1
A CIVIL WAR AND A RATIONAL PEASANT: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE
CIVIL WARS IN RUSSIA, FINLAND, SPAIN, AND CHINA
PAVEL OSINSKY
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
APPALACHIAN STATE UNIVERSITY
BOONE, NC 28608
PHONE: 828-262-7732
EMAL: [email protected]
BOONE, 2011
2
ABSTRACT
According to classic interpretations of the communist revolutions of the twentieth century,
political mobilization of peasantry was critical for the success of the revolutionary forces. This
article, which reexamines experience of revolutionary civil wars in Russia, Finland, Spain, and
China, argues that political mobilization of peasantry in Russia and later in China became
possible under very unusual historical circumstances: collapse of state authorities in the wake of
the long devastating war and existence of an unresolved agrarian problem in the countryside.
Neither of these conditions alone was sufficient for a success of the revolutionaries. The Spanish
civil war of 1936-39, for instance, was not preceded by a major international war. Because
institutions of the traditional social order had not been weakened by war, Franco was able to
defeat the Popular Front government, despite the peasants‟ support of the revolution. In the
Finnish civil war of 1918, which broke out in the wake of the First World War and the Russian
Revolution, state institutions collapsed but rural smallholders aligned with the Mannerheim‟s
white army, not with the urban revolutionaries.
3
INTRODUCTION
Dramatic experience of the communist modernization in the Soviet Union and the People‟s
Republic of China inspired generations of scholars. For years, social scientists tried to
understand whether these momentous transformations were caused by long-term structural
problems of these societies or came about due to unique combinations of contingent historical
events. Sociological interpretations of communist revolutions, guided by the principle of
historical determinism, pointed to a number of structural peculiarities of prerevolutionary
development that directed Russia and China towards collectivism. Scholars argued that
centralized semi-bureaucratic systems of authority combined with state-dependent gentry, weak
national bourgeoisie, century-old legacy of rural collectivism, and militant labor movement
provided exceptionally fertile grounds for the twentieth century experiments in collectivist
modernization (McDaniel 1988, Moore 1966, Skocpol 1979).
Recently this argument has been challenged by a new set of ideas. A war-centered theory
in studying communist revolutions contended that neither Russia nor China had been predestined
to the communist path of modernization. Despite the heavy burden of historical backwardness,
economic and political development of these countries showed encouraging signs. It was the
calamitous experience of devastating wars against advanced industrial nations that destroyed
modernizing economies of these countries, paralyzed state authorities, and created opportunities
for political takeover by the revolutionary state-builders. The processes of economic and political
modernization in these countries became interrupted by a communist interlude (Osinsky 2008,
2010).
Few persons at the threshold of revolutionary events could imagine radical socialists‟
coming to power and, when that happened, seriously believe that these parties stay in power for
more than few weeks. The strength of the military-bureaucratic state machineries and the
strength of the revolutionary contenders seemed incomparable. Yet, the new revolutionary
organizations, once they seized power, proved to be exceptionally resilient. Both in Russia and
China the revolutionary parties had to fight political enemies in long and devastating civil wars.
In several moments during these wars defeats of revolutionary regimes seemed inescapable.
However, against odds, the new regimes have survived. The civil wars have become the true
formative experiences of the communist states in which core institutions of these regimes
4
crystallized. Indeed, there are all grounds to argue that revolutionary civil wars were decisive
points in the revolutionary struggle.
EXISITING THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
A failure to explore the dynamic of the revolutionary civil wars represents one of the glaring
omissions in the traditional sociological scholarship on social revolutions. For decades, the
dominant structural perspective in studying revolutions was concerned “primarily with origins,
secondarily with outcomes, and relatively little with the dynamics of making revolutions”
(Oberschall and Seidman 2005: 373). Although scholars made a great number of insightful
observations about revolutions, they rarely specified the mechanism of the transformative social
change. A number of studies argued, for instance, that communist revolutions of the twentieth
century were essentially peasant revolutions but how peasants‟ collective action became possible
and successful on a nationwide scale has not been explicated (e.g., Moore 1966, Wolf 1968).
The notion that peasant collective action was subordinate to the strategies of political
actors represented a major step in a right direction (e.g., Migdal 1974). This argument found its
most systematic elaboration in a Theda Skocpol‟s (1979) state-centered analysis of revolutions,
which included a study of communist revolutions in Russia and China (as well as an earlier
revolution in France). In the early twentieth century, she argued, external pressures generated by
more advanced nations contributed to weakening and, ultimately, destroying archaic
administrative and military machineries of the Romanov‟s and Qing empires. This in turn, made
possible widespread peasants‟ assaults on landed elites and bureaucratic structures from below.
The revolutionary state-builders took advantage of the opportunities created by the class-based
collective action, organized masses, seized state authority, and established centralized
communist regimes (Skocpol 1979).
As insightful and argumentative as it was, a Skocpol‟s research has left, however, ample
space for further elaboration. Three observations warrant such elaboration. First, although
Skocpol emphasized that international pressures, including wars, contributed to the outbreak of
two revolutions, this accurate observation did not induce her to elevate experience of war to the
position of causal centrality in her account of processes in Russia and China. Dynamics of war
have not been expored in Skocpol‟s accounts of revolutions. Yet in both countries war was the
5
central context and condition of the revolutionary events, which deserved, I believe, greater
attention. Second, Skocpol came up with a two different interpretations of why revolutionary
forces were able to consolidate their authority. In Russia, the Bolshevik party-state survived the
civil war by using large-scale organized coercion deployed by such institutions as the Cheka, the
Red Army, and the party administration. In China, Mao and his comrades won the civil war
because they were able to mobilize the large groups of the population by the power of
persuasion. These explanations pointed to important contrasts between revolutionary processes
in two countries but neglected, I think, far more fundamental commonalities. Finally, a decidedly
structural, “non-intenionalist” Skocpol‟s account sidetracked factors of historical contingency,
strategic decisions, and individual choices, that all played a major role in the revolutionary
turmoil.
More recently, some scholars attempted to apply a rational choice perspective to studying
revolutions. This perspective is better attuned to indeterminacy of the revolutionary processes
and the role of decisions made by political actors. According to a study by Oberschall and
Seidman (2005), most relevant in the context of a present research, a structural approach
provides little help if structure ceases to exist. As applied to analysis of revolutions, a choice
perspective assumes fragmentation of power and a contest of several (usually two) political
actors for legitimate state authority. Because normal functioning of social institutions is
suspended, such situation typically involves shortage of resources. A political contender, which
is more effective in mobilizing and allocating resources (i.e., creating an effective “political
economy of shortage and predation”) has a greater chance to win the conflict. Effective use of
organized coercion is critical for its success (Oberschall and Seidman 2005).
There is one point in which a rational choice argument (in an Oberschall and Seidman‟s
interpretation) and a structural theory (a Skocpol‟s account of the Russian revolution, at least)
converge. One way or the other, they both point to effective use of organized coercion as a key to
winning a conflict. At surface, such argument seems plausible; after all, violence and coercion
were indeed common during civil wars. Theoretically, however, it is problematic. A civil war is
a multi-party engagement. If social groups and individuals choose sides and if one of the
contenders subjects population to excessive coercion (e.g., draft, requisitions, confiscations), a
subordinate group may switch its allegiance to another side. A political actor, which coerces its
6
followers but does not provide any benefits, risks alienating its supporters. (If, on the other hand,
people cannot change sides, the very notion of collective choice becomes irrelevant).
