48

The American Joint Distribution Committee and the relief committee headed by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen were also important in the relief efforts. Soviet President 8 Mikhail Kalinin, in his report on famine aid from abroad, indicated that ARA had contributed 85 percent of the total relief:

*Pood—a Russian weight equivalent to approximately 36 American pounds.

The population receiving foreign assistance numbered 12,120,189; the following organizations supported:

ARA____

Nansen_.

International Workers Committee_____

Trade Unions___

Others----

Persons

10, 387, 688 1, 496, 250 91, 209

45, 094

49 99, 945

In general, of course, the disaster did not divert the government from its course. A group of well-known Russian liberals organized a 63member Committee for Aid to the Hungry. After 1 month and 6 days the committee was disbanded by the police. Better no action than action by non-Communists, the government felt. As usual the committee was accused of subversion:

. . The Committee . . . carried on a wide underground activity directed toward the seizure of power "at the moment of the inevitable fall of the Bolsheviks as a result of the famine." 50

48 "President" is a term popularly applied by writers outside the Soviet Union to the titular head of the Soviet state. The head of state under the Soviet set-up, however, was the chairman of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Congress of Soviets until 1936, and the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet since that time.

"Itogi Posledgol, p. 16. These tables of figures contain a number of discrepancies. For example, the column of figures under the heading "Food" actually totals 35,100,103 rather than 34,421,003 as stated in the official Soviet publication. Figures listed under the heading "Persons" total 12,120,186 rather than 12,120,189. Itogi Borby s Golodom v 1921-22 gg., Sbornik Statei i Otchetov (Balance Sheet on the Fight of the Famine in 1921-22, Collection of Articles and Reports) (Moscow: Published by the Central Committee to Help the Hungry, 1922), p. 12.

The secret police made a public report on its own contribution which read in part:

The V-Cheka [All-Russian Extraordinary Committee] has issued a number of instructions concerning the tasks of its agencies and directives for the activities of [the] local commissions [the Chekas] to fight the famine. . . ... the local commissions must work in two directions:

first, to intensify vigilance in regard to counter-revolutionary elements. . . .51

Another item in the activities of the police was the confiscation of church valuables-gold, silver, and other jewelry-allegedly in order to create a fund for the purchase of food abroad. Citizens all over the country resisted the confiscation of church valuables and the drive was accompanied by violence, arrests, and deaths. When the results of the confiscation from the churches were published, the total amount realized appeared strangely small-1,344,824 gold rubles."

The situation began to improve in 1922, but the famine was not over until the end of 1923.53

6. The Police System

The transition from civil war to the New Economic Policy meant less direct fighting, fewer uprisings and consequently a reduction in the number of arrests and executions. These quantitative changes did not, however, mean that the political system had changed in essence. As before, no political opposition was tolerated and no freedom of press, assembly or religion was inaugurated. There was to be no doubt that the dictatorship of the Communist party was as strong as it had been, and statements to this effect were made publicly.

"The help given by the "capitalists" at this, one of the most terrible moments in Russian history, was not only officially overlooked, but was used to serve anti-American propaganda. In a textbook published in 1946 under the editorship of the ranking Soviet historian Anna Pankratova, it was said:

"The Soviet government mobilized all means to help the starving. All over the country voluntary donations were collected under the slogan: 'Ten well-off must provide for one hungry.'

"The capitalist world tried to make use of these new difficulties. Diversionists and spies set fires and arranged explosions in Soviet enterprises. The A.R.A., the American Organization to Help the Starving, was used for this hostile undermining work." (Istoriya S.S.S.R. Uchebnik dlya X Klassa Srednei Shkoly (History of the USSR, Textbook for the Tenth Grade of High School) (Moscow: Gos. UchebnoPedagog. Izd-vo Ministerstva Prosveshcheniya RSFSR (State Educational Pedagogical Publishing House of the Ministry of Education of the RSFSR), 1946), Part III, p. 293.)

These people [the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries] are helping mutinies, are helping the White Guards. The place for Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, open or disguised as non-party men, is in prison. We are surrounded by the world bourgeoisie, who are watching every moment of vacillation in order to bring back "their own folk," to restore the landlords and the bourgeoisie. We will keep the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, whether open or disguised as "nonparty," in prison.54

Lenin spoke only of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries because the other parties, the Kadets and the rightists, had been outlawed years before; what he meant was absolute suppression of all non-Communist political groupings. The principle was a strict one, and it remained in force during the whole NEP era. In July 1926, for instance, the Central Committee of the Communist party adopted a resolution which said:

The Communist party and the Soviet government must as determinedly and mercilessly as before suppress all sallies of the petty bourgeois political groups whose policy, as before, means return to capitalism; it tends toward turning the country back to bourgeois rule.

55

In two notes addressed in May 1922 to Dmitri I. Kurski, head of the Soviet department of justice, in connection with the projected preparation of a criminal code, Lenin was quite outspoken. On May 15, 1922, he wrote:

Comrade Kursky!

In my opinion it is necessary to extend the application of shooting (which could be substituted by exile abroad)... to all phases covering the activities of Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc.; to find a formula that would place these activities in connection with the international bourgeoisie and her struggle against us (by bribery of the press and agents, war preparations, etc.)

56

The Cheka, however, which had become a symbol of terrorism, illegality and death, had to be abolished, if only in name; it was out of place in the era of "free trade" and "concessions" to foreign capitalists.

