Unsuccessful attempt to abolish money during the years of “war communism”. The financial system of Russia during the years of war communism Chervonets and double circulation

Chapter 28 CORPORATISM AS A MODERN FORM OF "MONEY CIVILIZATION" Dictatorship of monopolies In Soviet times, especially in the era of "mature socialism" and "stagnation", when Marxism-Leninism was considered

The Victories of the "Money Revolution" and the Spiritual Enslavement of Christianity

Chapter 13 Working Class Perspective The innumerable chores of the house, grouped under the concept of "housework", namely, cooking, washing dishes, laundry, cleaning, shopping, etc., take away from the housewife in

Gradual death of everything "normal" One way to manipulate the activity of the human brain is optogenetics, a revolutionary new form of wireless communication in which the nerve cells of the brain are genetically programmed, which allows you to

The years of the Civil War are a continuation of a protracted black streak for Russia that began in the summer of 1914. Millions of people died on the battlefields, in the class struggle of the poor against the rich, from white and red terror, from hunger and epidemics. The Russian economy was set back decades in terms of key macroeconomic indicators. Instead of feudalism and capitalism, socialism began to be created, moreover, not as good and rich as it was described by Thomas More in his Utopia (1516), as well as in the 19th century. in the works of K. Marx and F. Engels. It was, in fact, from the very beginning, tough state socialism, with the most centralized management of socio-economic processes.

L. D. Trotsky spoke about this most frankly: “All our hopes for the development of a socialist economy are based on four elements: the dictatorship of the party, the Red Army, the nationalization of the means of production and the monopoly of foreign trade.” Note that he is not talking about the dictatorship of the proletariat, not about people's power and democracy, but about the dictatorship of the party.

Other writers and speakers of those revolutionary years it seemed that the world revolution and communism were not far off, that it was time to abolish money and the market. They started thinking about how to do it. One of the theorists of the “war communism” system, N.I. Bukharin, wrote in his book “Economy in Transition”: “During the transition period, in the process of destroying the commodity system as such, the process of “self-negation” of money takes place. It is expressed in the so-called depreciation of money.

Professor V. Ya. Zheleznov: “The value of money has fallen to extraordinary proportions and continues to fall, threatening complete depreciation - it doesn’t matter, you can do without them and even should, because money is a fetish that blinds the ignorant and inert masses and retains its charm among people infected with old social prejudices. You can transfer the entire economy to natural payments, distribute everything that anyone needs from public stores, and everyone's needs will be satisfied no worse than before.

The authors of such a “theory” were divorced from practice; they had little idea of ​​what would happen after the abolition of money. Nevertheless, it was precisely from here that a whole trend of Soviet political economists began - "non-commodity workers", "anti-market people". This was especially notable for the Department of Political Economy of the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University (Professor N. V. Hessin and his students). They discussed these issues furiously in the 1960s and 1970s. and later until the beginning of the XXI century. It never occurred to them to question many of the provisions of K. Marx, F. Engels, V. I. Lenin concerning the “bright future” (non-commodity and penniless, but abundant, fair, humane) - communism. Some of them still see "real sprouts of non-market, non-capitalist relations in the modern global world economy." So, Professor of Moscow State University A. Buzgalin writes: “A market economy is nothing more than a historically limited economic system that has not only a beginning, but also an end.” Indeed, dogmatism has lived, dogmatism is alive, dogmatism will live.

Many monetary circulation experts wrote in the 1920s that monetary policy changed dramatically in the second half of 1918. G. Ya. direct distribution of produced values”. However, G. Ya. Sokolnikov himself, in his own words, never shared the point of view associated with the annulment of money through their depreciation.

The main generator of ideas then was V. I. Lenin, at least until the stroke in 1922. In this regard, in vain, many modern authors do not remember him at all, forgetting the main thing - in these years he turned from a theoretician into a practice. It was he who, having enormous power, determined the economic policy of the country. During the years of “war communism”, V. I. Lenin wrote and spoke a lot about non-monetary commodity exchange. Even during the First World War, money was greatly depreciated, the peasants began to refuse to sell their products for unstable means of circulation. This problem worsened after the revolution.

That is why, on December 25, 1918, V. I. Lenin said: “The peasants demand an exchange of goods, they demand fairly, refusing to give bread for depreciated papers.” He repeated this again on January 17, 1919: “Without barter, the peasants say: No, we won’t give you anything for Kerenki.”

Anarchic commodity exchange took place in the bazaars: the peasants exchanged their products for clothes and other things they needed. V. I. Lenin wanted to establish this process at the state level. On November 26, 1918, a decree of the Supreme Economic Council and the People's Commissariat for Food was published on the state's trade monopoly on all textile products, including threads, as well as on factory-made shoes, sugar, salt, matches, kerosene, petroleum lubricating oils, candles, soap, all agricultural implements factory production, nails, horseshoes, tea, confectionery and tobacco products. All these industrial products came to the disposal of the People's Commissariat for Food, and he organized their exchange for agricultural products. As V. I. Lenin and his supporters believed, this was the path to the socialization Agriculture, to solving the problems of its connection with the industry.

The first decree on commodity exchange was issued on April 2, 1918. At first, it was based on a voluntary basis. Textiles were exchanged for bread. The textile industry was still in private hands. The state nationalized all wholesale warehouses along with their contents. However, the first experience was unsuccessful, because the fixed prices for bread established even before the October Revolution were too low.

At the beginning of August 1918, fixed prices for bread were tripled (20 times compared to pre-war levels). Barter became obligatory for the peasants.

The difficult food situation of the country, the need to supply half-starved cities gave rise to a decree on food dictatorship (May 13, 1918). Its main point was formulated by V.I. Lenin: “Declare all owners of grain who have surpluses and do not take them out to bulk points, as well as all those who squander grain stocks for moonshine, enemies of the people.” In fact, it was about surplus appropriation, a phenomenon not new. She appeared in Russia at the end of 1916, and before that - in Germany. It was the state grain monopoly.

A more detailed decree on the surplus appeared in the newspapers on January 11, 1919. This decree clarified the concept of “surplus” as grain in excess of the personal consumption of a peasant family, as well as fodder in excess of what is necessary to feed the owner’s livestock.

After the transition to surplus appropriation, manufactured goods began to be exchanged at fixed prices upon presentation of a receipt for the full surrender of “surplus” grain to state collection points. The surplus appraisal was abolished in the middle of 1921, more precisely, it was replaced by a tax in kind during the transition to the NEP. But the state, being a monopoly on manufactured goods, continued to exchange them for bread, i.e., the product exchange continued.

S. A. Dalin gives interesting data on state grain procurements in the order of apportionment and commodity exchange (in poods). The agricultural year then began in October:

• 1916/17-323 089 877;
• 1917/18-47 539 128;
• 1918/19-107 922 507;
• 1919/20-212 507 408;
• 1920/21-283 375 145.

Bread was distributed according to cards - to the Red Army, workers and employees, owners of private enterprises ("bourgeoisie"). The latter were supposed to be the least. An extensive network of state canteens was organized. So, at the end of 1920, out of 35 million citizens who received food cards, 21,261 thousand people. ate in canteens, at first - at fixed prices, and then - for free. S.A. Dalin wrote about this: “In April 1920, payment for labor food rations throughout the country was canceled, and on December 4 of the same year, by decree of the Council of People's Commissars, free delivery of all food products was established. On December 17, free supplies were extended to all industrial goods sold to the population. Thus, a penniless, communist system of industrial production and distribution, as well as public catering, took shape. It spread to the cities and only barely affected the village. This communist system was based not on an abundance of food, but on their acute shortage, on a half-starved existence, but this society was not divided into well-fed and hungry.

Surprisingly, money and the market still existed in parallel to this “communist” system. Half of the bread was given to the cities by the grain procurements, and the other half by the "bags", "speculators" (in the terminology of V. I. Lenin), but in fact - the market.

When the depreciated state marks did not help, the market returned to the ancient form of universal commodity equivalents, in particular to salt. This was taken into account during grain procurement, during the exchange of goods. So, on May 18, 1921, V. I. Lenin gave an order to M. I. Frunze: “Now the main question of all Soviet power, a matter of life and death for us, is to collect 200-300 million poods of grain from Ukraine. For this, the main thing is salt. To take everything away, to surround all the places of production with a triple cordon of troops, not to miss a pound, not to let it be stolen. Put in a military way. Assign exactly responsible persons for each operation. Me their list (All through Glavsol). You are the commander-in-chief of salt. You are responsible for everything.”

V. I. Lenin in February 1919, while working on the draft Program of the RCP (b), wrote: “The bourgeois elements of the population continue to use banknotes remaining in private ownership, these certificates for the right of the exploiters to receive public wealth for the purpose of speculation, profit and robbery working people". V. I. Lenin does not call for the abolition of money in general and immediately. He writes here about something else: “The nationalization of the banks alone is not enough to combat this vestige of bourgeois robbery. The Russian Communist Party will strive to destroy money as quickly as possible...”. And here the quotation is often cut off to show V. I. Lenin as a “non-commodity worker”. However, after a comma, he writes: “...first of all, replacing them with savings books, checks, short-term tickets for the right to receive social products, etc., establishing the obligatory keeping of money in banks, etc. In the field of finance, the RCP will carry out progressive income and property tax whenever possible.”