Furthermore, we assume, for sake of the argument, that one side deploys greater (or more
effective) coercion than the other and, therefore, it wins. Logically, however, there are little
grounds to think a priori that political actors vary substantially in the extent of coercion they
deploy. A civil war is a life-or-death struggle for political (and in many cases physical) survival.
It is rational to expect that all actors involved in a conflict would do everything they can acquire
necessary resources in order to win civil war. Of course, there may be variation in amount of
resources they obtain but to explain such variation one needs perhaps to look more closely at
variation not on a “demand side” but rather on a “supply side”, that is how much resources
population is willing to provide to one political actor or the other. The amount of support
available for delivery “from below” may be a more important factor in deciding the fate of the
conflict than an extent of coercion deployed by political actors.
A WAR-CENTERED FRAMEWORK: BRINGING BITS AND PIECES TOGETHER
Let‟s begin with a premise, consistent with a rational choice approach, that a victory in civil war
is eventually determined by political choices of large segments of population. In order to proceed
along these lines, however, one needs to identify the circumstances in which individuals and
groups are able to make choices. Historically, this is not a very common context. In the
traditional, predominantly rural societies, such as Russia and China before revolutions, most
actors were embedded in larger social group (extended families, clans, patron-client relations,
local territorial networks, etc). Human behavior within such settings was guided by customs and
traditions sustained by family members, neighbors, and co-villagers. This traditional behavior
was risk-aversive; even if there were challenges from outside, local communities were able to
absorb them (Scott 1976). To participate in various forms of high risk collective action
associated with a revolution or a civil war, individuals and groups had to be (at the very least)
disembedded out of their traditional settings and freed from the primary particularistic loyalties.
Needless to say, there had to be serious social dislocations that would make such transformation
possible.
7
A mass mobilization war is an event, which creates such social dislocations on an
extraordinary scale. The outbreak of war changes lives of millions of people in a most drastic
and immediate way. Draft removes millions of men from their local environments and mundane
routines. Authorities have to accommodate, supply, train, and arm millions of recruits assembled
in large imperatively coordinated organizations. Service in the army relieves individuals of their
former particularistic obligations. These obligations are replaced by a duty to their country and,
at the level of their daily experience, subordination to their commanders and military discipline.
The fate of these servicemen becomes dependent on decisions made by supreme military
authorities. War became a crash course in national politics.
Of course, service in army by itself (particularly during war) does not provide a variety of
choices for the rank-and-file personnel. Army is a hierarchically structured institution where
human existence is wholly regimented and supervised. However, under certain conditions,
subordination and discipline may erode. If the armies experience series of crushing defeats,
troops suffer heavy losses, conditions in the rear deteriorate, then legitimacy of state authorities
deflates. If war goes on for years, losses multiply, and there is no end in sight, soldiers at the
front and civilians in the rear turn against authorities. Protest against dire social conditions,
caused by war, fuels the radical collective action. If civilian protests and mutinies in the army
converge, the state authorities disintegrate. In vacuum of power there emerge new political actors
that advance their claims for legitimate state authority.
In the literature, such set of conditions is usually called state breakdown, which refers to
a situation, in which multiple actors compete for control over state institutions by extralegal
means and the outcome of such contestation is uncertain (see Collins 1999, Goldstone 1991,
Stinchcombe 1999). Conceptually, one may identify two kinds of state breakdown, depending
on its scope: a partial breakdown, which involves incapacitation of political institutions, and a
total breakdown that involves a deep crisis of all social institutions. Under conditions of total
state breakdown, the process of disintegration of authority may affect economic relations. If
repressive capacity of authorities is critically undermined and there exists extremely unequal
distribution of the most vital resources, a process of coercive expropriation may be initiated. If
there is no legitimate authority, laws and orders may no longer be enforced. Masses of the poor
seize assets belonging to the propertied classes: land, industrial facilities, financial assets,
8
dwellings, etc. No doubt, propertied classes would resist coercive expropriation of their
possessions. If such confrontation develops into a full-scale conflict of large military formations,
state breakdown turns into a civil war.
A CIVIL WAR IN A WAR-CENTERED FRAMEWORK
In a most general sense, civil war refers to an “armed combat within the boundaries of a
recognized sovereign entity between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of the
hostilities” (Kalyvas 2008: 17). Civil wars in such interpretation encompass a variety of conflicts
(revolutions, anti-colonial wars, ethnic conflicts, etc). This study examines the revolutionary
civil wars that involve dramatic change in economic and class relations associated with
establishing a collectivist form of social organization. Whereas some of these conflicts ended
with the victory of revolutionary movements, most of them resulted in restoration of the existing
political regimes.
What are the conditions under which collectivist forces win a revolutionary civil war? If
modern war is said to be a war of resources, civil war, waged in the context of modern (or
modernizing) society, is war of resources as well. The outcome of such conflict would depend on
amount of human and material resources available to political contenders involved (soldiers,
weapons, munitions, supplies, and provision). It is rational to assume that mobilization capacities
of political actors depend on environmental parameters of a conflict. Specifically, the amount of
resources available to political actors may vary depending on whether an armed conflict takes
place in the large cities or spreads from the cities to the countryside and involves large-scale
participation of rural population.
Why is this distinction important? Normally, material resources and organizational
capacities available to urban-based propertied classes are greater than resources and capacities
available to revolutionaries. Therefore, if an uprising is limited to few urban centers,
revolutionary forces are likely to be defeated. The failure of radicals in the German Revolution in
1919 showed inherent structural weakness of an urban-based proletarian revolution. In fact, most
such uprisings were suppressed before they turned into an all-out civil war (e.g., the Paris
Commune of 1871). If, however, civil unrest erupts in a predominantly agrarian country, some
segments of peasant population may become allies of urban-based revolutionaries and provide
them with necessary manpower and resources. Historical sociologists argued that such support
9
materializes if a revolutionary political party and peasants establish an effective exchange
relationship in which a political organization provides peasants with material benefits and
political patronage, whereas peasants provide a revolutionary organization with recruits and
logistical support (Migdal 1974, Skocpol 1982, Wickham-Crowley 1991).
What are the benefits that urban-based revolutionaries may offer peasants? In most
agrarian economies, land is a primary economic asset of a peasant household. If land distribution
in a particular area ensures peasants‟ livelihood and is generally perceived as more or less fair,
peasants are likely to be satisfied with the status quo and indifferent to any subversive claims.
For example, an agrarian economy dominated by independent peasant households, whose farms
are comparable in size, normally tends to reproduce peasant conservatism and work against
peasant mobilization on behalf of any radical cause. If, however, distribution of land is perceived
by most cultivators as grossly inequitable, such pattern of land tenure would fuel discontent and
render peasants more attentive to the demands for land redistribution. A rural economy, in which
large estates and farms coexist with small holdings of marginalized peasants, tenants, and
agricultural laborers, is likely to generate rural conflict and make cultivators available for
political mobilization, once it begins. Therefore, a dominant pattern of land tenure and economic
conditions in the countryside may seriously affect peasants‟ collective action in the time of the
revolutionary turmoil.
To sum up, several nested causal conditions should exist for a success of the
revolutionary movement. Peasants‟ support of urban-based revolutionaries would not transpire in
absence of a serious agrarian problem. Rural discontent, even if it does exist, would not turn into
peasants‟ political mobilization, unless state authority system experiences a systemic breakdown.
Only major social and economic dislocations, such as dislocations associated with experience of
total war, may produce such systemic breakdown. Therefore, there should be two critical
conditions for peasants‟ support of the urban revolution: total breakdown of state authority
caused by war and existence of major unresolved agrarian problem in the countryside.
