Юрий Ларин в первые месяцы после Октября. Алексей Сафро… — Transcript

Exploring Yuri Larin's role in early Soviet economic reforms post-October Revolution, focusing on his vision and impact in 1918.

Key Takeaways

Yuri Larin was a pivotal economic thinker and policymaker in early Soviet Russia despite physical disabilities.
He promoted gradual socialist reforms emphasizing workers' control and cooperative management rather than immediate capitalist destruction.
Larin’s vision included syndication of trade and cooperative peasant production as foundations for socialism.
His leadership roles in VSNKh and labor commissariat illustrate the acute staff shortages and trust placed in capable revolutionaries.
The early Soviet economic policy was marked by tensions between nationalization demands and practical governance challenges.

Summary

Yuri Larin, born Mikhail Zalmanovich Lurie, was a key figure in the first months after the October Revolution and War Communism.
Despite suffering from progressive muscular dystrophy, Larin was deeply involved in revolutionary activities, including exile and escape.
Initially a Menshevik, Larin joined the Bolsheviks in August 1917 and quickly became influential in economic policy.
Larin advocated for workers' democracy in factories, collective agreements, labor protections, and gradual coexistence with capitalists.
He proposed ambitious economic reforms including the formation of trusts, syndication of trade, and cooperative production among peasants.
Larin played a central role in the establishment of workers' control regulations and became chairman of the economic policy committee of VSNKh.
He signed draft laws on behalf of Lenin due to staff shortages and was trusted despite his illness.
Larin pushed for nationalization of key industries like mining and oil, facing resistance from VSNKh and the Soviet government.
He emphasized the extension of cooperative organizations to build socialism through production-consumer communes.
Larin’s efforts highlight the challenges and ideological debates in early Soviet economic policy and governance.

Chapters

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In each historical epoch, we can find people who define its face and concentrate its most characteristic features in themselves. For the period of the first months after the October Revolution and War Communism, such a face of the era is, in my opinion,

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Mikhail Zalmanovich Lurie. Better known as Yuri Larin. Since the first months after October and War Communism are two big differences, today there will be the story about Larin in 1918.

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Misha Lurie was born in 1882. That is, he met the revolution at the age of 35. His mother was seriously ill during pregnancy, and the child suffered from progressive muscular dystrophy from birth.

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Relatives recalled that when Larin was already a responsible employee, he had to pick up the phone with both hands. So weak he was. At the same time, his path is traditional for the old revolutionaries: active participation in illegal clubs, exile to Yakutia,

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escape, immigration to Geneva. Yes, yes, the man who could not hold the phone escaped from Siberian exile. The escape was collective. The comrades put Larin in a basket and carried him through Taiga.

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And Larin, whose muscles gradually died from childhood, could not be scared by such trifles. Difficulties made Larin completely unstoppable. Until 1917 he was a Menshevik.

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He joined the Bolsheviks only in August of 1917 but already presented himself as a candidate for the Constituent Assembly from the Bolsheviks. Against what Lenin, looking through the lists of candidates for the Constituent Assembly, vehemently protested. Lenin

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protested against unverified people representing the party in politics, but not against such people leading the economic bloc. During immigration, Larin became the specialist in the military economy of Germany. He wrote how in war conditions capitalism creates such forms of economic management that can be used by the proletariat when it takes power. Lenin drew attention

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to these articles. As Larin's relatives recalled, Lenin summoned Larin after the revolution and said: "Well, now socialize!" Before October, Larin demanded to include in the party's economic program the clauses on factory committees that would replace the owner's autocracy with

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the workers' democracy at the factory. He also advocated for collective agreements, the extension of labor legislation to all categories of workers, the establishment of a guaranteed minimum wage, guaranteed vacations, and labor protection. Let me remind you that at first

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the Bolsheviks nowise intended to destroy all capitalists immediately, but planned to coexist with them for a long time until workers learn how to manage enterprises themselves. Like many Bolsheviks in those months, Larin believed that the consciousness and self-discipline of workers,

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when they gain control over production, will be enough to ensure growth, not decline in labor productivity. Larin's confidence in the masses was also shown when he, together with the Left Social Revolutionaries, proposed to cancel the decree on the press, introduced immediately after the revolution, which closed

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newspapers calling for open resistance to the new government. власти. Immediately after the revolution in November 1917, Larin publishes in Izvestia an ambitious program of economic reforms on behalf of the economic department of the central executive committee of the All-Russian Congress of Soviets, what he

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apparently managed to enter already. Larin proposes to forcibly trust, that is, to combine all enterprises of a number of important industries into holdings or corporations, to concentrate all production on the largest of the most technically advanced enterprises,

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to carry out a conversion, that is, a transition to the production of peaceful products. It is curious that according to the project speculation in shares of enterprises united in trusts was prohibited on the stock exchange, but the previous shareholders were guaranteed certain profitability. доходность. Until the Civil War broke out,

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nationalization was supposed to compensate the previous owners. Larin proposes to local authorities to syndicate or municipalize trade. That is, to unite retail into trade networks, and, if possible, subordinate these trade networks to workers' self-government. He proposes

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doing the same with the peasants. According to his idea, local zemstvos were to unite all peasants into production cooperatives, which would sell products to the state and orderly purchase agricultural machinery and manufactured goods for their members.

