The development of the Soviet State, 1921-1929

In subsequent years Sokolnikov would be accused of “a capitulationist position” by trying to abolish the foreign trade monopoly. Sokolnikov did not oppose state control of foreign trade. Indeed, in a May 1920 Pravda article he pointed out that the Bolshevik trade monopoly had frustrated capitalist plans to dictate trade terms to Russia.66 But the economist Sokolnikov was more flexible on state control of forign trade than was Lenin. He said in early 1922 that the state did not need a total monopoly on foreign trade. He argued that relaxing the foreign trade monopoly a bit would attract more trade, increasing income from duties and customs. More importantly, as he told the Eleventh Party Congress, trade would create a stronger Soviet economy, which would bring further revolutionary gains at home and abroad, and mixed companies posed no problem as long as they were not in important economic areas. When, in Lenin's absence, Sokolnikov convinced the Sovnarkom and the Council of Labour and Defence (STO) to ease slightly the monopoly in a decision of 6 October 1922, Lenin quickly objected in a letter addressed to Stalin and meant for the entire Central Committee. He complained that the decision “wrecks the foreign trade monopoly. Small wonder that Comrade Sokolnikov has been trying to get this done and has succeeded.” Lenin was not surprised at Sokolnikov's efforts, but “that people, who in principle favour the monopoly, have voted for this." He requested and got the Central Commit-tee to postpone implenientation of the decision.67

An example of Sokolnikov's views can be seen in the establishment of mixed companies. Not dissimilar to those which the Gorbachev regime has sought to encourage, mixed companies were jointly owned by the Soviet state and foreign entrepreneurs. On 15 February 1922 STO set up a Commission for Mixed Companies, headed by Sokolnikov. Sokolnikov believed these companies were advantageous, since the foreigners needed Soviet trade, which would benefit the Soviet economy. At the Eleventh Party Congress. not many weeks later. Lenin reported nine such companies, six under the aeeis of Sokolnikov's committee. Still, Lenin was very suspicious. He wrote Sokolnikov in February, soon after the commission came into being, that “there will he no practical results -- the clever capitalists will draw stupid (most honest and most virtuous) Communists into the mixed companies, and swindle us as they are swindling us now”.68 Given Lenin's position, not as much came from the mixed companies as might have.

Lenin also opposed Sokolnikov's plans for importing grain into the country. In order to cope with the famine, Sokolnikov imported grain with the assistance of the American Relief Administration. But Sokolnikov also sought commercial importation of grain to help the farmers and to steady grain prices. Lenin strongly opposed this, but imports did cover shortfalls in the mid-l920s.69

Sokolnikov was also moderate as regards industry and did not side with the productionists, for whom economic accountability and profitability were far less important than production of goods. Sokolnikov believed production could develop only on a rational basis. In December 1920, before inception of the NEP, he pointed out that unified economic direction and less interdepartmental fighting could come only when the various economic ministries acted in purely economic and not in political ways; the latter had been the problem with the Supreme Economic Council, he said. In October 1922 he told TslK that industry could he saved not by paper money and deficits, as some productionists argued., but by acting in an economically rational manner.70 He argued that income from enterprises was important but that they still needed to pay for services. Further, while profits were not unimportant, he told the Eleventh Congress that "this test will be given in the market. The market is the severe examiner." In addition to his belief that enterprises should pay taxes so the state could determine how to spend their profits, he charged in 1924 and 1926 that the enterprises' need for money was partly the result of their improper use of credit and that the credit reliability of firms had to be monitored more carefully.71

Then, again like later leaders, such as Brezhnev and Gorbachev, Sokolnikov thought that labor productivity was a major problem. He said in later 1925 that “the unheard-of low level of labor productivity in agriculture conforms to the extremely low level of productivity in industry”. Alcoholism, as Gorbachev would again say, was a large part of the problem. “Our task in the future.” he said in 1925, “must be to limit the consumption of alcohol for drinking and we shall in future years firmly limit the production and consumption of alcohol.” A few months later, though, he admitted the importance of tax revenues from alcohol. Sobriety was an important goal, and he admitted “having suffered defeat in our attempt to set up in the country a regimen of complete sobriety”.72