In the rest of the article I will analyze four episodes of the revolutionary civil wars of the
twentieth century: the Russian civil war (1917-1921), the Finnish civil war of 1918, the Spanish
civil war of 1936-1939, and the civil war in China (1946-1949). All four conflicts took place
during the same historical period, the first half of the twentieth century, when the general
10
parameters of international relations and mass-mobilization warfare were fundamentally the
same. Many social structures and institution of these agrarian societies were similar. Why were
the revolutionary forces able to win civil war in Russia and, three decades later, in China, and
why revolutionaries in Finland and Spain suffered defeat?
FORGING ALLIANCE WITH PEASANT RADICALISM: RUSSIA
Before the revolution of 1917, Russia was an overwhelmingly rural country in which peasants
made about eighty percent of the population. Modern institutions made little impact on realities
of a rural world culturally separated from the urban society and governed by its own customs and
traditions. In most of the European Russia, rural relations were strongly encumbered by
historical legacy of serfdom. The islands of nobility estates coexisted with a sea of peasant
smallholdings managed through traditional communal arrangements. Before the Emancipation
Act of 1861, the landlord customarily divided arable land in two parts, one of which the serf
household cultivated for him, the other for itself. After the Emancipation settlement, the landlord
retained his half of the land whereas peasants had to pay redemption payments for the land they
obtained. Frequently, the land that landlord retained and now exploited with help of tenants or
wage laborers (batraki) remained wedged among the communal holdings (Pipes 1990: 101).
Pastures and woodland were also kept by the landlord. Most squires were absentee landlords
who did not reside in their own estates. In the early twentieth century, with the rise of grain
prices and expansion of commercial cultivating, landlords raised rents paid for use of their land
or reappropriated it for commercial exploitation. At the same time, low-productivity subsistenceoriented farming on small plots of land provided too little surplus to allow peasants to rise above
the level of abject poverty. Famine and epidemics were frequent visitors in the Russian villages.
Peasants suffered from scarcity of land, which was further exacerbated by growth of rural
population and division of large family households into smaller units. Needless to say, land of
gentry and well-to-do peasants (kulaks) represented the most desired possessions for less
prosperous cultivators.
Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to argue that Russia before war approached an
agrarian revolution. The Czarist regime, according to Yaney (1981: 401), “did not run steadily
downhill from one unavoidable catastrophe to another, nor did revolutionary masses steadily
gather themselves to rise against their masters.” In the years before the war, Russian agriculture
11
experienced positive effects of market-oriented cultivation. From 1891 to 1915, rye yields
increased by 24 percent and wheat yields increased by 10 percent. In 1911 Russia exported a
record of 13.3 million tons of cereals. In a decade before the war, gentry landholding decreased
by 12.6 percent (Pipes 176). By 1914 nobility owned only about 22 percent of cultivated land.
Most of the positive developments were due to a series of reforms launched between
1906 and 1909 by Prime Minister Stolypin who wished to improve peasants‟ conditions. In 1906,
peasants were given civil liberties, which placed them at the same status as members of other
estates. Restrictions on peasants‟ movement were removed. Authorities intended to alleviate
shortage of land by allowing peasants to consolidate scattered strips of land they owned within a
commune and form of a larger farmsted outside it. The authorities sold a large amount of state
land and crown land and encouraged peasants‟ resettlements to Siberia and Middle Asia (about 3
million peasants migrated to these regions). The Peasant Land Bank was created to provide
peasants loans to acquire land. In this way Stolypin hoped to create a numerous class of
independent rural freeholders supportive of the existing regime. Although these reforms
encountered strong resistance and were scaled down after Stolypin‟s assassination in 1911, land
settlements continued until the outbreak of war. “In the early summer of 1914 the Stolypin Land
Reform was flourishing. Land settlement commissions were working far more efficiently than in
their early years, and they were responding to peasant needs with a much finer sensitivity”
(Yaney 399).
The outbreak of war in summer of 1914 set in motion transformations that have changed
Russia forever. Russia‟s economy and the administrative system were ill-prepared to a full-scale
military conflict with more advanced European nations such as Germany and Austria-Hungary.
For two and a half years Russia‟s authorities managed to cope with numerous problems and
dislocations caused by war. In winter 1916-17 the large cities confronted a social crisis of
unprecedented proportions. Working class population in Petrograd, supported by the military
garrison, turned against the authorities and overthrew the government. In few weeks the whole
bureaucratic system of the Russian empire fell in pieces. The central and local administration, the
old imperial army, the police, and the courts were abolished wholesale. Several national
provinces in the periphery of the empire declared independence. In the capital and major cities,
the power came in the hands of the Provisional Government (which de facto shared it with the
12
Soviets of Workers and Soldiers Deputies). In most rural areas power was delegated to the
district committees entrusted with task of managing social relations in the countryside.
The Provisional Government proved unable to stop the war and resolve major social
problems. The conditions in the cities and the countryside continued to deteriorate. Petrograd
became a hostage of thousands of radical workers and soldiers who wanted the end of war. Since
the Provisional Government was determined to stay in war, the radicalized urban masses became
determined to overthrow the government. By championing the slogan of immediate peace and
radical social reform, the Bolsheviks, a tiny radical organization unknown to the most Russians
few months before, seized power. In the late October of 1917 a coalitional government (“The
Council of the People‟s Commissars”) headed by V.I. Lenin and composed of the Bolsheviks
and the left Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs) was installed in Petrograd. Very few people in
Russia believed that this authority would stay in power for more than few weeks.
For the Bolsheviks, who represented first and foremost interests of the industrial working
class, peasants and their problems were of secondary importance. In the socialist society, which
was the Bolsheviks‟ strategic goal, rural smallholders would give place to the large-scale
collectivized agriculture. Although in 1917 the Bolsheviks advocated transfer of land to
peasants, they saw it as merely a provisional step on the way towards socialism. However, in the
context of the major political conflict the Bolsheviks could not ignore aspirations of the
overwhelming majority of the Russian people. One of the first documents adopted by the new
government was the Decree on Land, which announced abolition of private property on land
(meaning squires‟ estates). It stipulated that all land was placed at the disposition of the district
land committees and would be distributed equally among peasants. The decree did not make
clear who ultimately owned the land, the state, the local communities, or peasant households,
thus leaving a legal rationale for interpreting it in a way that the state owned the land. But in the
fall 1917 this detail did not really matter. According to a popular consensus, the new government
gave all land to peasants and that was exactly what peasants wanted from the government. In
winter 1917-18 most of the gentry land was appropriated and redistributed among peasants. This
strategic move made by the Bolsheviks provided a basis for an alliance between the new
government and the peasants that had to play a major role in the course of the imminent civil
war.
13
The first act of the Russian civil war opened with the mutiny of the Czechoslovak corps
on the Trans-Siberian railroad in May of 1918. 1 By banishing the Bolshevik authorities from the
major cities on Volga and along the Trans-Siberian railroad, the Czechoslovaks created political
vacuum soon to be filled by the anti-Bolshevik socialist opposition. On June 8, 1918, in Samara,
the former socialist deputies of the Russian parliament, which was dissolved by the Bolsheviks
in January 1918, formed a new authority, the Committee of the Members of the Constituent
Assembly, or the Komuch.
This government presented itself as the legitimate successor of the Russian parliament.
However, outside the circles of provincial intelligentsia, students, and the cadets, the social
constituency of this government remained rather small. Neither urban workers, nor bourgeoisie
trusted this middle-of-the-road authority. Most remarkably, despite the fact that the SocialistRevolutionaries, who made the majority of the Komuch, were a peasant party and the majority of
local people were peasants, the Komuch failed to mobilize rural population. The Volga peasants
saw no reason to fight the Bolsheviks. The revolution gave them land and freedom and that was
all that peasants really wanted. In autumn 1918, the Kumuch troops were defeated by the
Bolshevik troops while the Komuch politicians were driven behind the Urals, to Siberia
(Mawdsley 1999).