"Lenin, "The Food Tax, The Significance of the New Policy and its Conditions" (April 21, 1921), Selected Works, vol. IX, pp. 198, 199.

55 "Ob Itogakh Perevyborov Sovetov" ([Resolution] On the Results of the Reelections of Soviets), Adopted at the United Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Control Commission of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), July 14-23, 1926, KPSS v Rezolyutsiakh i Resheniyakh S"ezdov, Konferentsii i Plenumov TsK (CPSU in Resolutions and Decisions of Congresses, Conferences and Plenums of the Central Committee) (7th ed.; Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Political Literature), 1953), Part II, p. 152.

This note was omitted from Lenin's collected works. It was published in Bolshevik, Moscow, January 15, 1937, p. 63 as a vindication of Stalin's purges and executions. It is still missing from the last (fourth) edition of Lenin's works, published between 1941 and 1958.

It was replaced by the State Political Administration (Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie-GPU)," but it continued under its chief, Feliks Dzerzhinski. On February 6, 1922, the Soviet government published a decree which read in part:

1. The All-Russian Extraordinary Committee [V-Cheka] and its local agencies are to be abolished.

6. At the direct disposal of the Main Political Administration are special troops the numbers of which are determined by decision of the Council of labor and defense. . .58

Actually, and contrary to the so-called liberalization, the Collegium of the GPU and its Judicial Board maintained, in all political cases, all of the rights and functions of a court: they could try and sentence a defendant to any form of punishment, including execution. Trials were usually held with the defendant absent and no appeal was possible.

The death penalty, abolished in January 1920 and reinstated in May of the same year, was widely applied by the GPU. No reliable records of death sentences of the NEP era have been published; existing reports are probably inaccurate.

The facts as to the number of persons executed for political and economic crimes throughout the Soviet Union are impossible to get officially. The nearest approach to an official statement was that made in conversation with members of the American Labor Delegation in 1927, by Menjinski, the head of the G.P.U. for the whole Union. He told them that about 1,500 persons were shot by the G.P.U. in the five years from 1922 to 1927, either on its own order or that of the courts.

How far the figure given by Menjinski can be relied upon as accurate, nobody is in a position to say. . . . I venture to guess that the figure does not include executions of Socialists in Georgia after the 1924 uprisingsome hundreds of which were publicly announced and many more known.59 A system of Soviet courts and criminal codes was introduced during the early NEP period.

Since 1922 there have been courts in the Soviet Union. However, by the position of the judges, court organization and procedure the Soviet courts are more akin to administrative agencies than to independent judicial bodies.

"In 1924 the GPU became the OGPU when the word Ob"edinennoe-United was added to its name.

""Dekret Vserossiiskogo Tsentralnogo Ispolnitelnogo Komiteta" (Decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee) (February 6, 1922). Istoriya Sovetskoi Konstitutsii (v Dokumentakh), 1917-1956 (History of the Soviet Constitution (in Documents) 1917-1956) (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Yuridicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing House for Juridical Literature), 1957), pp. 333, 334. Roger N. Baldwin, Liberty Under the Soviets (New York: Vanguard Press, 1928), pp. 211, 212.

Moreover, heavy penalties are imposed not only by courts but also by the Ministry of the Interior in an outright administrative action.... Although independence is promised to judges by the constitution, the conditions under which they hold their office do not guarantee such independence. A Soviet judge does not enjoy tenure for life on good behavior. He is "elected," being nominated by the Communist Party in the lower courts for three years, and in higher courts for five years, and may be prematurely recalled. Such recall is not like impeachment in American law; it is simply dismissal from office by a vote of an electoral body imposed by the Communist Party.60

A number of concentration camps continued to exist. One of the largest, situated on the Solovetski Islands in the far north, served to keep prisoners of various political trends far from Russia's mainland.

The expectation and "scientific prediction" of the Communist leadership that criminality would cease with the abolition of capitalism proved wrong. Although the wars had ended and the NEP had been inaugurated

In

. the number of murders, thefts, burglaries, briberies, and embezzlements was growing rapidly and far exceeded prerevolutionary levels. Criminality had reached an all-time high. In 1926 there were 162 criminal cases per 10,000 population, i.e., roughly 2,365,000 cases. 1927 the number of cases in which defendants were found guilty reached a million. Besides, about 1,600,000 persons were subjected to fines of a disciplinary (administrative) nature. The enormous rise in the number of new cases coming before the courts was the more alarming since, in Russia, criminality had always, even under the old regime, rightly been considered a revealing barometer of the moral and social state of the nation.61

The population in the congested prisons was growing rapidly under the new conditions:

January, 1924: 87,800

January, 1925: 148,000

January, 1926: 155,000

January, 1927: 198,000

To these numbers, thousands of inmates of the concentration camps and special prisons of the GPU must be added.62

A.A. Gertzenson, a high Soviet justice official, wrote:

The number of prisoners in the years 1922 to 1926 has risen at an annual rate of 15 to 20 per cent and has doubled in the course of these five years.

Vladimir Gsovski, Report Delivered June 13, 1955 at the Second Plenary Session of the International Congress of Jurists, Report of the International Congress of Jurists (The Hague: International Commission of Jurists, 1956), p. 34.

"David J. Dallin and Boris I. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labor in Soviet Russia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1947), pp. 158, 159.

"Ibid., p. 160.