This is not about the destruction of money, but about their binding, state control over the movement of cash, its all-round restriction due to growing inflation, speculation, disorganization, food crisis, etc.

In May 1919, V. I. Lenin clarified this issue: “Even before the socialist revolution, the socialists wrote that money could not be abolished immediately, and we can confirm this with our experience ... We say: as long as money remains and will remain for quite a long time during transitional period from the old capitalist society to the new socialist one. This was the position of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and the leader of the Bolshevik Party at that time. But in strategic terms, V. I. Lenin was at one with the “non-commodity workers”. Along with the tasks of replacing private trade with the planned distribution of products throughout the country, the leader of the proletariat and the idol of those years calls for “the destruction of the bank and its transformation into the central accounting department of communist society.” The party's program formulated the fundamental principle: "Relying on the nationalization of the banks, the RCP is striving to carry out a series of measures that will expand the field of cashless settlements and prepare for the destruction of money."

The policy of drastically restricting commodity-money relations was put into practice; it was no longer a theoretical discussion, but the implementation of the Program of the RCP(b). But even at this time, it was not possible to do without money. Moreover, the issuance of Soviet signs increased because the shortage of goods was supplemented by a shortage of money. Professor S. A. Falkner even developed the theory of the “emission economy”. He believed that there was no limit to the depreciation of money, it was only important to achieve a uniform growth in the mass of money, prices, and incomes. In other words, he did not understand the danger of inflation; on the contrary, it seemed to him that an antidote had been found. The only important thing, he noted, was that there were no other competing money - neither metal nor paper. It was a pure utopia, complete oblivion of the theory of money in general and quantitative theory in particular.

They printed a lot of money, without measure, but they were still not enough to create the Red Army, the state apparatus, to pay wages to workers and employees.

In August 1919, V. I. Lenin demanded that the head of the Narkomfin, N. N. Krestinsky, achieve a productivity of 600 million rubles. per day, offering to transfer the printing houses of Goznak (in the old way - “expeditions”) to three-shift work. As of January 1, 1921, about 14 thousand people were employed in the production of Soviet signs in Moscow, Petrograd, Penza, Perm, Rostov-on-Don.

Sovznaks were still depreciating rapidly: if at the end of 1919 the largest denomination of the banknote was 1,000 rubles, then in 1921 - 100,000 rubles. The obligations of the RSFSR were also issued in denominations of 10 million rubles.

But you can't feed people with paper money.

The "architects" of socialism at that time spoke sharply. The chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Ya. M. Sverdlov, argued that the Bolsheviks should “split the village into two irreconcilable hostile camps, ... kindle a civil war there” in order to get bread from the peasants. The chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council and People's Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs L. D. Trotsky, speaking of the introduction of universal labor service, believed that "the worker should become a serf of the socialist state." He believed that all economic problems of the country should be solved on the basis of military discipline. Paramilitary labor armies (1918-1921) were organized by the method of compulsory mobilization.

By decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of June 11, 1918, committees of the rural poor (combeds) were created. In a short time (at the beginning of 1919 they were merged with the local Soviets), the Kombeds confiscated almost 50 million hectares of land, cars, livestock, and oil mills from the kulaks. The commanders also helped the food detachments.

In connection with the growth of naturalization in the economy in 1919, free distribution of food rations and consumer goods, fuel and fodder, medicines, tickets for travel in transport was introduced, fees for utilities, mail, telephone, and radio were abolished several times. On this topic, from November 1918 to May 1921, 17 decrees of the Council of People's Commissars were adopted. On January 19, 1920, even a decree “On the abolition of the People's Bank” appeared. Its functions, together with assets and liabilities, were transferred to the budget and settlement department of Narkomfin. The motivation for this unprecedented for the XX century. The event was as follows: “The nationalization of industry subordinated the entire state industry and trade to the general budget order, in connection with which there was no need for the People’s Bank.”

In 1920, cash settlements between state enterprises were abolished. Instead of checks, a new form of transfer of material assets within the public sector of the economy was established through the so-called non-monetary circulating transfers, which formalized the movement of raw materials, materials, and finished products in kind. A new decree of 15 July 1920 forbade payments in cash, checks and direct appropriations. On August 16 of the same year, payment for the transportation of goods by rail was abolished, and on December 23, 1920, the decree of the Council of People's Commissars abolished payment for any kind of fuel provided to state enterprises and institutions. There were other similar measures to abolish money.

And yet, despite the harsh laws of wartime, trade was carried out throughout the country, there was an exchange of food for manufactured goods. At the largest Moscow market, Sukharevka, one could buy or barter almost any necessary product - from a pin to a cow. It was also possible to exchange Soviet money for foreign currency here, although officially this was strictly prohibited. Prices kept rising.

According to the Market Research Institute at the Narkomfin (headed by Professor N. D. Kondratiev), the free price index in Moscow showed in January 1921, compared with 1913, an increase of 27 thousand times. Prices on foodstuffs increased 34 thousand times, non-food - 22 thousand times. In 1920 alone, prices increased more than 10 times. The variation in the rise in prices of individual commodities was very large. The price of salt increased the most - 143 thousand times, vegetable oil- 71 thousand times, sugar - 65 thousand times, bakery products - 42 thousand times. Of the non-food items, the price of soap increased the most - 50,000 times, threads - 34,000 times.

There are no data on the monetary incomes of the population, but it is clear that they were in poverty, fighting for survival. The population of Moscow has decreased by about half compared to the pre-war. This process was also characteristic of other cities; many sought salvation in the villages with relatives, on earth. But even in the countryside, life was hard. Market prices rose faster than the money supply, because the supply of goods under the conditions of devastation was small.

Thus, from October 1917 to June 1921, the money supply increased 120 times, and retail prices almost 8 thousand times (Table 9.1). In comparison with the pre-war 1913 prices increased by almost 81 thousand times. Subsequently, in connection with the famine in 1921-1922. The “times” of inflating the emission and depreciation of state marks were already in the millions and billions.

In a word, there was such a policy of the era of “war communism”, but the market and money, albeit in a dilapidated state, have been preserved. The civil war was largely over by the end of 1920. The situation began to change. As Soviet power began to be established in most of the territory of the former Russian Empire, money circulation began to improve. The following organizational principles were used for this.

• 1. Emissions from local Soviet authorities were exchanged for money from the central government, setting exchange ratios according to the real situation.
• 2. The money of the "outlying Soviet republics" remained in circulation parallel to the central money until favorable conditions set in.
• 3. The money of hostile governments and organizations was annulled.

Table 9.1

War communism: money circulation and prices

However, the improvement of the monetary system and the economy as a whole was still far away.

One should not think that only combat commissars with “Mausers” on their sides solved the issues of monetary circulation. Scientists were also involved. An interesting page in the history of money in this regard is the attempt to replace rubles with labor units.

Even then, Russian scientists began to develop a material intersectoral balance (“revolving budget”). They again faced the problem of expressing numerous natural indicators in some generalized accounting units instead of sovznaki unsuitable for this purpose. A new consolidated accounting indicator was needed. Now it was set not only in the aspect of product exchange between the city and the countryside, the naturalization of wages, but also in the macroeconomic aspect.

A commission was set up under the chairmanship of S. G. Strumilin. In October 1920, he wrote in the article “Problems of labor accounting”: “Money accounting for economic goods must give way to non-monetary accounting. This is out of the question... It means that the ruble can no longer serve as a measure of value. But it only follows from this that we must find another measure of value, and not at all that we can abolish this concept altogether and dispense with any evaluations.

Similar ideas were developed by R. Owen, J. Gray, I. Rodbertus, P. Proudhon. The first attempts to put into practice “labor receipts”, “labor money”, certifying the amount of labor time spent on the production of certain products, date back to the first half of the 19th century. I. Rodbertus came up with his project of "working money" in 1842, P. Proudhon - in 1846-1949. R. Owen in 1832-1834 tried to organize in London a "national bazaar of fair exchange."

K. Marx and F. Engels criticized these utopias. The Bolsheviks again and again discussed this problem and did not find a solution. So, N. Kerve wrote: “The legacy of the bourgeois system, completely destroyed - the paper ruble - is living its last days. This is clear to everyone. But what should be next? Is it the absence of any value accounting or something else? Socialism is a subsistence economy that does not require gold and paper money based on gold as a means of accumulation and a means of valuing goods for its development. This is undeniable. But whether the need to abandon value accounting and value comparison of one product of production with another or not follows from this - this is a question that has not yet been solved by everyone in the same way. S. G. Strumilin in 1920 wrote more specifically about this: “As a unit of labor value, I propose to accept the value of the product of labor of one normal day of an employee of the first wage category when he fulfills the production rate of 100%. This normal labor unit, corresponding to work of 100,000 kilogram-meters, will be abbreviated as “tr. unit”, or the word “thread””. The discussion revolved around two questions: 1) about simple or complex labor; 2) on the scope of the “thread”.