The year of 1919 became the critical year of the Civil War. The Bolsheviks had to fight
three White armies in succession: the forces of Admiral Kolchak that advanced from Siberia and
Urals in spring, the army of General Denikin moving towards Moscow from Southern Russia in
summer and autumn, and the General Yudenich‟s troops threatening Petrograd in the fall. In
more than one moment in 1919 the fate of the Bolshevik regime hung in balance. These critical
circumstances induced the government to change its strategy with regard to peasants.
During 1918 the Bolsheviks were still committed to the old Marxist dogma that the
peasantry as a whole was a reactionary force. In their recruitment campaigns in the second half
of the year they relied on the urban-working class and avoided mobilization of rural population.
1
The Czechoslovak troops were formed in Russia from the Austrian prisoners-of-war to fight German armies. In
1918, they did not have any political agenda, except for leaving the Bolshevik Russia as soon as possible. Their
conflict with the Bolshevik authorities started with an accident at the railroad station (a skirmish of the
Czechoslovak soldiers with Hungarian prisoners-of-war). Trotsky‟s harsh ultimatum demanding disarmament of the
Czechoslovaks provoked their rebellion.
14
During winter of 1918-19 they begin to reconsider their position. Lenin realized that without
support of the largest part of peasantry, the Bolsheviks would not be able to stay in power. The
new policy of alliance with the “middle peasantry”, confirmed at the VIII congress of the party
in March of 1919, opened opportunity for massive recruitment of peasants to the Red Army. The
White offensives in spring and summer accelerated this process. The party began broad
campaign for drafting peasants. During 1919 the Red Army grew from 800,000 to nearly 3
million (Von Hagen 79).
The vast pool of manpower that the Bolsheviks had access to became the key factor of
their victory in the decisive battles of 1919. Pipes (1994: 11) argued, “The Communists had
within their borders all the manpower they needed: when in the critical engagements of 1919
they suffered heavy losses from casualties and desertions, they had only to call up more peasants,
put them in uniforms, hand them rifles, and ship them to the front. By contrast Denikin and
Kolchak, to increase their forces, had to conquer more and more territory, and, in the process,
overextend themselves. In the fall of 1919, when the decisive battles of the Civil War took place,
the Red Army had nearly 3 million men under arms: the combined effectiveness of the White
armies never exceeded 250,000.”
Did the Bolsheviks gain a manpower advantage over their enemy due to a more effective
use of organized coercion, as Skocpol (1979) and Oberschall and Seidman (2005) claim? It is
difficult to deny the fact that the Bolshevik regime did in fact use massive coercion to mobilize
rural population and necessary resources. There are, however, two important considerations that
do not allow accepting this thesis without serious qualifications. First, the Bolsheviks used
coercion but so did the Whites. Both sides practiced forced recruitment of rural population and
ruthless punishments of deserters including destroying villages and shooting evaders as a regular
practice (see Figes 1996). Second, despite such draconian measures neither side was particularly
effective in recruitment campaigns. The Reds did not do any better than the Whites. Out of 3
million soldiers recruited in 1919, more than 1,760,000 deserted (Pipes 1994: 60).
However, in the time when the Bolshevik regime was in critical danger, peasant
mobilization has made all difference. When Kolchak‟s troops began an offensive against the
Bolsheviks in the early 1919 in the East, peasants began joining the Red Army. From 800,000
soldiers in January, the Red Army doubled in size by the end of April, the height of the
15
Kolchak‟s offensive in the east. Most of the new recruits came from the Volga region, the Red
frontier against Kolchak, where the peasants had most to fear from a White victory. The same
change happened few months later, during Denikin‟s advance to Moscow from the South in
summer 1919. “The threat of a White victory made the peasants fear for the loss of their new
land - a fear that the Reds encouraged through their propaganda - and they preferred to send their
sons back to the army to defend this land. However much the peasants might have disliked the
Bolshevik regime, with its violent requisitioning and bossy commissars, they would continue to
defend it as long – and only as long – as it stood between Whites and their own revolution on the
land” (Figes 1996: 596-597, 668-669).
Thus, historical evidence shows that in the critical moments in the civil war Russian
peasants preferred to go along with the new authorities. The Bolsheviks have legitimized their
acquisition of land. For the first time in Russian history peasants were left to their own devices
and began to live according to their own traditional norms. The Whites were associated with a
return of the old order and the former landlords. The commissars did not miss stressing this point
to reluctant peasants. This rational appeal to common sense seemed to work well.
A political alliance between urban-based revolutionaries and peasants was not, however,
unconditional; peasants went along with the Bolsheviks‟ requisitions as long as there was a threat
of the restoration of the old regime. They supported the Reds only as the least of two evils. Once
the civil war ended, in many regions peasants revolted against Lenin‟s policies. In spring of 1921
Lenin had to make concessions and to launch a new economic policy which put the end of
arbitrary requisitions (replacing them with a uniform tax in kind) and restored market relations in
the countryside. But by this time the new regime consolidated its power and an immediate
military threat of a restoration ceased to exist.
STABILIZING EFFECT OF PEASANT TRADITIONALISM: FINLAND
Until the end of 1917, Finland was the province of the Russian Empire with a limited national
autonomy. 2 As such, it was embroiled in the same revolutionary turmoil as the whole country.
During the summer and autumn of 1917, the Finnish workers and agrarian laborers, led by the
2
In summer 1917 the Finnish parliament voted for independence and the Bolsheviks recognized Finnish
independence in early January of 1918.
16
social-democratic party, have been involved in serious of strikes, demanding higher pay and
better working conditions. The Red Guards, organized on the Russian model, emerged all over
country and, supported by the pro-Bolshevik Russian troops quartered in Finland, attempted to
seize control over some cities and towns. Many observers believed that sooner or later Finland
would follow Russia‟s lead. However, in contrast to Russia, the Finnish nationalist government
managed to prevent the revolutionary takeover under the Bolshevist scenario.
The nationalist government, which expressed interests of the propertied classes, was
determined to preserve social order. In absence of the imperial Russian police, which was
entrusted with this function before the revolution, it was a difficult task. The radicalized urban
proletariat harassed employers and the middle-class public. Beginning September 1917, the progovernment militia, the Civil Guards (or Home Guards), began to emerge. These corps have
been organized to defend middle class population and its property against “hooligans” and
“anarchists”, meaning basically the Red Guards. In autumn of 1917, the Civil Guards were
involved in collecting weapons and undergoing basic military training. As a result of this
military buildup, the Finnish society became increasingly polarized into two power blocs: the
social democrats with the Red Guards, on the one side, and a conservative government,
supported by the Civil Guards, on the other side.
In the context of the government‟s consolidation of power, the January 1918 rebellion of
the Red Guards was to a large extent a defensive revolution (Alapuro 1988). Until the end of
January Civil Guards functioned as self-governed citizens‟ militia. On January 25 the Civil
Guards were officially declared the troops of the government. On the night of January 28, the
Red Guards took control of Helsinki, the capital of the country. Government offices, telegraph,
telephone, railway stations, banks and other strategic points were occupied. The commander of
the Red Guards Haapalainen issued a manifesto proclaiming the Socialist Workers Republic of
Finland. The new revolutionary government, the People‟s Deputation, was formed. Several
members of the bourgeois government evacuated to the western town Vaasa and later formed a
provisional government in exile. The non-socialist politicians went underground. Government
employees, transportation workers, and schoolteachers went on strike. Factories and shops were
closed down (Alapuro 1988: 172-173; Upton 1980: 269, 274; Smith 1955: 500; Smith 1958: 3637).