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In those months this program was commonplace among the Bolsheviks. Lenin had similar thoughts on the regular tasks of the Soviet regime. Socialism was conceived as a network of production and consumer societies exchanging their products. Larin had the strong desire to start building it immediately.

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“A socialist state can arise only as a network of production-consumer communes that conscientiously take into account their production and consumption... Every factory, every village is a production-consumer commune... Capitalism has left us with a legacy of mass organizations capable of facilitating the transition to mass accounting

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and control of the distribution of products - consumer society... Cooperative, if it embraces the entire society in which the land is socialized and the factories and plants are nationalized, is socialism. The tasks of the Soviet government, after the bourgeoisie is politically

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and economically expropriated, are mainly to extend cooperative organizations to the whole of society, in order to turn all citizens of the given country, without exception, into members of one nationwide, or rather, state-wide cooperative.

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Already on November 14 of 1917, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted the regulations prepared by Larin on workers' control. Officially, the regulations were developed by the central council of the factory committees of Petrograd. So, apparently, Larin headed it too.

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According to the regulations on workers' control, an all-Russian council of workers' control was formed, which had time to hold only two meetings and became a member of the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh) formed in December. If all power belongs to the soviets, then councils of

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the national economy are created throughout the country under ordinary soviets. They elect the Presidium of VSNKh, and VSNKh, thus, does not dictate, but only coordinates their activities. That was the plan.

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So Larin came to be in the main economic body of the country, becoming the chairman of the committee for the economic policy of VSNKh. In addition, even before the formation of VSNKh, he entered the first collegium of the

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People's Commissariat of Labor. The story of Larin, who took several key posts a month after the revolution, shows how great was the staff shortage in the new government. The degree of Lenin's loyalty to Larin is characterized by the following fact: the first months after the revolution, Larin periodically

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signed draft laws in the name of Lenin. In those years, Pravda was in charge of Zinoviev, who received documents from the office of the Council of People's Commissars and from Smolny, where was a box for letters to the editorial office.

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Larin signed in as Lenin and packed letters in a box. Zinoviev neatly printed them in Pravda without checking.

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And Lenin got to learn about everything from newspapers. Larin proudly adds that for such arbitrariness he only once received a reprimand from Lenin. Probably, Lenin's softness was associated not only with Larin's illness, but also with the fact that Larin was the nephew of "Granat" book publishers,

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for whose encyclopedic dictionary Lenin wrote his article about Karl Marx, and, of course, with the same staff shortage. Already in January of 1918, Larin sent to Kharkiv an indiscriminate order to nationalize all mining enterprises in Donbas. The Supreme Council of the National Economy Presidium

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resolutely opposed the total nationalizatio

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money from Petrograd is limited only by the power of the printing press and the stock of paper.

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In March, from VSNKh Larin together with Milyutin took part in the preparation of the decree on consumer cooperative organizations. The decree was approved on April 11 of 1918.

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The entire population was to be included in cooperatives. As the cooperatives were provided with products, workers' earnings had to be replaced with cards – the certificates on receipt of certain consumer goods in cooperative organizations according to the norms

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established by central or local councils. The central distribution bodies would bring the production to the cooperatives, and the cooperatives would already distribute it among their members.

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The decree was a practical step towards realizing the idea of communal socialism. Larin's pressure on the idea of nationalization intensified after the Brest-Litovsk Peace, as he did not consider it necessary to preserve the semblance of good relations with capitalists

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any longer. However, the majority of VSNKh did not support the idea of Larin and his deputy Lomov. What would an ordinary person do in such a situation? Would try to convince the presidium or calm down.

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But Larin was not going to give up. In the spring of 1918, Larin, Lomov and Smirnov sent, as if from themselves, the invitation to all metallurgical plants to elect representatives from workers and to gather at a conference in Moscow to discuss the question of their nationalization. All plants came.

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The conference of more than a hundred members lasted for about a week in the hall of the Metropol Hotel. VSNKh treated the conference, to put it mildly, with restraint. But the conference accepted Larin's report on nationalization, elected the temporary bureau of nationalized factories, and sent the delegation to Lenin to ask for support.

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Actually, Lenin was put in difficulty. He had either to support the demands of the masses for nationalization by going against VSNKh, or to oppose the already ripe impulse of workers. For Larin, this was not enough. He appointed Gukovsky, who worked for him in the defense conference, as commissar

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over the oil industry for the preparation of its nationalization. Soon, at the masses' demand, it was nationalized too. VSNKh and the Soviet government, the Council of People's Commissars, tried to resist Larin's pressure and the masses' enthusiasm. Since the state was completely unprepared to provide

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the nationalized enterprises with raw materials, materials and organize their work, without proper preparation, nationalization only led to the fact that all debts and problems of enterprises were hung on the budget.