Above all, one cannot read Sokolnikov's numereous speeches, articles, and brochures without coming to the conclusion that the very core of all economic growth, in his opinion, rested on the development of agriculture. “Only to the degree that agriculture develops can industry develop ... and therefore in the policy of the Soviet government support of agriculture must he moved to the appropriate place," for, as he also told the Tenth Congress of Soviets in 1922, "we can say, reworking the old proverb, that the real People's Cornmissar of Finances in Russia is Comrade Harvest.” In his coreport on tax policy at the Twelfth Party Congress the next spring he told the delegates that Communists ought not to see the peasant economy as something alien, for the internal market for a long time would depend on the peasantry. Indeed, “our industry to a very significant degree depends on peasant resources”. Maintaining the smychka, he told Moscow party workers soon thereafter at a meeting to report on the congress, was the key to economic success, and that December he reiterated that “our economy -- that which defines our finances -- is primarily the economy of agriculture”. He pointed out that economic growth would come, literally and figuratively, from the ground up and that peasant taxes had to be kept low. In late 1925, shortly before he was removed as commissar, he said that, while some Communists argued that agriculture was too important in the economy in relation to industry, in his opinion agriculture was insufficiently developed to spur on industrial growth.73

All policies needed to he seen through the prism of agriculture. Only through increased agricultural productivity and exports could the national economy grow. Larger budgets rested on improved agriculture. Peasant taxes had to be low, for too much taxation would hurt the entire economy. Industrial growth had to be moderate because it was tied to agriculture. Exports depended upon agricultural exports, without which they would have to import less.74 In all this, of course, he was at one with the general policy of the mid-1920s.

Sokolnikov was pro-agriculture not pro-kulak and argued that taxation was the way to control the kulak, with the resultant funds to he used for co-ops for the middle-income and poor peasants. He was, at the same tune, broadly pro-peasant and, since the peasant represented most of the population, pro-people. Stalin may have believed that one could not have an omelette without breaking eggs but Sokolnikov did not share this alleged belief. He said once that “'our task is to enter upon the path of such an organization of the economy which will give the greatest satisfaction to the masses, and not at all the greatest profits to the statc.” Perhaps foreseeing what Stalin would do, he argued as early as 1924 that “in a poor harvest year the preservation of a certain reserve [of grain] in the country, as an insurance fund, is absolutely necessary.”75

Sokolnikov was unable to prevent Stalin's policies because he had lost in the struggle for power after Lenin's death in January 1924. At that time Sokolnikov, as finance commissar, was also a member of the Sovnarkom and STO. Within the party he was a full member of the Central Committee, which he had joined for the first time in 1917. In 1917 he had been elected to the first Politburo (along with Lenin, Trotskii, Grigorii E. Zinoviev, Lev B. Kamenev. Stalin and Andrei S. Bubnov), although that body had played no role in October and was soon disbanded, only to reappear permanently, in 1919. After the Thirteenth Party Congress in 1924. Sokolnikov became a candidate member of the Politburo.76 Sokolnikov's power base was clearly within the government apparatus and not the party's, a fact that would prove determinative.