K. F. Shmelev, E. S. Varga and other prominent economists and financiers of that time took part in the discussion.

G. Ya. Sokolnikov in his work of 1927 reports that immediately on the eve of the transition to the NEP, the principles of the policy of non-monetary circulation were still being developed and discussed. Thus, the obligatory surrender of foreign currency was already prescribed by a decree of December 3, 1918. But on January 3, 1921, the law confirmed the obligation for citizens to hand over to the state their precious metals in coins and ingots free of charge. The same law limited the right to own jewelry. It was forbidden to keep at home cash paper money in excess of a small amount - the maximum was ten times the lowest tariff rate. The development of the labor unit of account (“thread”) at the government level also continued. S. G. Strumilin wrote a draft decree on the labor accounting unit in the national economy; it was discussed in May 1921 at the Institute for Economic Research of Narkomfin. This is despite the fact that at the 10th Congress of the CPSU(b) in March 1921, a decision was already made in principle on the transition to the NEP, consequently, to the revival of commodity-money relations. In the said draft decree, it was established that “the unit of labor accounting is taken to be the average output of one normal day of simple labor with its normal intensity for this type of work. The designated labor unit is given the name “thread”. The widespread introduction of the aforementioned accounting unit in its entirety was planned from January 1, 1922. G. Ya. Sokolnikov wrote: “The development of these projects could not be completed. Economic practice turned in the other direction, and “threads” (practically, “threads” had to be equal to two pre-war rubles, i.e. 1 dollar) were thoroughly forgotten” .

But even if “trad” were introduced, it would inevitably turn into ordinary paper money. By the way, A. Potyaev wrote on this topic back in 1918: “The work of the expedition for the preparation of government papers will be aimed at making such labor banknotes, which will indicate how much the citizen has worked.” It was possible to change the name of the monetary unit: instead of the ruble, write “thread” or set the number of hours, days, but it would still be banknotes with conditional denominations. Abolishing money nationwide is not so easy. This is not a soldier's barracks, not a prison, not a labor commune of 100-150 people, this is the economy of a huge country.

Thus, the attempt to abolish money and market relations turned out to be unsuccessful, but it also turned out to be difficult to quickly carry out cardinal reforms in the transition from the policy of war communism to the NEP. The post-war devastation was aggravated by the unprecedented famine of 1921-1922, associated with the drought in the Volga region, and also with the fact that the predatory surplus in 1920 - early 1921. has not yet been replaced by a soft tax in kind. Even the seed fund was often confiscated from the peasants to supply the cities and the army. The army, fed by the peasants, suppressed the peasant uprisings, the Kronstadt rebellion. The punitive operations were led by major military leaders - S. Kamenev, M. Tukhachevsky, S. Budyonny, M. Frunze, P. Yakir, I. Uborevich and others. A lot of blood was shed.

As a result of the famine of 1921-1922. about 5 million people died. The unrestrained printing of Soviet signs did not help. Food aid came from the United States, in particular from the American Relief Organization (ARA). Various food committees sent ships with food, organized free canteens. So, in May 1922, the ARA fed about 6 million people, the American Quaker Society - 265 thousand people, the International Union for Helping Children - 260 thousand people, English trade unions - 92 thousand people, the Swedish Red Cross - 87 thousand people. This help was a drop in the ocean, but it was still a lifesaver for many people. Such was the military-political and social background during the transition from the policy of war communism to the new economic policy.

The introduction of surplus appropriation and numerous and general labor duties, the nationalization of all production down to the smallest enterprises, centralized (through the so-called "headquarters", that is, the main departments of individual branches of industry) management of all industry, the abolition of the free market and the centralized supply of the population and the Red army products - these are the characteristic features of this period. All these measures led to the fact that the sphere of market exchange was extremely narrowed: meanwhile, paper-money emission continued to grow; but its real value was falling due to the continuous increase in the rate of depreciation of the soviet marks.
§ 2. The following table shows the growth of the money supply and the fall of its real value.
Real price
An extraordinary reduction in the sphere of market exchange, a catastrophic increase in the velocity of money circulation with a continuous increase in emission, these are the reasons for such a sharp depreciation of the national funds. The rate of depreciation constantly (except for the 2nd half of 1920) overtook the rate of issue, as can be seen from diagram No. 5 on page 172.
But the paper money flow during this period was not exhausted by one centralized issue of Soviet signs by the Soviet government. Since the spring of 1919, local issues of banknotes have become extremely widespread in connection with the fragmentation of the entire present territory of the USSR into many politically or economically isolated regions and districts, and even individual cities, up to districts.
§ 2. The period of "war communism" is a period of unprecedented in the history of paper-money chaos. The disintegration of the unity of the monetary system reflected the deepest disintegration of the economic ties of the previously integral economic organism and, in turn, exacerbated the general economic degradation (decline). Prices not only grew from day to day, even from hour to hour, but most importantly, the single price disappeared. Over the same period, for the same product - rye flour - the prices in Sovznaks in Leningrad were 23.8 times higher than in Saratov, and 15 times higher than in Ulyanovsk. Each area set its own prices, and the more one area was separated from another, the greater the price gap. No less sharp was the gap in the prices of goods in the same market. For example, in the Moscow market in October 1920 the prices of butter, sugar, millet and herring increased by more than 10,000 times in comparison with 1913;

Diagram No. b
The ratio of the rate of increase in the money supply and price growth in percent from 1918 to 1921 in the USSR