17
Such denouement was foreseen by the bourgeois politicians. Ten days before the Reds
seized the capital, General Mannerheim, the former officer of the Czarist army, commissioned by
the government to form the regular army out of the militia corps, left Helsinki to the western
region of Pohjanmaa. Mannerheim understood that presence of 35,000 Russian troops in Finland,
even though the Bolshevik government ordered them not to intervene, was a major factor
working for the Red Guards. Russians provided radicals with weapons and in many cases
directly assisted in taking over authority. On the night of November 28, at the time when the Red
Guards seized strategic buildings in Helsinki, Mannerheim began capturing and disarming
Russian garrisons in Pohjanmaa. Taken by surprise, Russian soldiers were soon overpowered by
the Civil Guards.
Despite success of this operation, at the first stage of active military action (January 28 March 15), the Red forces troops managed to keep the initiative. Mannerheim‟s army was small
and short of munitions. Presence of well-trained Russian troops was still a major factor. Red
troops launched series of offensives. The most important offensive was undertaken north of
Tampere, an industrial center of Finland, in early March. The revolutionary forces, supported by
the Russian troops pushed Mannerheim‟s corps to the north. Their advance was, however, slow
due to winter conditions. Eventually, Mannerheim‟s troops, assisted by local Finns who knew
these places well, were able to stop the advance of the Reds.
At the second stage (March 15 – May 15), Mannerheim‟s troops overtook the strategic
initiative. The changing political situation in the Central Europe helped the Mannerheim‟s forces.
According to conditions of the Brest-Litovsk Peace, signed by Germany and the Soviet Russia in
the early March, the Russians had to withdraw from Finland. The largest part of troops promptly
evacuated leaving only a thousand volunteers behind. In the mid March, the Whites began twopronged offensive north of Tampere. On April 5, City Hall, garrisoned by Red Guards and
Russians, was surrounded. Only a small group of Reds was able to escape the town. The battle
for Tampere, the Manchester of Finland, was the critical turning point in the whole war. The
Reds suffered major defeat from which they would never be able to recover (Upton 1980: 468).
At the time when Mannerheim forces were storming Tampere, the German Baltic
Division, departed from Danzig and reached the Finnish port of Hanko. To help the bourgeois
Finnish government in Vaasa, the German commander Ludendorff dispatched an expeditionary
18
military force of 6,000 strong. In early April, the Germans disembarked and began their advance
towards Helsinki. On April 6, realizing that resistance was futile, the Red Government decided to
evacuate from Helsinki to the red stronghold Viipuri in the east. The remaining Red Guards in
the city were left without military command or any instructions (Smith 1955: 75). Chaos and
anarchy set in the capital. Germans met only scattered resistance as their advanced troops entered
Helsinki on April 13. In early May, all Finland was cleared from the Red Guards.
Some observers claim that the German intervention has played a decisive role for the
ultimate success of the Whites. They doubt if Finns themselves would liberate their country. It is
difficult to accept this claim. It should be kept in mind that by the time of German landing in the
early April Mannerheim‟s troops reached a major success in the battle for Tampere. Had the
Germans not intervened, Finland would be freed from the Red domination anyway (Upton 1980:
475). No doubt, the process of liberation would take longer time and bring about greater losses of
human life but the Whites most like would win the war (Smith 1955: 73).
Why did the revolutionary government in Finland suffer defeat? It can be argued that the
Mannerheim‟s army was more efficient and better organized than the Red militias. The core of
the army, the corps of Jägers, underwent intensive training in Germany. The White army was
commanded by professional officers. However, the same things could be said about the Russian
white army in the Russian Civil War. The Russian White Army was more professional, better
trained, and better supplied than the Red Army but the latter defeated the former. One of the key
factors of the Red Army‟s success, as I argued above, was the fact that it was much larger and
could rely on a greater manpower supply. Why would not the Red Finns win by mobilizing
masses, including peasants, that is, following a strategy similar to the Bolsheviks‟ policy in
Russia?
In contrast to the Bolsheviks‟ army, the Finnish Red Guards till the very end remained an
exclusively urban-based militia operating in a predominantly agrarian country. The revolutionary
government evidently failed to appeal to rural population. In fact, as I show below, the literature
indicates that it was the White Army which succeeded in mobilizing peasants. The force,
commanded by Mannerheim, was called officially the Finland‟s Peasant Army (Suomen
talonpoikaisarmeija) (Hodgson 1967: 71).
19
To explain why most peasants were either indifferent or hostile to the revolution we need
to look closely at class structure of Finland‟s rural population. Before Finland was annexed by
the Russian empire in 1809, it was a part of the Swedish state. It is not surprising, therefore, that
rural class relations in Finland more resembled agrarian relations in the rest of Scandinavia, than
in the mainland Russia with its feudal, serf-based economy. A nobility class in Finland was very
small and almost entirely incorporated in bureaucratic institutions of the state. In the early
nineteenth century nobles and other gentlemen owned only one-fifth of all farms in the Finnishspeaking regions of Sweden. As Finnish agriculture became increasingly commercialized, many
gentry sold their land to rich peasants whereas differences between manors and wealthy peasant
farms progressively disappeared. In consequence, there was no acute social antagonism between
the gentry and the peasantry. In contrast to Russia, where peasant communes made the world of
themselves, most Finnish peasants were culturally integrated in the middle-class values through
churches, elementary schools, and charity organizations.
Risto Alapuro (1988: 47) identified three major groups of the Finnish agrarian
population: agricultural laborers, crofters, and freeholders. The first group was composed of
landless agricultural laborers who made up to 48 percent of all rural households by the early
twentieth century. Growth of rural commercial economy and social differentiation among
cultivators caused a marked increase in number of rural workers. No doubt, laborers had a great
number of grievances regarding wages and other employment conditions. Presumably, this large
category of landless population was most amenable for radical political mobilization. However,
in the early twentieth century they did not experience serious economic distress. The rural
commercial economy expanded and the wages increased. Before war, living standards of the
rural laborers improved substantially (Alapuro 1988).
The crofters who made about 17 percent of rural households were small leaseholders who
paid rent to landowners by working a certain number of days for the owner or making payments
in cash or in kind. Although disputes between crofters and the landlords over leases were
common, in general crofters were far from being a revolutionary force. According to Kirby
(1986: 159), “The leaseholders were workers on the landlord‟s estate by virtue of their rent
obligations; but they were also farmers, and perhaps the employers of labour themselves. The
average annual eight-hour day demanded by farm-workers in the strikes of 1917 was of little use
20
to a man obliged to perform labour service only at certain times over the year.” Many tenants
hoped to rise to the status on landowners. In winter-spring of1918, most crofters remained
politically passive.
Finally, independent peasant landowners, who made about 35 percent of all households,
represented the most conservative part of rural population. In the prewar period, landowners
benefited from rapid commercialization of agriculture. They land possessions expanded. Many
freeholders hired laborers for harvest seasons. Many leased their land to tenants. Evidently they
were against excessive labor demands advocated by the urban radicals. When the events of
January 1918 erupted, these freeholders met the revolution with overt hostility and formed the
backbone of the Mannerheim‟s troops (Alapuro 1988: 183).