Sokolnikov, who had worked well with Trotskii and had been praised highly by him during the civil war, opposed Trotskii in the 1920s, almost assuredly because of their differences over economic matters. As early as 1923 Sokolnikov was among party leaders appearing at district meetings to combat Trotskiite positions on policy. Later an article of his appeared in the anti-Trotskii work Za Leninizm, along with articles by many other party leaders.77

One of the things that disturbed Trotskii, namely, Stalin's control over the party and the direction in which party work was turning, appears also to have brought Sokolnikov himself into opposition to Stalin. His opposition certainly was not an issue of economic policy at this time, for in the mid-l920s Stalin supported the moderates on economic issues. Sokolnikov appears to have clashed with Stalin as early as the civil war, when both men played prominent roles as political commissars. In early 1920 or late 1919, Stalin apparently threatened to resign one of his positions at the front if Sokolnikov remained in his position. In a telegram addressed to Stalin on 10 February 1920, one that was marked for personal hand delivery, Lenin wrote that “I am still hopeful that after your talks with Tukhachevsky and the removal of Sokolnikov, things will adjust themselves without your transference”.78

By the autumn of 1925 Sokolnikov was willing to join with Zinoviev and Kamenev, whose economic views differed sharply from his own, to oust Stalin. In early September Zinoviev, Kamenev, Nadezhda K. Krupskaya and he drew up a document that became known as the Platform of the Four, which attacked the policies of the secretariat and called for greater party democracy. These four acted together at the Central Committee plenum in October.79 At the Fourteenth Party Congress in December Sokolnikov was fully with the opposition. He attacked Bukharin for what Sokolnikov considered his overoptimistic view of economic perspectives and said that Stalin incor-rectly understood the economic situation. It was not the Leningrad faction led by Zinoviev that precipitated the problem, but Stalin, whose attacks on Zinoviev and Kamenev “are an attempt to introduce division into the leading Leninist cadres”. Saying he had worked hand-in-hand with Stalin for many years and that he had nothing personal against Stalin, he argued that the general secretary of the party should not also sit on its Politburo, for this created a conflict of interest, inasmuch as the secretariat is to carry out the Politburo's decisions. Lenin, he pointed out, never held the position of general secretary, and if Stalin wanted the authority that Lenin had, “let him earn this confidence.”80

Since Stalin's forces controlled the congress and smashed the opposition, retribution came quickly. Although re-elected to the Central Committee at the end of the congress, Sokolnikov lost his position on the Politburo. The next month he was replaced as finance commissar by his deupty, the more compliant and far less influential old Bolshevik N.P. Briukhanov. Sokolnikov's new post was vice-chairman of Gosplan. Since Sokolnikov had a negative view of planning, this appointment was ironic, but he held it for two years.

Indeed, the major theme in Sokolnikov's printed speeches and articles over the next two years can be read as a cautionary tale on the potential problems of long-range planning. Even in 1925 he saw the coming storm and took up the defense of moderation. In September 1925 he had downplayed the proposed control figures for 1925-1926. He argued then that the country had great potential but that economic progress would be slow in so backward a country. Planning, he said, was a special problem in an agricultural country, and a plan without reserves is a useless plan, one awaiting crises.81

In March 1926, soon after becoming Gosplan vice-chairman, he attacked Stanislav U. Strumilin's proposed five year plan at a congress of planning workers. Refusing even to concede that it was a plan. Sokolnikov said that it "is still not a five year plan in the strict sense of the term" but, rather, “a working hypothesis" that, at best, could serve as a basis for further work. For "I think it is impossible to say that the questions which justifiably concern us find their solution in that hypothesis suggested to us by comrade Strumilin.” He continued to argue that industry was emphasized too much and agriculture too little, even though the latter would be dominant for a long time. He was increasingly worried about a five year plan that would be unbalanced in the consumer sector.82

As planning came nearer, Sokolnikov's concerns grew. He told the Fifteenth Party Congress, in December 1927, that a two to three year plan should be tried before a five year plan. He again reminded the delegates that a real plan must rest on an agricultural base and must take care of the people's welfare. He predicted problems, especially in terms of consumer deprivation. Sounding like Brezhnev or Gorbachev, he said that “I think that ... the possibilities of developing our economy are reduced, in the end, to the problem of raising the productivity of labor on the one hand, and to the problem of the best organization of human laboring forces on the other”.83