state supply of workers in kind was: in 1918 - 41%; in 1919 - 63%; in 1920 - 75%. Also, in the total real state budget, cash income-expenditure by 1920 played an insignificant role. According to S. Golovanov's assumptions, the entire state income for 1920 (including the gross income from the nationalized sectors of the national economy) was equal to 1,726 million gold rubles. Of this amount, according to his calculations, only 126 million rubles, or 7.3 */0, accounted for the share of cash expenses. Of course, these figures are approximate, because there is no data for an exact calculation, but the ratio of the monetary and in-kind parts of the budget should have been approximately the same. Thus, the astronomical figures of the paper-money issue in 1920 actually brought the state a very modest real income. The main pillar of the budget was not emission, but the receipt of products in kind from the peasantry in the order of surplus appropriation and from industry by direct withdrawal of all the products needed by the state and their planned distribution.
§ 4. During this period were made practical steps on the way of replacing cash flow with non-monetary accounting calculations. The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of January 23, 1919 established a certain procedure for settlements between nationalized and municipalized enterprises and institutions under state control. Calculations were to be made, as stated in the decree, "accounting method without the participation of banknotes." By the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of January 6, 1920, these resolutions were extended to cooperation. Finally, by a decree of the Council of People's Commissars of July 25, 1920, on requisitions and confiscations, it was prescribed for private individuals to deposit all cash in excess of twenty times the minimum tariff rate of a given area per person into current accounts in state cash desks. Thus, the Soviet authorities at that time took measures (which were not limited to the above decrees) to narrow the scope of monetary circulation. Thus, the 2nd session of the VDIK on June 18, 1920, based on the report of the NKF, adopted a resolution in which the activities of the NKF were recognized, expressed "in the desire to establish / non-monetary settlements for the destruction of the monetary system - in general, corresponding to the main tasks of the economic and administrative development of the RSFSR." VDIK instructed to take effective measures to put into practice the new system of economic management.
In connection with the general course towards narrowing the sphere of money circulation, the question arose of replacing the old monetary accounting with a new unified method for assessing and accounting for economic activity. How to calculate the effect of production work? How can you determine which products are more profitable to produce if there is no common unit of accounting for labor productivity? And does not the establishment of this or that unit of account again mean a return to money, at least as a measure of value? These questions of the organization of economic accounting in socialist society during this period acquired tremendous practical importance, and it is not surprising that they were discussed in a lively manner in scientific and business circles.
Our economists proposed a number of host projects - “A, XX XVX
A ¦ ¦*
estvennogo accounting and evaluation under socialism. Some proposed introducing direct cost accounting for each type of product separately, while others put forward a single principle for estimating costs for all types of products. On the other hand, among these recent projects, some put forward the principle of tied (ration) distribution of products, others free distribution. In the latter case, each worker would be given a labor voucher, for which he could receive any products of equal "labor value". A significant part of the projects was reduced to the establishment of a single "labor unit" of accounting and distribution, which was called the "trade". According to Kreve's proposal, the basic unit of "labor" value is considered to be "an hour of simple unskilled socially necessary labor."
The most developed project of economic accounting under socialism was proposed by S. G. Strumilin. The problem, in his opinion, "reduces to solving the mathematical problem of what kind of distribution of the country's productive resources can provide the maximum satisfaction of needs with a minimum of labor costs." Labor that is expended in accordance with the above principle will be considered socially necessary; as a unit of accounting, Strumilin proposed "accepting the value of the product of labor of one normal worker of the first tariff category if he fulfills the production rate by 100%."
Also, the “working group of the Currency Subcommittee of the NKF” wrote in its draft: “The unit of labor accounting is the average production of one normal day of simple labor with its normal intensity for this type of work. The designated labor unit of accounting is assigned the name "thread". The Council of Labor and Defense is charged with the development and establishment of: 1) rules for reducing complex labor to simple; 2) the norm of the third price list, expressed in threads, of all economic goods and services subject to accounting, and 3) the procedure for the periodic, as necessary, revision of these rules and price lists. But what was "assigned" to the Council of Labor and Defense, and the most important and difficult. Of course, it is possible to take into account more or less exactly how much concrete labor is spent on a particular product (if the costs of raw materials are also expressed in labor units), but how to determine how much socially necessary and simple labor has been spent, how to reduce complex labor to simple? For the central bodies of economic management this would be very difficult, but not. unfeasible business. In the presence of planned accounting for public consumption, on the one hand, and data technical conditions On the other hand, it would be possible to establish what kind of labor in each branch is socially necessary. It is also quite POSSIBLE to reduce COMPLEX labor to simple labor if the necessary labor input to obtain a particular qualification is precisely established. However, this moment will not play a role in communist society, because, assuming a high development of technology, in this society the principle will be applied: "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." But in the absence of this possibility, i.e., when the conditions of technical development do not yet make it possible to fully satisfy all social needs, it will certainly be necessary to distribute production taking into account the labor expended by each producer, and consequently it will be necessary here to reduce complex labor to simple.
The most appropriate to the socialist system were the projects for the introduction of universal economic accounting in labor units - threads. These threads seem to be very similar to Owen's "labor bonds" or other similar attempts to directly determine the value of products in terms of labor units (see chapter XVIII). But the essential difference between them is that the projects of our threads had more or less solid ground in the form of nationalization and centralized organization of the entire industry (hence the theoretical possibility of establishing the amount of socially necessary labor spent on products), while Owen wanted to introduce an organized and "fair exchange" by. "labor value" in the presence of private ownership of the means of production and complete anarchy of all production.
But weren't these threads essentially the same money, just named differently? Bourgeois economists usually give a positive answer to this question, but this is completely wrong. “In social production, money capital disappears. Society distributes labor power and means of production among the various branches of labor. Producers may, perhaps, obtain paper certificates by which they withdraw from the public consumer stocks the quantity of products that corresponds to their working hours. These credentials are not money. They do not make conversions” (K. Marx).
§ 5. But the projects for the introduction of universal and unified economic accounting in threads and the distribution of products in "paper certificates", expressed in threads, were not implemented in practice.
The fact is that the obligatory condition under which “money can be liquidated, according to the decision of the VIII Congress of the RCP - “complete organization of communist production and distribution”, could not be realized either in 1918, or in 1919, or in 1920 If large-scale production had already been socialized and organized (and it still is), then many millions of peasant farms still remained a disorganized mass, and the state actually did not have the opportunity, on the one hand, to extract all the grain surpluses, and on the other hand, to supply the peasantry in the required amount of urban products. The implementation of the surplus constantly lagged behind the plans; it was established that the peasantry had significant stocks of grain. All this bread went to the "underground market", the market turnover, despite all the repressions, continued to exist.
And if there is a market, then, as we already know, there must be both prices and money. We know further that only one particular commodity, for example, gold, is real money. What kind of commodity was money on the "underground market" in the era of "war communism", what was the measure of value here? To answer this question, we must recall what was said in Chapter I, namely, the four forms of value. In the "underground market" during the period of "war communism" relations developed that can be summed up both under a simple and detailed form, and under a general form. When the urban population was experiencing a real famine, and the rural population was in dire need of a whole range of products, such as bread, textiles, etc., then there could be no question of gold being the universal commodity equivalent. Gold itself turned into an ordinary commodity and also much less valuable than before the war, in contrast to, for example, such goods as bread or salt.Already in 1918, gold could buy goods according to the index 10 times less than before the war, i.e. gold the ruble in goods was worth only a dime.
The market, driven underground, besides deprived of money, was therefore a defective market. But since the market existed, and market relations, even if in an ugly form and to a limited extent, developed, new money had to be created as well. And this process of development of new types of goods-money is exactly what we are observing during this period.
Sellers and buyers traded "from under the floor", i.e. illegally, in each individual case, establishing random exchange equivalents, since there was no universal equivalent.
Here is an example of the establishment in the city of Kaluga in January 1919, according to F. Termitin, of exchange proportions corresponding, according to Marx's theory, to the expanded form of value (since one commodity did not figure here as a universal equivalent):
1 lb. soap = 2 lb. millet,
22 lb. kerosene = 15 lb. peas,
1 overcoat = 101/2 FU3- groats, 3 lb. salt = 30 lb. oats,
1 pair of boots = 30 ft. buckwheat, U2 FUN * shag = 1 lb. pork fat.
Insofar as simple exchange relations were simultaneously established in the market over a long row of commodities, these relations may be called the expanded form of value, as, for example: poly (proportion taken from Weisberg's book "Money and Prices"). Such proportions were established in all markets, and this was inevitable, as soon as market relations existed.
The most salable and most valuable commodities become universal equivalents. Usually, not only in different areas, but even in the same area, there were several equivalents. These commodity equivalents constantly waged a struggle with each other for the position of a monetary, i.e., universal and single equivalent. So in Moscow in 1920 the strongest contenders for the "monetary throne" vacated after the "deposition" of gold were salt and baked bread. “We have all the data to consider,” Weisberg says, “salt for Moscow in 1920 as a price scale, an instrument of circulation and a means of accumulation.” There were other contenders elsewhere. Going to the village for groceries, he always first found out “what they change for in this village”, for example, salt or bread or kerosene, and in accordance with this he took with him a certain amount of this equivalent.
In this way the expanded form of value is transformed for each individual region into a general form.

flour.
Here is an example of this universal form of value (also taken from life), in which rye flour is the universal equivalent:
30 lb. kerosene 10 lb. soap 3 lb. shag 10 ars. calico
“If,” said Marx, “all commodities expressed their value in terms of silver, wheat or copper, then silver, wheat or copper would be measures of value, hence universal equivalents.”
However, inasmuch as in this period the “equivalent form” was nowhere firmly fused with the natural form” of any particular commodity in our country, in essence we still did not have real, fully developed money. The universal form of value has not yet been transformed into the money form of value. Since there was no single equivalent for the entire economic system of the USSR in the "underground market", it means that in the USSR there were no valid, fully developed money during this period.
§ 6. But along with these equivalents - underdeveloped money - there was something that we all called "money", namely, Soviet signs. Paper money is not money, but only substitutes or representatives of money. As soon as gold ceased to be real money, paper money had to find some other point of support, but there was no such single point. Hence the complete instability of the Soviet signs and the greatest confusion in prices. In one area, they said: “A shirt costs 10 pounds. flour, but in Soviet signs. Today it costs 20 billion rubles.” and the shirt seller received 20 billion rubles, with which he could buy 10 pounds. flour. In that. the same day in another district they said: “A shirt costs 5 pounds. salt, and today it costs 10 billion rubles in the Soviet Union.” And it turned out that the same shirt here costs 20 billion rubles, and there 10 billion rubles. Since different equivalents appeared in different regions, the Soviet signs had to replace salt, flour, chintz, etc. .
If real and fully developed money - gold, i.e., a universal and single equivalent, functioned as a measure of value and a means of accumulation, then such a situation could not exist: state signs would depreciate more evenly.
But just because of the severance of economic ties, profound shifts in production and consumption, the illegal state of the market, disruption of transport, etc., each region established its own equivalents, and each region established in its own way the value of a given commodity. equivalent - "half money" replace the state signs in circulation. In this absence of a single commodity-money basis, the Soviet signs have all the originality of the situation in the "underground market". Soviet signs were deprived of a solid, unified, established monetary basis for the entire society - a measure of value. lt;
§ 7. If equivalents developed in some regions, "at least temporarily performing the functions of money (a measure of value, a means of circulation \" and payment and instruments of accumulation), then one wonders why, nevertheless, the market did not completely annul locally, co-workers. and did not replace them entirely with flour or salt as a medium of exchange?
¦ This is due to the fact that these equivalents were \" і_sklfchielyo local equivalents that were valid only within the narrow limits of these areas. However, there is a completely economic connection between:
12 3. Atlas. Money and credit
separate markets never broke, and this relationship could only be expressed in monetary terms. If in a given region the equivalent was corn, and in another region it was salt, then it is obvious that a person who had at his disposal a known amount of the equivalent in this region could not use it as a means of purchasing in another region where he was another equivalent.It was also necessary to establish a certain value proportion between local equivalents.And these proportions could only be established in such a way that all local equivalents were expressed in a certain (albeit changing from day to day) number of universal and mandatory for admission throughout the territory of Soviet power paper money - substitutes for all local equivalents.
Thus, thanks to the existence of Soviet signs, a certain unity was introduced into inter-district market relations. All goods in local markets were expressed in a certain number of units of local equivalents, and these latter - in a certain amount of banknotes, and thus the equivalents of all regions received a single form of expression in co-packs.
In addition, it should also be taken into account that the "commodity form" of local equivalents, such as flour and salt, is not fully adapted to perform all monetary functions. How could you, for example, pay with flour for one box of matches, etc.? The flattering equivalents did not possess the necessary qualities of a monetary commodity - portability, high value in a small volume *, different quality, etc., which gold possesses under normal conditions.
Consequently, despite the continuously falling value of Soviet signs, which presented enormous inconvenience to commodity circulation, operating Soviet signs on the "underground market" was an economic necessity.
So, while discussions were going on in our institutions on the non-duty of threads as methods of socialist accounting and distribution, in the economic system of the USSR, the process of formation of “underground”, illegal and therefore unregulated “monetary systems” was taking place.
Literature.