One may wonder if rural mobilization worked differently, had the Finnish society been
fully involved in war effort. Finnish autonomy protected Finland from full participation in the
First World War. The country was not occupied or directly threatened by enemy troops. Draft
has not been announced in Finland. The transportation system and food supply did not suffer
compete disorganization. The system of authority did not disintegrate. A problem of radicalized
and brutalized masses or armed ex-soldiers and sailors ravaging the cities was not as acute in
Finland as it was in the mainland Russia. No radical elements returned to villages to foment
unrest and attack landlord estates. Most rural laborers and tenants remained within the realm of
control by the authorities and by the church. The role of church in protecting social stability was
particularly noteworthy. As Kirby (1986: 143-144) observed, “The rural proletariat in Finland
was largely literate and almost entirely Lutheran. The church provided an important link between
the state authorities and the population, with the clergy acting as registrars of births, marriages,
and deaths, providing evidence on the circumstances of their parishioners for the courts and other
institutions, and reading decrees and ordinances from the pulpit.” In short, unlike Russian
countryside, the Finnish rural society did not experience breakdown of traditional social
institutions, which remaining largely unaffected, prevented peasants‟ political mobilization on
behalf of the radical causes.
COUNTERREVOUTION WINS, PEASANT RADICALISM NOTWITHSTANDING: SPAIN
21
The Spanish revolution and civil war (1936-1939) was a dramatic historical collision of forces of
a revolutionary change and a traditionalist social order. The victory of the Popular Front in
parliamentary elections in February of 1936 released social tensions that the moderate republican
government was not able to control. Workers and peasant began expropriation and
collectivization of possessions of the propertied classes. At certain point some observers believed
that the political process in Spain unfolded along the same scenario as the Russian revolution.
The chief Comintern representative in Spain, Arthur Stepanov, commented, “There is no doubt
that Spain is undergoing the same historical process begun in Russia in February 1917. The Party
must learn to apply the tactic of the Bolsheviks; a brief transitory phase and then the soviets!”
(cited in Payne 1970: 193). However, the communist hopes did not come true. In the course of
almost three years of civil war, the Popular Front was defeated by Franco‟s counterrevolutionary
forces. The social achievements of the Republican era have been dismantled. The right-wing
authoritarian dictatorship, which was to last until the mid 1970s, was installed.
What was the main cause of the Popular Front defeat? Did the revolution fail due to a
lack of support provided to the radical forces from the countryside, like it happened in Finland?
Were the Spanish peasants conservative, like their counterparts in Scandinavia? In this section, I
will argue that rural social and political conditions were not the main cause of the Popular Front
defeat. The key difference of Spain in 1936 from the revolutionary Russia in 1917 was that in
Spain the class conflict erupted in absence of a major external war with its major social
dislocations. As a consequence, a ruling class with its institutions of political domination has not
been weakened by war, whereas the revolutionary forces have not been strengthened by war.
Under such conditions, a ruling class was able to mobilize an effective military force and
suppress revolutionary forces.
Let‟s begin, however, with a brief review of agrarian institutions. In some ways, the
structure of rural economy in Spain resembled the composition of the Russia‟s rural economy,
although in other respects it was different. Like Russia, Spain was a predominantly agrarian
country, which did not experience a bourgeois revolution. The positions of nobility and
bureaucracy remained strong. There existed a number of large noble estates (latifundias) whose
owners were absentee landlords. Most rural areas of the country have not been affected by
markets relations. The bourgeois class possessed low commercial interest in agriculture. On the
22
other hand, Spain, unlike Russia, was not burdened by the century-old legacy of serfdom or a
tradition of communal agriculture. In fact, Spanish agriculture was dominated by two main
patterns of land tenure. In the north and the center of the country peasants‟ land holdings and
tenants‟ allotments dominated the countryside. Peasant land holdings were typically small; the
overwhelming majority of farms possessed less than an acre. In the south, large commercial
estates that employed agricultural laborers (braceros) were common. A majority of the Southern
farm workers were poor and represented the most volatile segment of the Spanish rural society.
In 1930s, the unemployment rate among farm workers soared to 40 percent. Thousands of
braceros were involved in strikes, the number of strikes increased steadily year after year. When
the Republic was declared in 1931, conditions in the southern countryside were extremely
agitated and there was fear of an outright peasant revolt (Payne 1970: 96, 134).
To prevent a social explosion, the new republican authorities had to act quickly. In spring
and summer of 1931, the government issued several decrees aimed at improving conditions of
farm workers and tenants. One of these decrees required landowners to hire residents of the
municipality and prohibiting employment of workers from other areas. Another decree
prohibited eviction of tenants except for non-payment of rent or failure to cultivate land. One
more decree established arbitration committees designed to enforce labor laws and promote
collective bargaining. Finally, an eight-hour working day was legally extended to agriculture
(Esenwein and Shubert 1995: 90). In September of 1932, the Agrarian Reform Law, the
cornerstone of the republican agrarian policy, was promulgated. The goal of this law was
redistribution of land and resettlement of peasants. The bill declared confiscation of land of
hereditary aristocracy, permanently leased land, badly cultivated land, and land in areas of
irrigation, which had not been irrigated. For many peasants, however, these measures brought
about little change. The law was approved by the parliament but its implementation was slow
due to the budgetary constraints. About 90 percent of expropriated land required compensation
while the government lacked funds to pay compensations. The authorities expected to resettle
60,000 peasant families per year. In 1933, however, only 4,399 families were resettled
(Esenwein and Shubert 1995: 93). Under such conditions, “socialist measures remained little
more than hopes on paper. There was virtually no machinery with which to enforce the new
decrees in the isolated villages of the south. The social power consequent on being the exclusive
providers of work remained with the owners” (Preston 2006: 57).
23
The victory of the Popular Front in February 1936 inaugurated a new period in rural
relations. The poor cultivators took land reform in their own hands. Peasants could not wait any
longer. From here and there came reports about peasants‟ expropriations of squires‟ estates and
farms owned by bourgeoisie. On March 17, for example, two thousand peasants seized an estate
of Count Romanones in Toledo province. On March 25, about 60,000 peasants in province of
Badajos occupied the land and began to cultivate it (Bolloten 1991: 6). The official land reform
accelerated dramatically. From March to July 1936 the government settled 110,921 peasants on
572,055 hectares of land. “There was no more violence than before, but the rural south was
becoming a world turned upside down” (Esenwein and Shubert 1995: 98).
After Franco‟s mutiny in July, the class conflict turned into a full-scale armed combat. In
the city and the countryside proletarians confiscated the property of “fascists” and bourgeois.
Vincente Uribe, the Communist minister of agriculture, gave peasants the right to farm land
confiscated from those who supported the uprising (Seidman 2003: 69). More than 300,000
thousand Spanish peasants acquired land in this period. The scope of expropriations was great.
According to Payne (1970: 240), by mid-1938 the total confiscations amounted to more than
one-third of the arable land in the provinces affected. For comparison, during the Russian civil
war of 1917-21only 25 percent of the arable land in Russia changed hands. Spanish peasants
joined the Communist party which soon became the largest party on the left. By June 1937,
agricultural workers and peasant proprietors made about 56 percent of all party members
(calculated from Payne 1970: 280). The most effective corps in the Republic, the Communistdominated Fifth Regiment, was composed of approximately 50 percent peasants (Seidman 2003:
69).
All this indicates that a situation with peasants in Spain was quite different from one in
Finland. In Spain, distribution of land represented a major problem. Farm workers, tenants, and
poor peasants all desired land. There existed a great deal of social radicalism in the countryside.
The Republican government was willing provided land to peasants. Peasants did support social
reform in the countryside. To understand social causes of Popular Front‟s failure, one needs to
look at some other conditions.