Again buried in the Stalin steamroller, and undoubtedly amazed and disturbed at the "extraordinary measures" in the countryside that Stalin launched the month after the congress, Sokolnikov found his political star descending. In 1928 he was dropped from Gosplan and became head of the oil syndicate, a job he filled until late 1929. Between the autumn of 1928 and the spring of 1929, he appears to have successfully negotiated, in this capacity, a deal with western oil firms to establish more nearly normal trading relations in oil among the various countries and companies.84

Sokolnikov's days at home were numbered, however. Although he had recanted at the fifteenth congress for his earlier oppositional activities and had been re-elected a member of the Central Committee, he again became involved in opposition activities in 1928, this time with the so-called Right Opposition of Bukharin and Rykov. He played an important role in trying to reconcile the former Left Oppositionists with the Right Opposition of the late 1920s, arranging a meeting between Bukharin and Zinoviev in July 1928 for which the Central Committee soon denounced all the oppositionists.85 During this period, Sokolnikov is alleged to have described Stalin, watching him attack Tomskii at the July 1928 Central Committee Plenum, as follows: “swarthy, sour, wrathful and vindictive. A forbidding sight ... What struck us most was his coarseness.”86 By 1929, with the Five Year Plan which Sokolnikov so feared in full swing, Stalin decided to move Sokolnikov to a distant shore. With the restoration of diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom, Sokolnikov became the Soviet Union's first ambassador to the Court of St James. Those activities, however, are beyond the scope of this article, which has tried to demonstrate how Sokolnikov played a positive role in the development of the Soviet state in the l920s and how his concerns for development would be borne out in important ways.

We may wish to look at Sokolnikov's work in the I920s in two ways -- forward and backward. Looking backward, it is possible to observe that when historians speak of the economic successes of the New Economic Policy, they often ignore or give too little attention to the important developments in financial policy. It seems clear, however, that without those positive developments in the financial area economic advancement would have been, at best, much more difficult. Looking forward, we can see that the changes so far during the Gorbachev period -- in terms of economic rationalization, greater emphasis on success at the expense of ideology, greater openness within the party, concern for improving the lot of the average Soviet citizen, the fight against alcoholism. and others -- are similar in important ways to the goals and aspirations of some leading 1920s Communists, among whom Sokolnikov was an important figure.

I wish to thank California State University, Stanislaus, for a sabbatical that gave me time to complete the research and writing of this article and also the Mellon Foundation for a travel grant administered by the Center for Slavic and East European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, which permitted me to use the resources of the libraries at Berkeley and the Hoover Institution. Portions of this article appeared, in embryonic form, in my entry, Sokolnikov, Grigorii Yakovlevich, Modern Enclopedia of Russian and Soviet History, 50 vols, to date (Gulf Breeze, Fla: Academic International. 1976-) 36:128-132.

Notes

1. Leninskii sbornik 36 (1959) 367: Lenin, Collected Works, 45 vols. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960-1970) 42:364, 45:446: T.H. Rigby, Lenin's Government: Sovnarkom, 1917-1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 139-l4O. The emphasis is Lenin's.

2. Because he was eventually purged, Sokolnikov became a non-person in Soviet historiography. He is ignored in all editions of the Bol'shaia sovetskaya entsiklopedia and the Sovetskaya istorecheskaia entsiklopedia. His brief autobiography is in G. Ia. Sokolnikov, Sokolnikov (Briliant). Grieorii Iakovlevich (avtobiaerafiia), Entsiklopedia slovar' Granat 41, part 3:73-88. This work appears to be the only extant biographical information, but it offers some useful information. Of the 244 biographies and autobiographies in the Granat section entitled Deiateli SSSR i Oktiahr'skoi revoliutsii in the three parts of volume 41, only three (those of Karl Radek, Lenin and Iu. Iu. Markhlevskii) are as long as or longer than the eighteen columns Sokolnikov wrote about himself, covering the years to approximately 1927. Although most scholars of the early period of Bolshevik rule mention Sokolnikov, no one has written even an article about his career. For a study of Sokolnikov's early career, which is awaiting publication, see my A Bolshevik in Revolution: G. Ia. Sokolnikov, the Party and State, 1888-1921. Trotskii's quote is in Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed: Trotsky, 1879-1921 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 446-447. In accordance with Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of relative historical glasnost, Sokolnikov is among the former leaders who have been rehabilitated since 1987. Whether this will lead to the publication in the Soviet Union of significant historical work on him remains to he seen.