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The problem with the nationalized industry, which was completely collapsed by the summer of 1918, was that now the state had to maintain it, which had absolutely no funds for this. As a legacy from the previous government, the Soviet government inherited a meeting on defense, the

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very one where Gukovsky was. It had the right to support the military industry through emission.

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That is, the printing of new paper money. Larin achieved reassignment of the meeting on defense from the management of the People's Commissariat of Armaments to the management of its own committee of economic policy of VSNKh, with the expansion

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of powers to finance the entire industry. “From here, loans were issued to the wide variety of enterprises, up to and including the Society for the Organization of Coal Mines in the Kuznetsk Basin. The spending of money had to take place under the working control exclusively for the procurement of raw materials,

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fuel, materials, for the issuance of wages, payment for transport, and the like." Of course, this immediately led to the fact that a queue lined up for money.

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Lenin on 8th May of 1918 sent a telegram to the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Siberia.

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“Prokopiev and others flood Larin with dispatches, asking for money. I declare that I did not receive a reply to my telegram with exact figures dated April 23rd. I declare I declare that such an attitude to business is unacceptable when no answer is given on what purposes

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hundreds of millions were used and why and how much is needed over the norm." From May 26 to June 4 of 1918 the first All-Russian Congress of Economic Councils was held, the resolution of which stated that nationalization should be devoid of a random

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nature and can be carried out exclusively either in VSNKh or with the Council of People's Commissars at the conclusion of the Supreme Council of the National Economy.

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Not a bit of it. The tactic of putting everyone in front of a fact was developed by Larin in Berlin, where he went in June 1918 as part of the delegation that also included Bukharin and Sokolnikov. The delegation was supposed to discuss with Germans the economic conditions of the Brest Peace.

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The fact is that Germans raised the issue of compensating German shareholders for the cost of the nationalized enterprises. Seeing this, Russian capitalists began to rewrite their factories to Germans, hoping this way to get at least somemething for them. The delegation,

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among other things, had to discuss this sensitive issue. Lenin telegraphed the Soviet Ambassador Adolf Abramovich Joffe on this matter: “Comrade Joffe! Sokolnikov and Bukharin are coming to you, and I think Larin too... Bukharin is loyal, but he has gone

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too far into «left-blindness». Sokolnikov went crazy again. Larin is a fussy intellectual and a first-class in hurry doer. Therefore, be on the alert with all these nice and wonderful delegates..." And Larin did not disappoint: “Having arrived in Berlin in June of 1918 as part of the Soviet delegation to

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negotiate relations after the Brest Peace, I pointed out to the very first question of the German representative about our intentions that all joint-stock industrial enterprises would be nationalized. Firstly, this immediately caused the conflict within the Russian delegation, and secondly, the protest of

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the Germans. The Germans declared that they were ready to tolerate the nationalization of only what had been confiscated so far, moreover, on condition that owners would be rewarded. Any nationalization after July 1 (there were several days left until this date), and in addition, the general

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nationalization of all joint-stock enterprises were rejected by them." In a rage, Joffe sent Lenin the telegram asking him to give him the authority to send Larin back to Moscow, because it was impossible to work with him. But the deed was done. VSNKh was forced in emergency mode

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to prepare the decree on the general nationalization of industry in a few days in order to nationalize everything possible before July 1 of 1918. года. Surely, Soviet historians tried not to mention that the total nationalization of the entire large-scale industry was carried out at the wish

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of just one person, who used the Germans as the battering ram against the Council of People's Commissars, which, in his opinion, was insufficiently revolutionary. If it were not for Larin's boasting, perhaps we would not have known about it. The decree on general nationalization roughly coincided with the beginning of the revolt

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of the Czechoslovak Corps, which marked the beginning of the full-scale Civil War and the corresponding policy of War Communism. Now Larin could really do whatever wanted.

Topics:Yuri LarinOctober RevolutionWar CommunismBolsheviksSoviet economic policyworkers' controlnationalizationVSNKhcooperativesearly Soviet history

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Yuri Larin and why is he significant in Soviet history?

Yuri Larin was a revolutionary and economist who played a key role in shaping early Soviet economic policies after the October Revolution, advocating for workers' control and cooperative socialism.

What were Larin's main proposals for economic reform after the revolution?

Larin proposed forming trusts to consolidate industries, syndicating trade networks, establishing cooperative production among peasants, and gradually transitioning to socialism through workers' democracy and cooperative management.

How did Larin's physical condition affect his revolutionary activities?

Despite suffering from progressive muscular dystrophy, Larin was highly active in revolutionary work, including escaping exile in a basket, and held significant leadership roles, demonstrating his determination and influence.

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