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6. War and Revolution in the Marketplace, 1914–1921
- University of Pittsburgh Press
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173 Russia’s entry into World War I, the two revolutions in 1917, and the civil war that followed interrupted the campaign of activist-journalists and debates about the nature and value of modern retailing, as well as consumers’ daily shopping routines. The hardships of war and implementation of revolutionary imperatives led to state interventions into the retail economy and the politicization of the retail trade and consumption, along with new ways of buying and selling goods and interpreting consuming behaviors. During these years, the retail marketplace and its culture were transformed, although not in the ways that members of the trade press or liberal and conservative commentators had hoped. The war and civil war shaped the environment within which the Bolsheviks took power in October 1917. Thus, in order to gain a full understanding of the retail trade and patterns of consumption in the early Soviet era, one must first have an understanding of this wartime era. It is often assumed that the new communist state set into motion the campaigns of expropriation and nationalization that transformed the retail economy. Scholars who have assessed the relationship of World War I to the 1917 revolutions, however, have shown that a remarkable degree of continuity existed between the economic policies of the wartime tsarist government and the policies of both the provisional and the early Soviet governments. Nicholas II and his ministers initiated policies that, over the next seven years, had enormous consequences for merchants, the retail 6 War and Revolution in the Marketplace, 1914–1921 174 war and revolution in the marketplace, 1914–1921 trade, and consumers, as well as for the culture of the retail marketplace. Lars Lih has characterized the entire period from 1914 to 1921 as one united by a “food supply crisis that was both symptom and breakdown of national economic and social life.”1 More recent scholarship concurs with Lih’s characterization. Peter Holquist argues that a “continuum of crisis” marked the period.2 Peter Gatrell considers the Great War “a stepping stone on the path to revolution,” while Eric Lohr, in his study of the campaign against enemy-subject participation in the economy, contends that the war was a “nationalizing event.”3 Julie Hessler identifies the economic crisis of 1916–1922 as the “crucible of Soviet socialism” and argues that policies during these years not only conditioned the Soviet state’s policies but actually “helped to create the possibility of socialist revolution.”4 Thus, despite the different ideological perspectives of the three regimes that governed Russia from 1914 to 1921, their economic policies showed a great deal of continuity. The tsarist government intervened in the wartime economy in ways that were unprecedented; it centralized production, confiscated and nationalized private enterprises, and enacted discriminatory policies. During the nine-month tenure of the Provisional Government, officials continued these policies and tactics, and when the Bolsheviks came to power, they significantly expanded them. Of course, the inspiration and political goals of the Bolsheviks differed from those of the other two governing bodies. Marxist ideology provided the Bolsheviks with a framework and a rationale for centralized planning and class-discriminatory policies, and they carried out these measures in order to enact class struggle and redistribute wealth. The tsarist regime, and to a large extent the Provisional Government, did not seek wholesale transformation of social and economic structures and institutions. Nevertheless, despite widely varying ideological positions, the three regimes heralded an increasingly interventionist state that orchestrated economic activity, transgressed Russia’s fledging ideals of private property, and, as Lohr puts it, “embraced a radical program to nationalize the economy by transferring ownership and jobs from enemy aliens to Russians, other ‘reliable’ individuals, and the state.”5 Beginning in 1914 and continuing through the civil war, there were dramatic changes in the structure and culture of the retail marketplace and in the behavior of merchants and consumers. As the documentary evidence suggests, the reorganization of the retail sector and redistribution of consumer goods were central to waging war and making revolution; moreover, the imperatives profoundly altered the ways in which goods were bought and sold and the meanings attached to the retail trade and consumption. Merchants and consumers contributed to these changes by initiating their own campaigns, organizing alternative means of obtaining goods, and adapting and subverting state policies . The regimes in power expropriated goods from and launched liquidation [54.224.124.217] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:30 GMT) war and revolution in the marketplace, 1914–1921 175...