3. The Case of Leon Trotsky: Transcript of Proceedings in the Hearings of the Preliminary Commission of Inquiry into the Charges Made Against Leon Trotsky, Albert M. Glotzer, court reporter (New York: Harper, 968: copyright 1937), 123: E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 (New York: Macmillan, 1951-1953, 2:351.

4. New York Times, 7 July 1922. 5.

5. Robert V. Daniels. The Conscience of the Revolution: Communist Opposition in Soviet Russia (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1960), 291 and Louis Fischer, Russia's Road from Peace to War: Soviet Foreign Relations, 1917-1941 (New York: Harper, 1969) 198. Sokolnikov's wife, the well-known writer Galina Serebriakova (b. 1905) wrote a good deal of memoiristic material, including vignettes of many prominent people whom she had met and of her experience in England from 1929 to 1932, when her husband was the Soviet ambassador, but she never mentions him in her works. (See, for instance the 1968, 1971 and 1975 editions of her 0 drugikh i o sebe. The 1975 edition is part of Galina Serebriakova: izbrannye proizvedenia, 2 vols [Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1975]. (Even in a multi-volume work, such as Dokumenty veneshnei politiki, the names of such prominent diplomats as Sokolnikov have been deleted from their dispatches (Teddy J. Uldricks, Diplomacy and Ideology: The Origins of Soviet Foreign Relations, 1917-1930 (Beverly Hills, Calif, Sage, 1979), 184 n8). It should he pointed out that although Sokolnikov was the first resident official amtbassador of the Soviet Union to the United Kingdonm, there had been earlier Soviet representatives at a lesser rank, including M.M. Litvinov (November 1917 to September 1918), L.B. Krasin (1922 to 1923 and then 1925 to 1926), Kh. G. Rakovskii (1923 to 925) and A.P. Rozengolts (1927): see U.L. Crowley ed, The Soviet Diplomatic Corps, 1917-67 (Methuen, N.J., Scarecrow, 1970), 37-38.

6. S.S. Katsenellenhaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 1914-1924, translated from the Russian (London: P.S. King and Son, 1925), 2-3, 6, 8.

7. Ibid, 49-54, 60, 69, 75.

8. Ibid, 52-54, 59, 69, 75; John Kenneth Galbraith Economics in Perspective: A Critical History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 144.

9. Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, (London: Penguin, 1972), 68.

10.10. G. Ia. Sokohnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 3 vols, (Moscow: Finansovoe izdatel'stvo, 1925-1928) 1:187; New York Times, 5 July 1922, 3.

11. G. Ia. Sokolnikov, Konfiskatsiia i nalog (starye i novye metody), Pravda, 27 December 1921 in Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:91.

12. Leninskii sbornik 23 (1933): 192-193. Other collections of his speeches and articles were published, some even after he was no longer in Narkomfin; they included Problems finansovogo stroitel'stva (Moscow: Narkomfin, 1923 (Denezhnaia reforma, 2 editions, and Finansovaia politika revoliutsii(Moscow: Narkomfin, 1925-1928).

13. G. Ia. Sokolnikov, Zadachi finansovoi politiki, 2d. ed. (Moscow: Narkomfin, 1922), 6-7; idem, Tverdaia valiuta, tverdaia vlast' i real'naia politika, Sotsialisticheskoe khoziaistvo 5 (1924): 11; idem, Problemy finansogo stroitel'stva, 8; idem, Piat' let finansovoi revoliutsii, Ekonomicheskaia zhizn, 7 November 1922, reprinted in idem, Finansy posle oktiabria, 7; idem, Finansovaia politika revolutsii, 3:134; idem, Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm i novaia finansovaia politika, 3.

