Monetary and credit system of the state in the period of war communism. Money circulation during the Civil War

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From August 1918, Krestinsky held the post of People's Commissar for Finance of the RSFSR (until the end of 1922). His appointment marked the beginning of the VC policy. The leadership of Krestinsky fell on the Civil War. The VC period was characterized by almost complete disregard for eq. the laws of the development of society and the role of money devalued millions of times as a result of inflation (monetary terms appear - a piece (a thousand rubles), a lemon, a lemonard. The general collapse of the economy, the need for strict centralization of supply, the struggle of the state against private trade were accompanied by the naturalization of relations. A feature of financial policy VC were "extraordinary taxes" on the exploiting classes.

A one-time emergency tax of ten billion dollars was established for the bourgeois classes. the total collection in May 1919 did not reach even a billion rubles.

Other taxes (income and trade) also did not produce results. The excise form of taxation (nationalization, centralization) lost its significance and was abolished. In 1920, the People's Bank was liquidated, so there was no credit and banks in Russia for 2 years.

The most important material source in that period was the surplus appraisal. Significant masses of commodities circulated on semi-legal markets, and the state sought to extract these resources for its own purposes. Through emission. The entire amount of withdrawals through the issue amounted to 1163 million pre-war rubles, and withdrawals through the surplus appraisal amounted to 931 million pre-war rubles. The Soviet government wanted to destroy money and replace it with a labor unit.

Thus, the emission, surplus appropriation and cash taxes provided the material resources of the state. conversion to period civil war.

Despite the extreme unpopularity among the population, the policy of the VC allowed the communists to stay in power. However, by the beginning of 1921, the VK had exhausted itself, and in February 1921 all cash taxes were abolished, emission was stopped, and the surplus appraisal was replaced by a tax in kind. radical transformations and the restoration of financial mechanisms began.

27. Financial transformations during the NEP period

By the beginning of the 1920s. Russia found itself in a state of political, economic, financial crisis, to overcome which the NEP was adopted, the resuscitation of the market began, and commodity-money relations began to develop. The task was to recreate credit institutions. In the autumn of 1921, the State Bank was established, and a monetary reform was soon carried out, which stabilized the country's financial system. 1922 was headed by Sokolnikov. The main merit of the People's Commissar Kerensky is ( 1922–1924) monetary reform, the result of which was the withdrawal from circulation of 886.5 quadrillion old rubles and the creation of a solid national currency - the gold chervonets. Transformations followed: the introduction of an extensive system of taxes, loans and credit operations. As a result, in 1924, after the famine of 1921, thanks to the NEP, the country not only fed its population, but also sold 180 million poods of grain abroad. Established the State bank. Thus was laid the foundation of the den-th economy of Soviet Russia. The nationalized industry began to reorganize itself on new self-supporting principles. Lending to industrial and trade enterprises on a commercial basis has begun. Until the stabilization of the ruble, State. the bank issued loans at high%: from 8 to 12% per month, but gradually the interest rate decreased. At the end of 1922, a number of banks appeared: Prombank for financing industry, Electrobank for electrification, Vneshtorgbank for foreign trade, and savings banks were established to mobilize the population's savings. A decree was issued on the establishment of a state labor savings banks. In the summer of 1922, a subscription was opened for the first state. a grain loan for a total amount of 10 million poods of rye grain. In 1922, stock exchanges were organized to carry out transactions with the Central Bank. There was a "black exchange", or "American". She was unofficially recognized by the authorities. They sold any currency, gold, valuable furs. In the same place, the purchase of canceled securities took place. As a result, stocks and bonds, which in 1919-1920. met like a wrapper, disappeared and ended up abroad. Simultaneously with the monetary reform, tax reform was also carried out. The transition from taxation in kind to cash. taxes were imposed on tobacco, liquor, beer, matches, and honey. Already at the end of 1923 the main source of income for the state. budget began deductions from the profits of enterprises, not taxes from the population. The main result of the tax reform was to overcome the budget deficit in 1924.

