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I thought it the duty of every citizen to stand by the country and live in it whatever the cost. At one moment under the stress of family troubles … I was tempted to retire to the Ukraine, and then to leave Russia. But my doubts did not last, and I returned to my heartfelt convictions. It is not every nation that has had to pass through so vast and so distressing an upheaval as the agony of Russia. The path may be hard, but I can choose no other, even if it should cost me my life. ²

But once enrolled in the Red Army many officers stayed on out of fear, for the Bolsheviks were terrified of subversion and — especially in times of danger, as when the White commander General Yudenich moved his troops on St Petersburg in 1919 - they would shoot their ex-imperial officers on mere suspicion of betrayal.

The transition was distressing, the suffering widespread. In the countryside, food requisitioning became a scourge of the peasantry. Used as an emergency wartime measure to ensure food supplies to the cities, it was adopted by the Bolshevik regime, which sent teams of young Party men into the countryside to requisition grain, confiscate hidden stores of it, or simply steal it. The practice caused anger and distress, and it had been an issue in both the Kronstadt and the Tambov rebellions. But the root cause of the food shortage lay in a shattered economy. Cities faced starvation because peasants did not market enough grain, and the peasants did not market enough grain because there was nothing to buy with the proceeds. Industry could not be rebuilt without capital, and Russia was devoid of capital. Nor could capital be raised abroad as it had been before the war.

The first three years of war had cost the Empire 16.5 billion gold rubles -four times the internal debt of 1914 — not counting the massive issues of paper money which had fed inflation. On the eve of the World War, thanks largely to railway-building, the Russian economy had already been dependent on foreign credits, but by 1918 its foreign debt had grown from under 4 billion to nearly 14 billion gold rubles. About half this enormous sum consisted of war loans. The major creditors were Britain and France, its erstwhile allies and new-found enemies. Russia was in no position to repay, and Lenin had no intention of doing so. In January 1918 he annulled ‘all foreign debts without any exception or condition’. Four years later, in 1922, an international conference held in Genoa tried to resolve the problem. Russia’s creditors recognized that loans were needed for reconstruction, but insisted that the debt, which the country could not repay, be recognized. However, Moscow (the capital again from March 1918) was obdurate, and so Soviet Russia was isolated by the international community — until in March 1922 at Rapallo Russia made common cause with the other outcast European state, debt-ridden Germany. ³

The country’s economic rebuilding had to proceed without benefit of foreign investment. Foreign trade surpluses might have contributed, but as late as 1926—7 they were only a third of what they had been before the war. World demand for grain had slumped in the aftermath of war. Somehow the economy had to be lifted, but it was clear that the Bolsheviks’ original ideas would not work. They had started out by nationalizing the banks and business. They had even abolished money. With industrial production in 1920 down to a fifth of what it had been in 1913, ⁴ theory was soon sacrificed to necessity. In the spring of 1921 an attempt was made to stimulate activity by means of a ‘New Economic Policy’. This permitted small-scale private enterprise, including private shops, and commercial middlemen. Farmers were now allowed to rent land and hire labour; state subsidies for raw materials and wages were abolished, and taxation reduced somewhat, ⁵ though large enterprises remained firmly under central control and subjected to strict central planning and discipline. In October 1921 a state bank was set up, run by a Constitutional Democrat who had served as a minister before the war. It proceeded to issue paper banknotes, of apologetically tiny dimensions, and even a gold coin.

These concessions to reality eased the situation. Enough food and consumer goods appeared to avert immediate catastrophe. Nevertheless, the country’s economic problems were so great that only central direction could get the country moving. In the judgement of the historian best acquainted with the early Soviet period, planning was a product of national emergency rather than doctrine. ⁶ Even so, serious economic problems were to recur. Meanwhile the Party was alternately mounting campaigns to recruit enough members to enforce its line in every outpost factory and farm and being ‘cleansed’ or ‘purged’ of ‘opportunists’ and ‘adventurers’ who rushed in when the ranks were opened.