14. Sokolnikov, Gosudarstvennyi kapitalism, 4ff.

15. Sokolnikov in Zadachi finansovoi politiki, 8-10, 22, 29-30.

16. Odinnadtsatyi s'ezd RKP(b) mart-aprel, 1922, goda; stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, 1961), 296-314.

17. Ibid 315-318, 361, 365, 486-48.

18. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:178-179, 170, 172, 181

19. Ibid 2:l33-156, 208, 241, 291

20. Ibid 1:218, 215, 250ff.

21. Sokolnikov, SokoInikov, Grigorii Iakovlevich (Briliant) (avtobiografiia), cols. 86-87.

22. Quoted in Adam B. Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence: Soviet Foreign Policy, 1917-73, 2nd ed (New York: Praeger, 1974); Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:182, 275-276.

23. Lenin, Collected Works, 45:445-446. Emphasis in the original.

24. Ibid, 427, 450, 712; Rigby, Lenin's Government, 139-40. A few months later Trotskii complained about the arrangement (Lenin, Collected Works, 33:355). Krasnoshchekov (1880- 1937) subsequently became chairman of the Industrial Bank (Prombank), member of the presidium of the Supreme Economic Council, and an official in the agricultural commissariat. His reported death in 1937 indicates that he was probably a victim of the purges (see The Great Soviet Encyclopedia [a translation of the third edition of Bol'shoia sovetskaia entsiklopediia] 13:182).

25. Practically complete runs of this publication are available in diverse places, such as the New York Public Library and the University of California, Berkeley. To date I have been unable to come up with specific figures on the number of peisonnel in PCF from 1918 to 1926.

26. Katsenellenbaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 149-152.

27. G. Ia. Sokolnikov, Kvoprosu o natsionaliatsii bankov (Moscow: Volna, 1918) 6, 9-13, 30.

28. Sokolnikov, Gosudarstvennyi kapitalism i novaia finansovaia politika, 13, 30-31.

29. See, for instance, speeches and articles in Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 2:44 and 3:150, and Denezhnaia reforma, 2d ed. (Moscow: Narkomfin, 1925), 148, 151, 163, (hereafter cited as Denezhnaia reforma/2); Tret'ii s'ezd sovetov SSSR (Moscow: Izdanie TsIK. 1925), 442.

30. Katsenellebaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 154, 161, 183-90, 192-193.

31. G. Ia. Sokolnikov, Problemy finansirovaniia promyshlennosti, Planovoe khoziaistvo, no. 3 (1927), in Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 3:120.

32. Katsenellenbaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 59; G. Ia. Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma 1924 g, Finansy i narodnoe khoziaistvo, no. 15/23 (1927), in Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 3:28 1.

33. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 1:191, 161; Problemy finansovogo stroitel'stva, 29.

34. G. Ia. Sokolnikov, Reforma prodnaloga (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel'stvo, 1923). 33; E.H. Carr, The Interregnum, 1923-24 (New York: Macmillan, 1954), 36; Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika resoliutsii I:190, 256 and III:266; Sokolnikov. Denezhnaia reforma/2, 110-112.

35. Katsenellenbaum, Russia, Currency and Banking, 11, quoted in Maurice Dobb, Soviet Economic Development Since 1917, (New York: International, 1966; originally published in 1928), 122.

36. Sokolnikov, Gosudarstvennyi kapitalism i novaia finansovaia politika, 14-15: Tverdaia Valiuta, 6; Denezhnaia reforma/2, 84-86, 88-89; Zadachi finansovoi politiki, 11-12.