1. Weisberg, Money and prices. 3VL 1925.
2. Prof. J.I. Yurovsky, Monetary policy of the Soviet government. M. 1928,
3. Prof. 3. S. Zhatsenelenbaum, Money circulation in Russia 1914-1924.

1. Prof. SA Falkner, Problems of the theory and practice of emission economy. M. 3924.
2. Collection "Our monetary circulation", ed. L. Yurovskaya. M "1926.
3. E. A. Preobrazhensky. Paper money. Gis. 1920.

1. L. Zhritsman, The Heroic Period of the Russian Revolution, ed. 2. M. .1. 1926.

1. Describe the state of monetary circulation and the process of naturalization! farming during the period of war communism.
2. What projects of economic accounting were put forward during this, t period under the social-kmach?
3. What kind of money was real money, i.e., was the measure of value under war communism and at the beginning of the NEP?
4. Were Soviet signs substitutes for any particular type of real money?
5. What are the reasons for the "survivability" of the Soviet sign?

More on the topic CHAPTER XV. MONEY CIRCULATION IN THE PERIOD OF WAR COMMUNISM:

1. 5. Soviet \r\nmodel of economy and Soviet \r\neconomic science
2. CHAPTER XII. MAIN POINTS FROM THE HISTORY OF MONETARY CIRCULATION AND MONETARY THEORIES.
3. CHAPTER XV. MONETARY CIRCULATION IN THE PERIOD OF WAR COMMUNISM
4. CHAPTER XVI. MONETARY CIRCULATION UNDER THE NEP BEFORE THE MONEY REFORM OF 1924

By the end of 1917, the system of money circulation was so shaken that under no circumstances could it be thought of any quick restoration of it. The actual conditions for the existence of Soviet Russia during the first four years - political and economic conditions - were such that the monetary system had to undergo even greater disintegration. Here it is necessary to give a brief outline of these conditions and the economic system they created.
First of all, it must be emphasized that we would have embarked on the path of erroneous judgments about the situation in which monetary policy developed during 1918-1920 if we began to consider the economic system of this era only as a method of organizing war. This system, of course, was closely connected with the war - both with the world war that preceded it, and especially, of course, with the civil war. But it would be a mistake to see in this system only the proletarian aspect of the military-state organization of the economy, the organization that, in the form of state capitalism, characterized the economic system of Germany during the World War, and in the form of war communism characterized the Soviet economic structure in 1918-1920. . The so-called "war communism" also had other, very deep sources. The most essential threads of ideological influences stretch, as you know, to the West. Other threads run deep into our own history, and they undoubtedly belonged to a very important. However, we will not talk about them here. The events are too close to be able to consider them in the proper perspective and put them in the right connection with the entire historical past of the people, who over the course of several years have carried out a social upheaval of unprecedented proportions. An analysis of these influences and their relative importance is a matter for the future. We will confine ourselves to mentioning conditions that are closer, sufficiently clarified and, it seems, beyond doubt.
The Russian proletariat (or, at least, that layer of it that had previously taken part in the political struggle and its leaders
1 The system of war communism was not established immediately. The short period from the October Revolution to the summer of 1918 was of a transitional nature, and financial policy even thought of strengthening the monetary system, although it did not have the means to do anything in this direction.

entered the revolution with a certain social ideology. If without a definite ideology, then with definite social demands, moods and feelings, the peasantry and numerous intermediate strata of the population also entered the revolution, which sometimes have no name, but which play a very important role in the turbulent epochs of history.
The foundations of the ideology and even the practical program of the proletariat were given in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party", the second chapter of which ends with the following words, quoted so many times:
"... The first step of the workers' revolution must be the elevation of the proletariat to the rank of the ruling class, the conquest of democracy. The proletariat will take advantage of its political domination in order to gradually take away all capital from the bourgeoisie, in order to centralize all the instruments of labor in the hands of the state ... Of course, at first this may be carried out only by despotic intrusions into the right of property and into the bourgeois conditions of production, and therefore by means of measures which from an economic point of view seem insufficient and unreliable, but which, in the course of the movement, will outgrow themselves and are inevitable as a means for transforming the whole mode of production. Then follows a brief enumeration of general measures that "could be adopted almost everywhere" "in the most civilized countries" ("Communist Manifesto", translated with a preface by D. Ryazanov, third edition). Among these measures were indicated: expropriation of landed property; destruction of the right of inheritance; centralization of credit in the hands of the state through a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly; centralization of transport in the hands of the state; an increase in the number of state factories and instruments of production, the cultivation and improvement of fields according to the general plan; the same labor service for all, the establishment of industrial armies, the combination of agricultural labor with industrial labor, etc.
All this began to be put into practice after the October Revolution, and very much in the very first year after October. True, the Communist Manifesto does not contain very much of what became a feature of the war communism system, but the authors of the program themselves, K. Marx and F. Engels, pointed out that "the measures will, of course, be different in different countries." Economic reorganization began to take place in a situation that even the most penetrating insight could not foresee exactly 70 years before the October Revolution. Its main features are listed below.
The peasantry demanded the division of the land. There was as yet nothing socialist in this demand, but it went hand in hand with the demands of the industrial proletariat insofar as, by doing so, the common slogan of the expropriation of the propertied classes was advanced both in town and countryside. This slogan was joined by the intermediate layers mentioned above. Even if the French Revolution, in which the bourgeoisie was the winner, aroused the pathos of the destruction of the upper classes, which flared up more and more as the struggle for the retention of power developed, then the same pathos appeared in the Russian
a revolution in which the victory went to the workers and peasants, and in which the civil war was in any case no less tense than in France at the end of the eighteenth century. The pathos of the destruction of the propertied classes played a huge role in the era of war communism, and anyone who would ignore it would never be able to find a complete explanation not only for many episodes, but also for some organizational structures of the time described. The striving of this phase of the revolution to nationalize all enterprises, to abolish all private ownership of the instruments of production and even of consumer goods, some of its tendencies in the field of distribution policy, etc., cannot be understood without taking into account the fact that the tension of class contradictions reached during the civil war to the greatest bitterness.
Given these prerequisites, it was impossible to expect that the new revolutionary socialist government would be willing and able to raise only the question of measures for gradual socialization. Everything pushed on the path of radical solutions and led to a radical social reorganization.
We noted in the first chapter that by the autumn of 1917 in the national economy of Russia there were already many elements that were destroying the system of commodity-money economy and thereby prompting the construction and complexity of the system of state regulation of the special type that was implemented in subsequent years and about the signs which will be discussed later. We refer here to the relevant measures of the pre-revolutionary and especially the Provisional Government, carried out or proposed, proclaimed by the authorities or demanded from the authorities, not in order to show that already before the October Revolution some experience in regulation had been accumulated and that the Soviet government could follow the outlined path. This is not the point, for neither the wartime experiments, nor the experiments of the Provisional Government could inspire anyone with bright hopes. But the point is that internal logic, which is inherent in any economic process and which manifests itself with irresistible force, as soon as economic development has entered a certain path. There is no clearer example than price regulation, which we wrote about in the first chapter. What happened during the war years and during the months of the Provisional Government in the field of regulating the national economy was not an "example" for the next era, but constituted the first links in a logical series. And this line was not crossed in the era of war communism by any other line, because the economic and political situation strengthened the importance of measures to reorganize the entire economic system.
For the direction of economic policy in this direction, the fact that the commodity market, the money market and the monetary system were deeply deformed by the end of 1917, that the events of 1917-1918 were of great importance, was of great importance. continued to destroy them, and that under such conditions it was difficult to carry out the plan of building socialism on the basis of commodity production and money
significant exchange, as was done after the transition to the new economic policy. The growing unprofitability of industrial enterprises was also impelling towards the liquidation of the commodity-money economy. In the pre-revolutionary period, the war brought huge profits to the industrialists. During the period of the Provisional Government, the picture became variegated: the market situation remained very favorable, but in the internal life of enterprises collapse set in and the conditions for their supply became more and more difficult. The situation worsened in 1917-1918, for the revolutionary takeover of industrial enterprises by the working class could not, of course, be accomplished painlessly. The entire first stage of the reorganization of industrial management, which began spontaneously under the Provisional Government and was carried out by the Soviet government in 1917-1918. - the stage of workers' control - was in fact (at least in the overwhelming majority of cases) a measure of the mastery of industrial enterprises, i.e. a preparatory measure for their complete transfer to the disposal of the state, and not a measure to strengthen the efficiency of industry. Although it must be admitted that, given the mood of the working masses after the revolution, without workers' control, probably in many cases no production could take place at all.
When the market is deformed, when enterprises are disintegrating, when money is rapidly depreciating, when even the methods of determining profitability are gradually lost, on condition that, without any calculation of it, it could be safely said that all enterprises have become or are becoming unprofitable - in the presence of all these circumstances, the line on the system of war communism even seemed to be the line of least resistance.
And finally, a civil war - the most destructive of all wars - with complete isolation from the outside world, with the state territory torn apart and the areas of raw materials, fuel and processing isolated from each other, with the extreme depletion of all the material resources of the country, with the provision of the last reserves mainly army and with stalled transport, made movement towards war communism more and more inevitable, and movement in the other direction - until the end of the war - less and less possible.
However, only everything taken together created the economic system that existed during 1918-1920. This system was not the product of military conditions alone and other spontaneously acting forces. It was also the product of a certain ideology, the realization of a socio-political plan that built the economic life of the country on completely new principles.
The short period of war communism is characterized by extraordinary intensity of work in the field of reorganization of all institutions, modification of all economic relations, breaking old ties and establishing new ones, revising old principles, destroying traditions, etc. This work did not stop for a single moment, and it is unlikely that it even slowed down in any significant way in certain periods of the epoch under consideration. Reorganizations followed one after the other, and therefore one cannot look for a system of war communism in
that was firmly imprinted at any particular moment. It can only be "constructed" from separate elements that were in constant motion, and we must take into account not only what has already managed to be embodied in real life, but also what remained just another expression of the will of state power. In our study, it is in no way possible to abstract from these expressions of will, because in order to direct monetary policy they mattered most.
The few pages that follow are intended to give a concise description of the basic principles of the War Communism system; without such a description we could not give a history of the monetary policy of this period.
The first principle was that all means of production belong to the state. This principle was not implemented to the very end. However, the exceptions were not very great (as we shall see below) and, if the principle was narrowed down by some exceptions, it was broadened on the other hand, for nationalizations and expropriations affected not only those material resources that can be considered means of production. The relevant acts relate mainly, but not exclusively, to 1918: Decree on the socialization of the land of October 26, 1917, Decree on the nationalization of banks of December 14