In 1917 Russia, breakdown of the state involved first and foremost disintegration of the
old army. In Finland, a national army did not really exist at the outbreak of hostilities. In either
24
case, a revolutionary contender was able to seize state authority operating essentially in vacuum
of power. A composition of class forces that could be potentially mobilized to fight for a
revolution (or fight against it) became a critical factor under such conditions. The Spanish
scenario was different. In the context of political turmoil in summer of 1936, republican political
institutions were paralyzed. They were barely able to unite the nation, which dominated by trade
unions and left political parties and increasingly fragmented into autonomous provincial entities.
But the Spanish army (or, at least, its anti-republican core) was left intact. As a consequence, in
Spain revolutionary forces had to fight a fully mobilized, well-trained, and disciplined army, a
primary instrument of political domination of the ruling class.
Of course, the outcome of the struggle might have been different had the revolutionaries
able to create an effective and well-coordinated army themselves. For about year in war the
Republican forces outnumbered the Franco troops. They did not experience lack of weapons
(Thomas 2001: 316). Yet the key problem was that the Popular Front government was very slow
and ineffective in meeting the challenge of Franco‟s offensive. The liberal government of Jose
Giral possessed little power. Instead, power was split into fragments and scattered among the
numerous revolutionary committees (Bolloten 1991: 53). All military effort of the Republic in
early period of the civil war was based on the revolutionary militia. Most militia units, however,
were badly organized, untrained, often completely undisciplined. According to Beevor (2006:
119), “In street fighting, caught up in collective bravery, they were courageous to a foolhardy
degree. But in the open the shelling and bombing were usually too much for them, since they
refused to dig trenches.” In October of 1936 the government began transforming militia into a
regular, centrally-controlled army. The Communist Fifth Regiment became the core of the new
troops. The corps of foreign volunteers known as the International Brigades arrived to defend the
republic. But the critical time was lost. By November of 1936, the Nationalist forces reached
western and southern outskirts of Madrid and began preparing their first assault on the national
capital.
In the next year the balance of forces began to swing to the side of the Nationalists.
Under Franco‟s command, the Nationalist army methodically expanded territory under its
control. The seizure of the industrially developed provinces of the north, such as Basque and
Asturias, strengthened a resource base of the Nationalists. By July 1937 the insurgents controlled
25
about 60 percent of Spanish territory and population and about two thirds or more of agricultural
resources (wheat, potatoes, cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and fish) (Seidman (2003: 147). Being able
to have access to expanded sources of manpower, Franco initiated several conscription
campaigns. By the end of 1937, the Nationalist troops began to outnumber the republican forces.
Since the insurgents were able to acquire a larger resource base and skillfully expand it,
manpower and materiel advantage translated into higher military effectiveness of troops. The
republican troops had to retreat from most areas they previously controlled. In 1938 troops and
the population in the areas controlled by the republicans began to suffer acute shortages of
provision. In the early 1939, the republican forces have been defeated.
The most important difference of the Spanish civil war from conflict in Russia was the
fact that in Spain popular revolution began in time of peace. In Russia, three years of war have
forged a large contingent of organized, trained, armed and disciplined groups of lower classes. In
1917, these groups were decisive in overthrowing the monarchy and the Provisional
Government. Radical soldiers and sailors became the primary driving force of the revolution and
later the core of the Red Army. They had skills of organization and discipline. Neither Spanish
revolutionary leaders nor proletarian masses, in contrast, passed a wartime school of military
organization and discipline. Most Popular Front leader remained entirely civilian individuals.
The popular revolutionary forces were fragmented into separate units affiliated with trade unions
and political parties (socialists, communists, anarchists, etc). They lacked unity of command and
determination. In summer of 1936 the working class militias were given guns but they did not
have organization, training, and discipline to resist the thrust of Franco‟s professional army. By
the time they acquired some of these skills, Franco‟s troops occupied most of the country.
On the other hand, Franco‟s army, unlike the Czar‟s army, did not experience a prior
defeat in war. It was not disorganized and demoralized. The right-wing military coup was
carefully prepared and skillfully executed. From the very beginning, leaders of counterrevolution
possessed the initiative. They decided where to advance and where to give battles. Franco was
invested supreme power as a head of the state and commander of the army as early as October 1,
1936. His authority and decisions were not disputed. The army, directed by professional and
experienced officer corps, had a unity of purpose and organization. Franco received a great
material support from the middle class which was able to preserve a large part of its possessions.
26
More than his ill-fated predecessors in Russia, Franco was able to benefit from a international
military and financial assistance (from Germany and Italy).
In his perceptive study of social aspect of the Spanish civil war Seidman (2003: 239240) concluded: “Unlike the Russian Whites in their civil war, who confronted an enemy with
similar political and social demands, the Spanish counterrevolutionaries could rely upon a
competent officer class that, in contrast to its Russian counterpart, had not been decimated and
destroyed by the world war. The neutrality of Spain during World War I was one of the most
astute policies even undertaken by Spain‟s governing elites and may have prevented that nation
from following the Soviet example. Furthermore, neither propertied nor clerical elites had
suffered the disruptions of the Great War. In 1936, church, state, army, and industry were largely
intact.”
MOBILIZING THE POWER OF PEASANT RADICALISM: CHINA
In contrast to Spain, the Chinese Civil War (1946-1949) began in the wake of the devastating
external war. The eight-year War of Resistance against Japan (1937-1945) had a profound effect
on Chinese economy and society. The Japanese armies occupied the most populated and
economically advanced areas of the country. Under assault of the Japanese troops, Chiang Kaishek‟s nationalist government had to evacuate to the distant southwestern corner of the country
and install his new capital in Chongqing in province of Sichuan. Its authority was deflated by
painful military defeats.
In retrospect, the Japanese invasion gave the Communists perhaps their only chance at to
survive (Esherick 1995). In the mid 1930s, the situation was quite different. For Chiang Kaishek, the Japanese, who threatened China from the northeast, represented merely a “disease of
the skin,” whereas the “communist bandits” were a “disease of the heart,” which he was
determined to eradicate. To avoid extermination, the main Communist forces left their Kiangsi
base and, under incessant attacks by KMT troops, retreated northwest to Shaanxi. Less than 10
percent of those who began this “Long March” made their way to their new base in Yenan. In
central China, according to Chen Yung-fa (1986:24), the KMT had reduced Communist forces to
“a few lingering sparks among dead ashes.”
The beginning of War of Resistance in 1937 brought about an extraordinary turnabout for
the communists. Chiang Kai-shek stopped the “bandit suppression” campaign and agreed to
27
create a United Front with the CCP. With the creation of the United Front, the CCP was given a
unique opportunity to reorganize and increase its numbers. In 1937, Communist troops in North
China were redeployed as the Eighth Army of the KMT. In 1938, the New Fourth Army was
created out of Communist forces in Central China. In the occupied areas, the Japanese destroyed
the KMT‟s bureaucratic structures and, because the occupiers themselves were not able to
penetrate the depth of the society, created a power vacuum underneath their major administrative
outposts. This provided a unique opportunity for the Communist infiltration, which Mao Zedong
exploited in full extent. By the end of the war, the CCP had become a major national force with
large, effective, and battle-hardened armies. The communist troops increased almost tenfold and
the party membership more than tenfold (Van Slyke 1991: 188-189). In the final phase of the
war against Japan the Soviet Union joined the conflict and occupied Manchuria in August of
1945. Protected by the Red Army, the Communist troops poured into Manchuria and took over
administration of major cities and towns.