37. Sokolnikov, Problemy finansovogo stroitel'stva, 17; Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 3:321.

38. Katsenellenbaum, Russian Currency and Banking, 101 ff.

39 Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2, 27; Problemy finansovogo stroitel'stva, 54; Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 3:58 and 2:258-259.

40. Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2, 10-Il; Finansovaia politika revolutsii 2:19-20 and 3:282.

41. Katsenellenbaum. Russian Currency and Banking, 142-143: Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2, 81-82; Dobb, Soviet Economic Development (1928 edition), 252-253.

82. For attacks on Strumilin and Krasin see Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia retorma/2, 31-36, 97-104. For the quotation on storming, see ibid, 88, and for the achievements of currency reform, see ibid, 30-31, 77, 83-84, 115, 168.

43. Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2, 154; Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:267 and 3:144-147.

44. Leninskii sbornik 36(1959):407; Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 3:336; Sokolnikov, Problemy finansovogo stroitel'stva, 19; G. Ia. Sokolnikov, Chervonets i razvitie denezhnogo khoziaistva, in Denezhnaia reforma/2, 74-75.

45. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 2:5-10: Problemy finansovogo stroitel'stva, 3-10.

46. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 3:340, 262, 290; Denezhnaia reforma/2, 145-146. For slightly different figures on gold extraction given by Sokolnikov see Tret'ii s'ezd sovetoz SSSR 449 and Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2 144. One pud equals slightly more than thirty-six pounds.

47. Sokolnikov, Denezhnaii reforma/2 17-18; Granat, col 87: Finansovaiia poliliki revoliutsii 3: 168, 170; Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm i novaia finansovaia politka 18-19; Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:188.

48. Dvenadisatyi s'ezd RKP(b), 17-25 aprelia 1923 goda: stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow: Gos politizdat, 1923), 427-428; Sokolnikov, Reforma prodnaloga, 14-20; Finansovaia po1itik revoliutsii 2:132.

49. Dvenadtsatyi s'ezd RKP(b), 424; Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 2:179 and 3:169; Tretsi s'esd sovetov SSSR, 432-433. For a resolution embodying these ideas, see Vtoroi s'ezd SSSR0: revoliutsii (Moscow:Izdanie TslK, 1924), 12-I5.

50. Odinnadtsatyi s'ezd RKP(b), 305; Sokolnikov, Tverdaia saliuta, 14 and Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 167 and 3:229.

51. Sokolnikov, Zadachi finansovoi politiki 20-21.

52. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 1:163, 269ff and 3:242-243.

53. Tret'ii s'ezd sovetov SSSR, 434; Sokolnikov, Tverdaia valiuta, 12-13, 16.

54. Lenin, Collected Works, 45:446.

55. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:180 and 3:218; Denezhnaia reforma/2 38.

56. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 3:228 and 2:133, 136: Odinadtsatyi s'ezd RKP(b), 303-305; Sokolnikov, Tverdaia valiuta, 16; Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2, 40; G. Ia Sokolnikov ed, Soviet Policy in Public Finance, 1917-1925 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1931), 423. For somewhat different figures see Sokolnikov, Soviet Policy in Public Finance, 401, and Tret'ii s'ezd sovetov SSSR, 425.

57. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:164, 185 and 3:107-108; Denezhnaia reforma/2, 15-16; Zadachi finansovoi politiki 16-18.

58. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 2:37, 40, 50.

59. Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2, 39, 107 and Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:184 and 3:164-65.

60. Lenin, Collected Works 45:446, 497.

61. The Case of Leon Trotsky, 123; Armand Hammer, Hammer (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1987), 157-158: Nove, Economic History, 92, 128.

62. See for instance, Pravda and Ekonomicheskaia gazeta, 1 December 1925; Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2, 48; Sokolnikov, Finunsovaia politika revoliutsii 3:129, 144, 320, 323.