1. Decree on the nationalization of water transport of January 26, 1918; Decree on the annulment of loans of January 28, 1918; Decree on the nationalization of foreign trade of April 23, 1918; Decree on internal trade of November 21, 1918; Decree on the nationalization of the Moscow People's (Cooperative) Bank of December 7, 1918; industrial enterprises with the number of workers over 5, in the presence of a mechanical engine, and over 10, in the absence of a mechanical engine. However, in fact, many smaller enterprises were also nationalized, and the 1920 census showed more than one in seven establishments with one worker among state enterprises (see JI. Kritsman, "The Heroic Period of the Great Russian Revolution", pp. 62 - 64). With absolutely insignificant exceptions, all the means of production in industry, in transport, in trade, and land - the main means of production in agriculture - were placed at the disposal of the state. Part of the former landlord farms was turned into "state farms", that is, they were also, with all their means of production, at the disposal of the state. As for the means of production of peasant farms, they were only redistributed through the "committees of the poor" (decree of June 11, 1918). The transfer of these means of production to the disposal of the state did not happen, and the state approached the end of the era of war communism to the peasant economy from the other side. On the other hand, the state received not only the means of production, but also other material resources, like the entire urban housing stock, some
   what of the housing stock in the village, the furnishings of apartments in cases where the state, represented by local authorities, confiscated it, jewelry, libraries, etc.

1. up to 15 workers and 10.9% had 16 to 30 workers. ("On new paths", ed. STO. M., 1923, issue III, p. 176, art. P. I. Popov). And in individual industries, small enterprises played an even greater role: the share of establishments with 1 worker accounted for 25.4% in the production of food products, and 25.8% in the construction business (ibid., p. 177). True, even introducing the smallest enterprises into its system, the state could not concentrate all industrial establishments under its jurisdiction. According to the 1920 census, only 53.3% of all persons employed in industry, covered by the census, worked in state enterprises, and the rest were distributed as follows: 21.5% worked in private and cooperative enterprises that used hired labor, and 25.2% worked in handicraft establishments without the use of hired labor. However, it must be taken into account that cooperative enterprises in this period did not differ much from state enterprises, and handicraft enterprises, in the order of mobilization, served the state, working on its instructions and being registered with it. Industrial production was almost entirely state-owned or under state control.

1. added: "All existing institutions for the regulation of the economy are subordinate to the Supreme Council of National Economy, which is given the right to reform them." The Supreme Economic Council did not, however, become such a unifying institution. Instead, it became a special Commissariat for the management of industry. In 1920, the task of general management of the regulation of the national economy was therefore entrusted to the Council of Labor and Defense, which arose from the Council of Workers 'and Peasants' Defense, established in November 1918. The Regulations on the STO said that it "establishes a single economic plan for the RSFSR and "directs the work of the economic people's commissariats in accordance with this plan." The State General Planning Commission (Gosplan) was established as an auxiliary body under the STO. But the work was too difficult and complicated. The first general plans were already drawn up in the new era of economic policy, in profoundly changed conditions and therefore on completely different principles than those that had to be created under the conditions of the military-communist economic system.

1. in 1920, and her activities were particularly widespread in 1920. Her task was to draw up a general plan, but during the first year she had to deal mainly with the approval of individual appointments. In 1918, she approved 19 plans for use, in 1919

1. Additional rations were introduced for disabled members of the families of Red Army soldiers, a commission for workers' supply was established under the People's Commissariat for Food, which established various categories of enhanced supply and soon introduced 30 various norms. In 1920 (decree of the Council of People's Commissars of April 30, 1920), an attempt was made again to unify and simplify the various norms that were in force in the field of distribution. However, a variety of rations existed until the liquidation of the entire system, and the differences consisted not only in what kind of ration this or that person received, but also in how many rations he received, because the principle of receiving only one ration was not followed very consistently (cf. A Vyshinsky, "Questions of distribution and revolution", M., 1922, N. Vishnevsky, "Principles and methods of organized distribution of food products and essentials", M., 1920).

1. The order of free transportation by railroads and waterways was established.

1. included an extraordinary revolutionary tax, which was collected only partially.

Therefore, the importance of emission in the state economy of the era of war communism should not be exaggerated. She played a huge role in balancing budgets during the years of the civil war and the implementation of the policy of war communism. But it acquired much greater significance later, when the denaturalization of the economy began and in all branches of our economic life a transition began to be made to the principle of monetary payment for goods and services.
We would get an absolutely fantastic idea of ​​the actual nature of the budgets and the state economy of that time if, ignoring these remarks, we began to judge their real volume according to emission statistics. No matter how compressed the satisfaction of all needs was during these years of the greatest difficulties and hardships, it would, of course, be unthinkable to satisfy all state needs with the help of the mere issue of new paper signs. Consistent implementation of the principle of "emission economy", as S.A. Falkner called the financial system of that time, it turned out to be possible only because during these years the entire national and financial economy was resolutely and consistently naturalized, and money served in the hands of the state only as an auxiliary means of balancing the state budget. It is necessary to emphasize this with special insistence, because comparisons of the relative value of share premium in the budgets of different years were very common in newspaper and magazine literature, and no attention was paid to how these budgets combined monetary and in-kind parts.
The organization of the financial department and budgetary work had to be adapted to the completely changed conditions of economic and financial policy. The evolution in this area has been quite complex. The fate of the pre-revolutionary State Bank was closely intertwined with the development of the financial department in the narrower sense of the word, and all financial work was reduced to the production and distribution of paper money. The main stages of this evolution are as follows.

1. December 1917, the nationalization of private banks was decreed. All of them passed with their assets and liabilities under the jurisdiction of the State Bank and merged with it into a single "People's Bank of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic." The motives for the decree lay partly in considerations of possible meaning banking system in mastering the industry and in managing it. But they also had another reason. Nationalization was supposed to deprive depositors of the opportunity to receive money from their current accounts. Without nationalization, the new government, as is clear from official statements, was not able to achieve this goal (G.Ya. Sokolnikov, "Financial Policy of the Revolution", I.M., 1925, pp. 37, 38). The business of nationalizing the banks was completed on December 2, 1918.

1. November 1917 - 19,577.9 million rubles. Before the February Revolution, about 8.5 billion rubles were issued to finance the war. During its eight-month existence, the Provisional Government added about 9.5 billion more to this amount. After that, the issue of money passed into the hands of the Soviet government, and in the first four years of its existence it gave the following results:

We end this table with the summer months of 1921 because since that time new phenomena have become apparent in the field of money circulation in connection with the transition to the New Economic Policy. During the period from the October Revolution to this period, the volume of money circulation increased more than a hundred times.
The growth proceeded at a progressive pace. The number of banknotes in circulation increased on average per month ("monthly

rate of emission") in 1918 by 6.9%, in 1919 by 11.5%, in 1920 by 14.7%. People then lived in the power of other ideas about money circulation than those that established subsequently, and this rate of emission seemed enormous.In the further development of the monetary system, it was surpassed many times over.
However, even this rate of issue, which was reduced even in the first half of 1921 compared with 1920, due to the increasing naturalization of the economy, led to such a rise in prices that exceeded the growth in the number of banknotes in circulation. If the money supply increased by about 100 times over the 42 months under consideration, then prices increased by 8,000 times over the same period of time (according to the All-Russian Labor Statistics Index), and a comparison of the money supply growth and price growth for six months gives the following picture:

The excess of price growth over the growth of the money supply did not take place every month, but on the whole it characterizes the entire period. The reasons for it are quite clear. Trade turnover was shrinking, and new banknotes, falling into a narrowing circle, as it were, had to be more and more crowded in this shrinking space. If this process did not develop continuously, then it depended, on the one hand, on seasonal contractions and expansions of turnover, due to which the summer and autumn months, from July to October, were usually the most favorable for emissions, and on the other hand, on changes in the territory on which the Soviet banknote was in circulation in connection with the course of the civil war. Therefore, the year 1919 is characterized by an enormous rise in prices in comparison with the rate of issue, because in this year the territory at the disposal of the Soviet government is subject to the greatest reduction. In areas cut off from the center, there are many independent systems of money circulation. V

1. As a result of the victories of the Red Army, the circulation of "sovznaks" is expanding, and in the second half of 1920, new issues of banknotes are placed relatively painlessly. A major turn for the worse is revealed by numbers relating to the first half
2. G.; here is the influence of the main process that took place during the entire period under consideration - the process of conscious reduction with the help of economic policy measures in the sphere of the monetary economy.