November 7, 1917 at six o'clock in the morning, on the orders of the Petrograd Military Revolutionary Committee, armed sailors of the Guards naval crew, without meeting any resistance, occupied the building of the State Bank. In the afternoon, representatives of the new government demanded money from the Bank. In response, the leadership of the State Bank instructed to stop servicing customers. On November 12, the State Bank was demanded to open a current account in the Petrograd office in the name of the Council of People's Commissars and presented samples of the signatures of V. I. Lenin and the temporary Deputy People's Commissar of Finance V. R. Menzhinsky. But the employees of the Bank continued to carry out operations on the basis of financial documents issued by the Ministry of Finance. Even the one-day arrest of the Bank Manager IP Shipov did not make them change their position. From November 8 to November 23, 1917, the State Bank did not serve customers, but during this time it continued to carry out its main function - emission. 610 million rubles were put into circulation. and 459 million rubles were sent to the offices and branches of the Bank.

In December 1917, the reorganization of the country's credit system began. On December 8, 1917, the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the abolition of the Noble Land Bank and the Peasant Land Bank" was adopted. The land, inventory and urban real estate owned by these credit organizations were transferred to the peasants, state farms organized at that time and local bodies of Soviet power.

One of the issues of the theory and practice of socialist construction, which was solved in general terms by V.I. Lenin, even before the October Revolution, was the question of the role of commodity-money relations and ways to use them in the national economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The first step of the Soviet government in the field of monetary circulation was the decree of December 14, 1917 "On the nationalization of private banks."

The nationalization of the banking system meant not only its transfer to the disposal of the state and the centralization of management, but also the rapid withering away of the former functions of banks. Only one was preserved and carried out - the issuance of credit notes, but with the nationalization it acquired a completely different character. The point is not even that it has become purely treasury in essence, it is important that the ideology monetary policy, carried out by the Soviet government in the early years, was based on "the rejection of the former capitalist relationships in production and the elimination in the end of any influence of money on the ratio of economic elements."

The question of what money should be like under socialism first arose in the spring of 1918, when the inability of the old form of circulation to solve new problems became obvious. However, the Soviet government did not have a strict plan for a new monetary circulation. During the Civil War, the attitude towards money changed several times. At the first stage, it was considered that transition period money must be saved by replacing old units with new ones.

By the spring of 1918, within the framework of the general plan for economic construction adopted by the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets of the National Economy, a program was developed for restoring the country's financial economy through a monetary reform and reorganization of banking. It envisaged the completion of the nationalization of banks, a gradual transition to mandatory current accounts covering the entire population, the widest development of check circulation and transfers, and the creation of a common accounting department for all nationalized enterprises. As part of the approved program, the congress decided to replace pre-revolutionary money with new ones. In the summer of 1918, the production of a "new type of paper signs" called "calculation signs of the RSFSR" began.

The turning point in relation to money was the transition of the organization of the national economy to the principles of war communism, which began in the autumn of 1918 and continued until the second half of 1921.

During the years of war communism, when the idea of ​​the possibility of an accelerated transition to socialism-communism became widespread, many economists began to consider the exclusion of commodity-money relations from national economic ties as one of the priorities. The naturalization of the economic life of the country, forced by economic disruption, seemed to be a natural, logical process, and this in practice led to an even greater naturalization of economic ties, a decrease in the role of money in economic turnover and their gradual elimination as such.

Taking into account the peculiarities of the country's economic situation during the period of war communism and the practical task of eliminating commodity-money relations in 1919-1920, many Soviet economists directed their efforts to working out questions of organizing a moneyless economy. One of the most urgent problems that had to be solved in order to completely exclude money from economic circulation was to find a new form of economic accounting that did not require the use of cost indicators. This task was all the more urgent because in the conditions of the depreciation of money and the disorder of the entire financial economy, monetary accounting did not give the desired effect, since it not only did not reflect, but often distorted the results of the production activities of enterprises. In the process of work, the most diverse, sometimes opposing points of view were revealed.