63. Sokolnikov, Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm i novaia finansovaia politika 3, 4, 9; Zadachi finansovoi politiki 27; Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:87, 3:105; Denezhnaia reforma/2 135. 64. Sokolnikov, Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm i novaia finansovaia politika 21 and Finunsovaia politika revoliutsii 1:263; Dvenadtsatyi s'ezd RKP(b), 422. 65. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:170, 245 and 2:183-4.

66. See for instance, E. Genkina Lenin, predsedatel' sovnarkoma i STO; iz istorii gosudarstvennoi deiatel'nosti V.I. Lenin v 1921-22 godakh (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo an SSSR, 1960). The Pravda article is in Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:290-292.

67.67. Sokolnikov, Zadachi finansovoi politiki, 28 and Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm i novaia finansovaia politika, 25-26; Odinnadtsatyi s'ezd, 313-314; Lenin, Collected Works 33:375-376, 528-529, n115.

68. Lenin, Collected Works 33:522-523, n58 and 35:549-550; Odinadtsatyi s'ezd 26, 311, 765-766 n8; Sokolnikov Gosudarstvennyi kapitalizm i novaia finansovaia politika, 6-8; Zadachi finansovoi politiki, 25-26; Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii 1:85.

69. Herbert Hoover, An American Epic: Famine in Forty-Five Nations, Vol III: The Battle on the Front Line, 1914-1923, (Chicago, 196l) 478; Lenin, Collected Works 45:490, 496-497, 500, 723-724 n600, 726 n608.

70. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 1;72, 164.

72 Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 3:10, 22, 227; Tret'ii s'ezd sovetov SSSR, 474.

73. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 1:183, 97 and 3:37; Reforma prodnologa, 5-10; Dvenadtsatyi s'ezd, 421; Sokolnikov, Denezhnaia reforma/2, 16

74. Pravda, 24 September I925, Tret'ii s'ezd sovetov SSSR, 439; Sokolnikov, Tverdaia valiuta, 12; Dvenadtsatyi s'ezd RKP(b), 425; Sokolnikov, Reforma prodnaloga, 7-8 and Denezhnaia reforma/2, 133.

75. Sokonikov, Finansovaia politika revoliutsii, 3:24, 167, 229 and Denezhnaia reforma/2, 128.

76. Protokoly tsentral'nogo komiteta RSDRP, avgust 1917-fevral' 1918, (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1958), 292. For a list of members of the Central Committee, Politburo and Orgburo chosen at these party congresses, see Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, appendix 2:422-432.

77. Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 225; Za Leninizm (Moscow-Leningrad, 1925), 157-167.

78. Lenin, Collected Works, 44:340. Unfcrtunately, the sources do not mention the positions in question.

79. Sokolnikov, Granat, col 87; Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 255; Charles Bettelheim, Class Struggles in the USSR: Second Phase, 1923-1930 (Sussex: Harvester, 1978), 370.

80. Chetyrnadtsatyi s'ezd kommunisticheskoi partii(b), stenograficheskii otchet, (Moscow-Leningrad: Gosizdat 1926), 323-336.

81. Pravda, 24 September 1925: Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politikat revoliutsii 3:14, 34-35, 217.

82. Sokolnikov, Finansovaia politikat revoliutsii, 3:69-70, 86-87, 90-92, 293-294, 324.

83. Piatnadtsatyi s'ezd VKP(b), dekabr' 1927 goda: stenograficheskii otchet, (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1961-1962) 1128-1129, 1133, 1135. Indeed, as late as in a work appearing in 1931 Sokolnikov said that "whether it is possible actually to have a fixed and complete 'united plan' ... is a problem which must as yet be considered as unresolved" (see Sokolnikov, ed, Soviet Policy in Public Finance, 346).

84. New York Times, 2 March 1929, 6.

85. Daniels, Conscience of the Revolution, 332; Stephen Cohen, Bukharin-Kamenev Meeting, I928, Dissent (Winter 1979) 78-88.

86.86. Quoted in Moshe Lewin, Russian Peasants and Soviet Power: A Study of Collectivization (New York: Norton, 1975), 306.