By the middle of 1921 its decline had become so significant that the task of liquidating the money economy was almost completed. It is quite understandable that in this situation, the amount of real values ​​that the state treasury monthly extracted from the issue of banknotes systematically fell. It was in index rubles (according to the labor statistics index) on average for:

The lowest figure falls on June 1921, when the issue gave the State Treasury a total of 3149.5 thousand rubles. If we subtract from this insignificant sum the expenses for the manufacture of banknotes, for the maintenance of the entire treasury apparatus, and take into account the value of money not at the moment when it was issued by the department of banknotes and payment notes, but at those moments when the money entered the market, then it would turn out that the game was really not worth the candle for the state. Such was the conviction of a significant number of leaders of economic policy on the eve of its transition to a new track.
An acute shortage of money and technical difficulties in the manufacture of new signs forced, first of all, to put into circulation bonds of the "loan of freedom", issued by the provisional government. Unfortunately, bonds with a denomination of no more than 100 rubles were admitted "along with bank notes" (Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of February 16

1. G.). Then, for the same reason, the coupons of all state interest-bearing papers for a period up to December 1, 1917 were allowed to circulate,
   (Announcement of the People's Bank of March 3, 1918). They were equated to credit notes and a series of the State Treasury (Circular of the People's Bank of May 9, 1918) - No new samples of money were issued in 1918.

1. 3, 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 5000 and 10,000 rubles (Decrees of the Council of People's Commissars of March 4 and November 27, 1920).

1. rubles of the sample of 1922) had the purchasing power of the pre-war kopey-

1. (Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of June 28, 1922) all banknotes of the pre-revolutionary period, the period of the Provisional Government and the era of war communism were withdrawn from circulation.

sTva... Money as a single measure of value does not exist at all. Money as a means of circulation can already be abolished to a large extent... Money as a means of payment will cease to exist when the Soviet state... relieves (the workers) of the need to run around Sukharevkas. Both are within our foresight and will practically be resolved in the coming years. And then money will lose its significance as a treasure, and will remain only what it really is: colored paper" ("Money", "Economic Life", November 7, 1920, No. 250).
In recent years, financial legislation and administrative practice have been consistently working in this direction.
The problem was, as it was believed then, primarily to replace cash payments with the so-called non-cash payments, i.e. accounting entries in books on the basis of certain documents: checks, turnover appropriations, etc. In this area, it was necessary to cope only with technical difficulties caused by the fact that the problem had to be solved on a very large scale and in conditions of extremely shaky accounting of all enterprises and their constant reorganization. But the very practice of cashless settlements was well known to the capitalist economy as well; it was only a question of using and adapting to the new situation already known methods and models.
The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of May 2, 1918, required that all funds in the management and custody of Soviet institutions or officials be paid into the cashiers of the People's Bank or the State Treasury and that all payments be made only by appropriations and checks. It was allowed to keep in the cash desk only advances released for small operating or travel expenses. The Decree of the Supreme Council of the National Economy of August 30, 1918 required that all nationalized enterprises register their products with the relevant centers, main committees or departments and receive from the latter all the necessary materials and raw materials in order to "pay for those delivered and received by such way the products were produced by accounting records, without the participation of banknotes". Accounting records also had to be used to make payments to all consumers - Soviet organizations and institutions. The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of January 23, 1919 established a certain procedure for settlement transactions between nationalized, municipalized and under their control (registered) institutions of the Supreme Council of the National Economy, the People's Commissariat for Food and Provincial Councils of the National Economy, as well as between industrial and commercial enterprises: all Mutual settlements were to be made "accounting method without the participation of banknotes." By a decree of January 6, 1920, these regulations were extended to cooperatives. The Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of July 25, 1920 on requisitions and confiscations established that any amount of cash kept by private individuals and exceeding in total twenty times the minimum tariff rate of a given place
banknotes per person (regardless of the samples of money) are subject to compulsory deposit into the current accounts of the owners in the state cash desks.
Further, measures were taken to break the ties between the state and non-state economy - those ties that were serviced by cash. Appeal to private suppliers for the purchase of any kind of goods was allowed by Soviet institutions and state enterprises only if it was impossible to obtain them from the relevant Soviet institutions that produce or distribute these goods, and was surrounded by a number of formal restrictions. Decree of the Council of People's Commissars dated

1. July 1920, the purchase of goods by Soviet institutions and enterprises from private suppliers was even more constrained. The purpose of the decree was to put an end to the free market as far as possible. The decree stated that all Soviet and public institutions, enterprises and organizations in need of any items were obliged to apply to the appropriate Soviet distribution institutions to receive them. Any purchase of articles, materials, products, etc. directly on the free market by these institutions and enterprises was prohibited. It was allowed only to Soviet institutions and cooperative organizations that were part of the state procurement apparatus, moreover, only those items, the procurement of which was entrusted to this institution and at prices established by a special evaluation commission at the Workers 'and Peasants' Inspectorate.

1. Mr. on speculation forbade, under pain of imprisonment for a term not less than 10 years, combined with forced labor and confiscation of all property, the purchase and storage of platinum, silver and gold in its raw form, in bullion or in coins. The Decree of the People's Commissariat of Finance dated October 3, 1918 obliged to continue to hand over foreign currency to the Credit Office at the rates established by it. The export of currency abroad was subject to the receipt of a special permit from the NKF.

1. placed in the "Bulletin" of the Market Institute, but not collected by the Market Institute. The origin of these data is unknown and must be treated with great caution. All this information is reprinted in the collection Our Money Circulation, p. 227, and we compare them below with commodity price indices for the same months (see p. 82).

for very special reasons, not having shi m relation to the value of gold. The ratios in 1920 were probably not far from those that existed in 1919 and 1918. There is at least no reason to believe that this was not the case, and this is confirmed by the figures given by JI. K. Soldatova ("Revolution of the value of gold on the world market and in Russia", M., 1924, p. 79) and which we do not reproduce, because we do not know their origin.

What does the row of numbers above show?
In the movement of the value of gold (in comparison with the movement of commodity prices), seasonal fluctuations are observed. Gold falls in price from January to July and then rises in price from July to January. The same movement is repeated in 1920 and 1921.
In this era, gold is not money, but a commodity, and it is not difficult to explain why these fluctuations in the relative price of this commodity are observed. Gold rises in price from July to January, firstly, because after the harvest the situation on the commodity market becomes easier, and, secondly, because during this period the demand for metal coins increases on the part of peasants and sack merchants. as an instrument of savings. The reverse process takes place from January, when grain supplies become increasingly scarce, until the time of harvest. Gold fell greatly in price in July 1921, probably because on the eve of the severe crop failure the position of the grain market was extremely tense and it is quite possible that the peasants, who left their homes and started wandering in search of food, sold at that time quite a few "dozens" saved up for a rainy day. The price of gold rose greatly by the autumn and winter of 1921, despite the fact that the year was hungry, because by this time there was already a significant urban "Nepman" demand. We think that the described conditions are seasonal fluctuations in connection with the state of the agricultural market for the era of war communism; the emergence of new accumulation with the transition to the new economic policy - were the main points that determined the valuation of gold. However, it is possible that JI.K. Soldatov about some influence of the German gold market on the Russian one has grounds. J.I. K. Soldatov notes a sharp increase in the relative price of gold in Germany by the winter of 1920 and then again by the winter of 1921 under the influence of local political conditions. It is possible that through contra
gang trade, these phenomena of central Europe influenced the price of gold, first in the Soviet outskirts, and then throughout the country; this is all the more possible since the market for such a portable commodity as gold could be sensitive to all external influences, even in the conditions of the isolation of the Soviet republics.
The general picture of the movement of gold reserves in the era of war communism is quite clear, although there are some discrepancies in the figures in the materials. Separate elements of this picture are known to the Russian reader from the works of Z. S. Katsenelenbaum ("Teaching about money and credit".
Part 1. 1922, p. 230), N. N. Lyubimov ("USSR and France", 1926, p. 41) and A. I. Pogrebetsky ("Money circulation and banknotes Of the Far East for the period of war and revolution 1914 - 1924". 1924). In the subsequent presentation, we rely mainly on the data of the article by V. Novitsky, which we have already quoted in the "introduction", and on the materials of the Narkomfin.
We saw in the "introduction" that the gold reserves within the country amounted to 1,101 million rubles by the time of the October Revolution. For military reasons, the pre-revolutionary government evacuated part of it to Saratov and Samara. Then, already under Soviet rule, in connection with the beginning of the movement of the Czechoslovak troops, gold was transferred from Saratov and Samara to Kazan. The fate of this "Kazan gold" turned out to be the most difficult in the future. It was captured by the Whites, returned to Samara, then transported to Ufa and from there sent to Omsk. This gold served as one of the main sources of covering the expenses of the Kolchak government. Part of the same gold fell into the hands of Ataman Semenov. Something was looted while moving in the train wreck containing the gold transport, in

1. At the same time, the surviving part of the transport passed in Nizhneudinsk under the protection of the Czechoslovak troops and was for some time in their actual possession. Some sums not spent by the Kolchak government and not exported by him abroad were used to cover the expenses of the Far Eastern governments after the fall of the Kolchak government. With rounding, inevitable due to discrepancies in the available data, the amount of gold exported from Kazan to the east can be taken as 650 million rubles. According to this calculation, 1,101 million minus 650 million remained in the center, i.e. 451 million rubles.