The next stage in the development of money is associated with the transition to a new economic policy. The NEP brought about profound changes in the economic mechanism. Recognition of the need for a market turned the products of labor into commodities, the category of price came into its own, and the guiding principle of Soviet power in the field of finance was "restoration of money circulation on a metal basis (gold)". The first step in this direction was the revival of the activities of the State Bank of the RSFSR. It was established with the aim of promoting the development of industry, agriculture and trade with credit and other banking operations, as well as with the aim of concentrating money circulation and carrying out other measures aimed at establishing the correct monetary circulation. However, the newly created State Bank had a number of specific features that distinguished it from the state banks of the capitalist countries. The bank did not take any part in the regulation of money circulation, since the issue of state marks was carried out by the People's Commissariat of Finance.

The issuing function of the bank arose later, when it put into circulation bank notes denominated in a new gold monetary unit - chervonets. Chervonets contained 1 spool - 78.24 shares of pure gold, which was equal to the gold content of the former Russian ten-ruble coin. Based on this ratio, the State Bank had to regulate the rate of gold coins in foreign currency. No fixed quantitative relationship between chervonets and sovznak was established.

The banknotes were collateralized by: - ​​gold and foreign stable currency, accepted bills of exchange and easily marketable goods of the public sector. Bank notes were exchangeable for gold. The beginning of the exchange was supposed to be established by a special government act, but it was never adopted. At the same time, Soviet banknotes remained in circulation, and their number continued to grow due to the state budget deficit, to cover which they were printed.

The final moment of the monetary reform was the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of February 5, 1924, according to which treasury bills of the People's Commissariat of Finance were put into circulation. 10 rubles in treasury notes were equal to one gold piece. Thus, through the gold content of the chervonets, the ruble de facto acquired a gold content and began to be called chervonets, in contrast to the ruble represented in the Soviet signs.

According to the law, the total amount of treasury notes in circulation should not exceed half the amount of chervonets circulating in the country. A little later, a fixed rate of Soviet signs in chervonets was announced and their redemption began in exchange for treasury notes.

As a result of the monetary reform of 1922-1924. in the Soviet Union, a monetary system developed, the originality of which was determined by the following circumstances:

• 1. The monetary system was based on the interaction of two non-changeable types of money: banknotes and treasury bills. Banknotes were backed by gold and had a gold parity, but there was no gold money circulation. The advantage of such a system was that there could be no shortage of means of payment, and at the same time the danger of an increase in paper money was neutralized by the regulation of the issue of banknotes.
• 2. Chervonets as the basis of the national monetary system assumed, on the one hand, the relationship, and on the other hand, the autonomy of its exchange rate and internal purchasing power. The external course was based on the monopoly of foreign trade and foreign exchange interventions; domestic purchasing power-on price stability in the socialized sector of production.

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 of the existence of Soviet Russia during the first four years - political and economic conditions - developed in such a way 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 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
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 in late XVIII centuries. 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 described time. The desire 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 the 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 was of great importance, that the events of 1917-1918. 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 reorganizing all institutions, modifying all economic relations, breaking old ties and establishing new ones, revising old principles, destroying traditions, and so on. 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 individual 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 by no means possible to abstract ourselves from these expressions of will, because they were of the most essential importance for the direction of monetary policy.
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, because 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 especially 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, "Problems of distribution and revolution", M., 1922, N. Vishnevsky, "Principles and methods of organized distribution of food products and essentials", M., 1920).

1. was established the procedure for free transportation on railways and waterways.

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 in these years the entire national and financial economy was resolutely and consistently naturalized and money served in the hands of the state only auxiliary means balancing the state budget. It is necessary to emphasize this with particular 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 the possible significance of the banking system in mastering and managing industry. 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 taken shape 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 increase 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 also 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 they were issued by the department of banknotes and settlement 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 meaning 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 the products delivered and received by such way the products were produced by accounting records, without the participation of banknotes". Accounting records were to be made and 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 distribution Soviet 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 shea 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. ". 1924). In the following 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 currency 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. Events that are known to everyone took place at this station: 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.