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8. Identifying the Role of Defense Outlays
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Chapter 8 IDENTIFYING THE ROLE OF DEFENSE OUTLAYS ALL BOLSHEVIKS saw national defense as one of their major responsi bilities. They had seized power against high odds and endured three years of civil war before establishing a feeble and insecure nation state. They hoped and expected that the Revolution would spread to other countries, but after 1923 that hope was increasingly called into question. Instead, among the new Bolsheviks, there was increasing fear of attack from abroad. Armed struggle, one way or another, was seen as sure to come. Either an effort would be made to crush the Revolution's base in the USSR or Soviet support would be needed for uprisings abroad. Party doctrine made it clear that both of these even tualities required a Soviet drive to catch up with and surpass the ma jor Western powers. What methods seemed appropriate? The experience of prolonged civil war and emergency management of an economy under siege shaped the habits and outlook of a whole generation of Party mem bers. It was their baptism by fire, their formative experience in gov ernance. Under socalled "war Communism" they developed methods that proved successful in dealing with their immediate military and economic problems. Under the New Economic Policy there was an interlude of relative calm in the 1920s, but when the newBolshevik "second Revolution" was deliberately launched "from above" in 1929, the terminology and outlook of "war Communism" reemerged. After Lenin's death in 1924, and prior to the second Revolution, Trotsky and Stalin had led a major debate over the outlook for addi tional revolutions outsidethe USSR. The issues werecomplex and the arguments were intricate, but in essence, the Trotsky view was that the USSR should work for "permanent revolution," that is, should en courage and support armed struggle abroad to overthrow Western governments. The newly established proletarian regimes could then join with and assist the USSR in building a new order. Stalin, on the other hand, called for "socialism in one country," arguing that early successful revolutions elsewhere were unlikely and that the USSR needed to build a powerful state and economy on its own, with litde assistance from abroad. At the fourteenth Party Congress in Decem ber 1925, Stalin's position won majority support, and at the fifteenth THE ROLE OF DEFENSE OUTLAYS 137 Party Congress in December 1927, the implied domestic economic policies were spelled out and ratified. During the 1920s, while the restoration of the economy had top pri ority, the Red Army was reduced from its civil war peak size of 5.2 million to under 600,000 men. In absolute terms, this was still a sub stantial defense force, demonstrating the regime's commitment to de fense even when the economy was weak. Oudays for national defense were budgeted at about onesixth of the AllUnion national budget, as shown in table 81. Defense thus made amajor claim on the economy, one that competed strongly against economic recovery itself, since de fense drew on highquality manpower and scarce resources. During 192628 the defense share of the budget declined somewhat as recov ery was being completed. In the central budget, the "administration" category covered man agement of government commissariats, the court system, the secret police, border guards, and the like. In the 1920s its expenses rose less rapidly than defense outlays and even declined slighdy during 1927 and 1928; in 1928/29 they were only 25% larger incurrent prices than they had been in 1922/23. After 1929, oudays on administration rose steadily and more rapidly, although their share of the state budget de clined. In addition, the activities of the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs) expanded markedly. Its oudays in 1937, 1938, and 1939 came to 2,995, 4,244, and 5,732 million rubles respectively (In dustrializatsiia SSSR, 19381941 1973, pp. 25 and 31). In the 1940 budget the NKVD was allocated 3,440 million rubles for special con struction projects (Zaleski 1980, p. 194). In the annual plan for 1941, the NKVD was assigned responsibility for producing a substantial vol ume of industrial output (Gosudarstvennyi plan 1941). During 192933, allocations for defense increased modestly in cur rent rubles; perhaps more in real terms (Cooper 1976). The share of defense in the state budget fell from 12.0% in 1928 to 3.4% in 1933, as funds channeled into investment for heavy industry enlarged their claims. After 1931 the number of men in the...