A. I. Pogrebetsky (p. 109 et seq.), it was even more and amounted to 50 million). It also formed that “untouchable reserve” on which the Vladivostok authorities based their foreign exchange measures and monetary reforms after the fall of the Kolchak government (see below Chapter IV). It was spent partly in Vladivostok, partly in Blagoveshchensk, partly in other places in the Far East and helped to overcome financial difficulties before the Sovietization of the Far East at those moments when local authorities could no longer rely on the issuance of paper money.
"Kazan reserve", with the exception of gold sent to Vladivostok, remained in Omsk until November 1919. This remainder was loaded, according to the description of V. Novitsky, “within ten days from October 28 to November 8 in a special train consisting of forty wagons . Admiral Kolchak's trains under the letters A, B, C, D, D and the armored train departed from Omsk on the afternoon of November 12 and at night on November 12 and 13. Omsk was occupied on the evening of November 15th. Admiral Kolchak left Omsk in train B, and trains A, C, D, D were the General Staff, Chancellery and Guards. At Tatarskaya station, train B collided with a train carrying gold, and a fire broke out that destroyed 8 cars. 80 people from the guard were killed and 30 wounded. Several boxes of gold were lost, and after loading the rest into other cars, the trains arrived at Novo-Nikolaevsk, where they remained until December 4, when, after a series of incidents, they managed to send trains further east. The Czechs, who until that time had taken possession of all the locomotives for the evacuation of their troops, refused to provide Admiral Kolchak with those 7 locomotives that he needed. They yielded only due to the intervention of representatives of foreign powers and under the pressure of General Sirovois. At this time, the line was busy, and only two trains could pass during 24 hours. Therefore, 4 trains of Admiral Kolchak managed to reach only Krasnoyarsk, and only 2 - the one in which Admiral Kolchak was, and the one in which gold was transported - reached Nizhne-Udinsk. At this station, events took place that are known to everyone: Admiral Kolchak left his train and transport with gold ... From the moment when the train with gold remained in Nizhny-Udinsk, the further fate of the gold reserve cannot be established with the same degree of accuracy and all responsibility for its safety lies with the Czechoslovaks. Based on the armistice concluded between the Bolsheviks and the Czechs at the end of January 1920, the gold was handed over to the representatives of the Bolsheviks. This transfer was a condition for the free passage of Czech troops to the east" (V. Novitsky, pp. 218, 219, 220).
Of the entire "Kazan reserve", the Soviet government managed to get back 409 million rubles (according to the data of the Irkutsk financial department, which is very close to the data of V. Novitsky). In addition to Kazan gold, there were still about 451 million (the balance at the end of 1917; 1101 million minus Kazan gold - about 650 million) and the amount is, therefore, 860 million. However, one large expenditure had to be made from this fund. According to the additional to the Brest Treaty, Russian-

According to the German financial agreement of August 27, 1918, Germany was to receive about 320 million rubles in five installments. The German revolution led to the annulment of the Brest Treaty, but 121 million rubles had already been issued by that time and then passed to France and England on the basis of the Treaty of Versailles (see N. N. Lyubimova, p. 41). After deducting this amount, the gold reserve was 739 million. This was the amount that had been preserved by the time the civil war ended.
As is known, the foreign trade of Soviet Russia, which resumed in 1920, was at first exclusively passive. The needs of the country, devastated by the civil war and the crop failure that befell it in 1921, were enormous, and, naturally, it did not have goods for export. In the last year of the era of war communism and in the first period after the transition to the new economic policy, therefore, very large expenditures had to be made abroad, for which part of the gold fund was turned over; perhaps, in addition to the objective necessity of large expenditures, at first a certain role was also played by the fact that in 1920/21, under the dominance of the ideology of a moneyless economy, the value of the gold reserve was diminished. The other part of the gold fund remained in the following years as a special state reserve in the administration of the People's Commissariat of Finance. Quite large sums of it were transferred at different times to the State Bank, established in 1921. Over time, the currency and gold reserves of the State Bank acquired the main importance as a security for a new issue and as a fund for making foreign payments, and in subsequent chapters we will already stop only on it.

The new financial system was built on the principle of the incompatibility of Soviet power and commodity-money relations, so money must be eliminated. The socialist economy must have a natural and non-monetary character with a centralized distribution of resources and finished products.

The exclusive right of the state to carry out banking operations, to reorganize, liquidate old and create new credit institutions (state monopoly) was approved by a decree on the nationalization of banking in the country. First, the State Bank was nationalized, and then the Russian-Asian, Commercial and Industrial, Siberian and other joint-stock and private banks. In January 1918, bank shares owned by large private entrepreneurs were annulled.

The State Bank was renamed National Bank, and during 1919 all banks were liquidated and valuables confiscated.

N. Bukharin, E. Preobrazhensky, Yu. Larin and others in 1918-1920. they constantly emphasized that “communist society will not know money”, that money is doomed to disappear. They wanted to immediately devalue the money, and put in its place a mandatory system of distribution of benefits by cards. But, as these politicians noted, the presence of small producers (peasants) did not allow this to be done quickly, because the peasants were still outside the sphere of state control and they still had to pay for food.

Based on the idea of ​​the need for a quick abolition of money, the government was increasingly inclined towards the complete depreciation of money through their unlimited issue. So many of them were printed that they depreciated tens of thousands of times and almost completely lost their purchasing power, which meant hyperinflation, which was deliberately carried out.

The money issue of the first post-revolutionary years turned out to be the most important source of replenishment of the state budget. In February 1919 were issued the first Soviet money, which was called "settlement signs of the RSFSR". They were in circulation together with "Nikolayevka" and "Kerenka", but their rate was much lower than that of the old money.

In May 1919, the People's Bank was ordered to issue as much money as needed for the country's economy. As a result of rampant emission, the price level has reached unprecedented proportions. If the price level of 1913 is taken as 1, then in 1918 it was 102, in 1920 - 9,620, in 1922 - 7,343,000, and in 1923 - 648,230,000. As a result, Soviet money was completely depreciated. high value retained only the gold tsarist ruble, but it was almost never in circulation.

Devastation, lack of roads, civil war turned the country into closed, isolated economic islands with internal cash equivalents. Many varieties of money circulated in the former Russian Empire. They printed their own money in Turkestan, Transcaucasia, in many Russian cities: Armavir, Izhevsk, Irkutsk, Yekaterinodar, Kazan, Kaluga, Kashira, Orenburg and many others. In Arkhangelsk, for example, local banknotes with the image of a walrus were called "walrus". Credit notes, checks, change marks, bonds were issued: "Turkbons", "Zakbons", "Gruzbons", etc. By the way, it was in Central Asia and Transcaucasia that the largest issue was, since the printing press was in the hands of local governments, which were actually independent of the center.

After October, the tax system practically collapsed, which completely undermined the state budget, to replenish which even the coupons of the “Free Loan” of the Provisional Government were put into circulation. During the first six months after the revolution, the government's expenditures amounted to 20 to 25 billion rubles, while revenues did not exceed 5 billion rubles.

To replenish the budget, local Soviets resorted to discriminatory taxation of "class enemies" in the form of "indemnities." So, in October 1918, a special contribution of 10 billion rubles was imposed on wealthy peasants.

As a result, the Russian financial system was destroyed, the economy switched to barter. In industry, a system of non-monetary relations and settlements was introduced. Head offices and local authorities issued warrants, according to which enterprises were to sell their products to other enterprises and organizations free of charge. Taxes were abolished, debts cancelled. The supply of raw materials, fuel, equipment was carried out free of charge, in a centralized way through Glavki. To carry out production accounting at enterprises, the Council of People's Commissars recommended switching to physical meters - "threads" (labor units), which meant a certain amount of labor expended.

In fact, the credit and banking system ceased to exist. The People's Bank was merged with the Treasury and subordinated to the Supreme Economic Council, and in fact turned into a central settlement cash desk. On the bank accounts of enterprises, the movement of not only cash, but also material assets within the public sector of the economy was recorded. Instead of bank lending, centralized state financing and logistics were introduced.

In accordance with the surplus appraisal, private trade in bread and other products was prohibited in the country. All food was distributed by state institutions strictly according to the cards. Industrial goods of daily demand were also distributed centrally according to the cards. Everywhere, 70-90% of the wages of workers and employees were issued in the form of food and manufactured goods rations or manufactured products. Monetary taxes from the population were abolished, as well as payments for housing, transport, utilities, etc.

Of all its links in the financial system during the period of war communism, there was only the State budget, but it also consisted of a monetary and material part. The main revenue items of the budget were money emission and contribution. The formed financial system fully met the tasks of centralizing economic development.