SOVIET RUSSIA. Brief history of the USSR |
The five year civil war and intervention turned into the greatest tragedy for Russia, which had the worst consequences. The provisional amount of economic damage to the country was 39 billion gold rubles, and more accurate data, including property losses of the population, amounted to more than 50 billion gold rubles. Industrial production was reduced by 5 times, coal mining - by 3 times, oil - by more than 2 times, and iron smelting - by 33 times compared to the prewar 1913.
At the same time, the remaining economic potential was not updated during the entire period of the war and represented Himself dilapidated equipment and transport. The number of the proletariat has almost halved, and for the remaining working class the declassifying processes were characteristic. There were not enough working hands even for a functioning production. Agriculture produced products at 40% less than before the war. The most developed commodity farms were destroyed. Technical equipment remaining was extremely low.
There was practically no to-war-exchange between town and country. Money has depreciated strongly and had a limited circulation. Reigned naturalization of the economy. Most of the scientific and technical potential of Russia has ceased to exist. About 1.5 million people - almost the entire political, financial and industrial, to a lesser extent scientific and artistic elite and their families - were forced to emigrate. Engineers and agronomists have become rare.
The country's population has decreased over five years by almost 13 million people, excluding the emerging non-dependent states in the west of the former Russian Empire. They were mainly victims of epidemiology and famine. A significant proportion were victims of hostilities, white and red, green terror, pogroms and intervention. Casualties reduced the labor and, to a certain extent, intellectual potential of the people, hardened the population. The value of individual life in the mass consciousness has become extremely low.
One of the main results of the civil war was the deepest social changes in Russian society. There was a liquidation of the whole classes: landowners, large and middle bourgeoisie. The clergy, the Cossacks and the well-to-do peasantry in the face of the kulaks suffered serious losses. There was a redistribution of property previously controlled by them, mostly transferred to the state, partly to the poorest peasantry, partly destroyed or exported abroad. Serious changes occurred in the proletariat and the peasantry, primarily the averaging of their social and property characteristics. The poorest sections of the urban and rural proletariat have noticeably improved their economic position and influenced the political life of the country.
A certain number of previously most exploited strata of the population gained access to governing the country, serving as a support for the Soviet regime. At the same time, it should be noted that there has been a counterposition of these categories of population to other segments of society, including highly skilled workers and engineers in the cities and the wealthy middle peasants in the villages.
Significant changes have occurred in the system of public administration. Civilian deformation deformed the principles of Soviet democracy proclaimed in October 1917. The dictatorship of the proletariat degenerated into the dictatorship of the party. The system of Soviets was only nominally the basis of the system: the Party and emergency bodies had a much greater significance. In less than a year, the abolition of the death penalty turned into red terror, and the temporary organ of the Cheka became the symbol of extraordinary management measures. Initially, the extensive involvement of workers in management was replaced by the establishment of a new bureaucracy. Being in the center of the emerging system, the ruling party could not avoid changes.
The necessary cohesion before the internal and external enemy led to a decline in inner-party democracy, to unity of command, leaderism in the party. Forced to concentrate all forces in order to preserve power, the Communist Party consistently rejected the previously proclaimed principles.
At the same time, the results of the civil war included not only the results of destructive processes, but also a certain constructive beginning. The collapse of the Russian Empire, which began during the First World War and intensified after the February Revolution of 1917, was suspended. The emerged state, regardless of the will of the new rulers, restored a thousand-year historical space. Although territorial losses amounted to 800 thousand square meters. km with a population of 30 million, the Soviet republic has found acceptable forms of government, uniting the peoples of Russia.
During the civil war, it was possible to break with Russia's economic dependence on the Western powers, to stop the export of capital. Despite the fact that the consequence of this was an economic and political blockade, in the future this circumstance created the basis for the establishment of a truly independent, economically developed state. The victory of the Bolsheviks in the civil war caused significant damage to the colonial system of imperialism, undermining its foundations and opening up the perspective to dependent and colonial countries. Finally, the victory of socialism in the USSR forced the countries of the West to revive their own society.
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History of the Soviet Union and Russia in the 20th Century