The Communists would not have such success had the majority of the Chinese peasants
been satisfied with their social conditions. Before the war, the distribution of land in the most
rural China was unequal. The class of landed nobility owned about a third of all land. The rest of
the land belonged to peasant households. In Northern China individual small holders were more
common, whereas in the South a majority of peasants were tenants. Abundance of rural labor
meant that landlords experienced no need to rationalize production. Instead they preferred to
supplement rent payments received from tenants by offering usurious loans and sharing tax
collection with state officials. In absence of egalitarian communal institutions, there existed a
considerable economic differentiation among the Chinese peasantry. In the normal time most
families managed to make ends meet but any natural disaster or a social disorder placed
thousands of families on the brink of starvation. Since land remained the primary source of
subsistence, its distribution was the issue of life and death in the countryside. Landlords and rich
peasants were object of much resentment but their grip over rural communities, supported by the
bureaucratic authorities of the state, was quite strong. Regional, clientalistic, and kinship ties and
identities prevented forging bonds of solidarity among peasants.
The war provided a unique opportunity for communist penetration in the countryside. In
the areas they infiltrated, the communists appealed, first and foremost, to economic interests of
peasants. One of the most effective instruments of bringing cultivators on their side, particularly
28
in the areas where tenancy was common, was policy of a rent reduction. In situation when
tenants had to pay 40 or 50 percent of their crops as a rent, such policy had a major appeal.
However, to convince peasants to demand rent reduction was not an easy thing to do. Initially,
many peasants wanted to avoid confrontation with lenders. Some tenants were afraid of
punishment, some felt personal loyalty to lenders, some were connected with them by kin ties,
and others believed that contractual tenancy was a legitimate traditional institution. Some
peasant doubted the communists‟ ability to defend them (Chen 1986: 175). Communists had to
convince at least part of the village that rent reduction was a realistic goal. In the cases where
families urgently needed money, such arguments fell on the most fertile grounds. Once a certain
number of grievances were identified, communist mass workers would convene a village
meeting. In such meetings peasants were encouraged to speak about their misfortunes and make
public accusations against landlords, their assistants (“dog legs”), and rich peasants. The targets
of accusations, who were identified beforehand and brought to the meetings, were forced to
apologize and make financial compensation. In many villages such meetings became arenas of
intense emotional confrontation and even violence. By pursuing such policy communists were
able to polarize villages and create a social base among the rural poor. The activists who
emerged out of these meetings became the backbone of the Party at the local level. In most
villages, they formed peasant committees that began taking power from the former rural elite.
Communists provided political education and training to their supporters. Working through these
local activists, the communists provided the rural population with protection, tax reduction, work
assistance, mutual aid programs, education, women‟s empowerment, and other welfare benefits.
During the United Front period (1937-1945), rural reform had a limited character. Communists
cooperated with peasants in reducing rents and taxes, alleviating debt burden, and addressing the
most obvious cases of social injustice. As far as redistribution of land was concerned, the
Communists postponed such measure. A direct attack on landlords, merchants, and well-to-do
peasants would threaten the anti-Japanese alliance with the KMT.
In the first phase of the civil war, which broke out in summer of 1946, the Nationalists
seemed to be winning. Chiang Kai-shek‟s army outnumbered communist troops by a factor of
three. They rapidly reconquered Chinese provinces occupied by the Japanese. The main body of
communist troops, pursued by Chiang Kai-shek‟s forces, retreated to Manchuria. However, in
the end of 1947 the situation began to reverse. The key problem was that Chiang Kai-shek‟s
29
government could deploy a large army but did not have enough resources to keep it in the field
for a long time. To be effective in combat, troops had to be continuously supplied with weapons,
munitions, clothing, and provision. After eight years of a devastating war against Japan, this task
that was clearly beyond the KMT‟s capacity. China‟s economy was devastated. A centralized
system of troops‟ supply was not effective. Keeping the army on a self-help regime provoked
fierce resistance of the local population. Ill-supplied and badly equipped, the Nationalist troops
possessed a low fighting spirit. When the long war against Japan was over, soldiers could not
understand why Chinese should be fighting Chinese. They deserted or turned to the Communist
side in numbers.
Perhaps, the Nationalists would have a better chance had Chiang Kai-shek reconsidered
the KMT agrarian program after the end of the anti-Japanese war. In fact, in May of 1945 a
group of young KMT politicians called for the end of landlordism and distribution of all farm
land to the tillers. The government even announced a 25 percent rent reduction. However, the
authorities failed to make any practical steps beyond declarations. In March of 1947, the KMT
once again rejected the immediate land redistribution in favor of moderate reform, which was
effectively sabotaged by landlords (Eastman 1984: 83). Whereas in 1946 many peasants
remained politically neutral and in some areas even welcomed the KMT return, in 1947 they
started to change their minds. For peasants, as Bianco (1971: 187) commented, “it became clear
that the return of the Kuomintang meant the undoing of social and political advances the
peasants had thought they taken for granted, the repeal of reforms related to interest rates, land
tax, and land rent that they had presumed to be part of any postwar government program, and
worst of all, a return to the traditional social and political order.” Apparently, these prospects did
not instill much enthusiasm among peasants.
Meantime, an outbreak of the civil war had relieved Communists from their obligation to
suspend a radical land reform. The Draft Agrarian Law of October 10, 1947 became the
cornerstone of the communist agrarian policy during the civil war. The law abolished all
landownership rights of all landlords as well as all ancestral shrines, temples, monasteries,
schools, institutions, and organizations. Debts incurred in the countryside were cancelled. All
land was to be transferred to the village peasants‟ associations to be distributed equally among
all peasants, male and female, young and old. The Draft Agrarian Law, according to Hinton
30
(1966), expropriated $20 billion worth of property in land; put an end to all possible compromise
between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang; made overthrow of the landlords the main
aim of the war; facilitated the capitulation and recruitment of Chiang‟s soldiers into Mao troops;
inspired peasant unrest in the far corners of China; and gave impetus to demonstrations of
workers, students, and professional people in urban centers throughout the Kuomintang rear.
The land reform, according to (Pepper 1999: 431), was the Communists‟ key revolutionary effort
of the civil war period. Hinton (1966) compared the significance of the Draft Agrarian Law to
the role of the Emancipation Proclamation in the American Civil War. According to one
estimate, by end of 1947 at least sixty percent of peasants were pro-Communist (Chassin 1965:
162).
Radical land reform contributed to increase in number of the Communist troops and,
eventually to a reversal in the balance of forces. By the mid 1948, the Communist forces
(including regular and guerilla units) grew to the point of parity with the Nationalist troops,
reaching about 2,200,000-2,300,000 soldiers (Chassin 1965: 177). The increased military power
allowed the communist to begin the large-scale frontal operations against a rapidly shrinking
Chiang Kai-shek army. By mid March the military situation in Manchuria had been completely
reversed (Westad 2003: 178). In the decisive battles of the second half of 1948, particularly
battle of HuaiHai in November 1948-January 1949, the Nationalist armies have been defeated. In
spring of 1949, the People‟s Liberation Army takes Beijing, Nanking, and Shanghai. On October
1, 1949, the People‟s Republic of China was proclaimed by Mao-Zedong in Beijing.
Of course, a number of factors may have contributed to the Communist triumph.
However, it is difficult to overestimate the factor of massive peasant support. Eastman (1984)
summed up the story in the following passage: “In the Nationalist area during the civil war…
peasants did not rise, as the French peasants did in 1789, in a broadscale attack on the old order.
In important, indirect ways, however, they withheld their support. In the Communist areas, by
contrast, although most peasants probably remained essentially apolitical, they tended to
cooperate with the insurgent regime. Some, particularly the youth, actively supported the
Communists. The result was, in effect, to create a pressure differential: little pressure (or
support) on the Nationalist side; some pressure (support) on the Communist side. A partial
political vacuum favoring the Communists was thereby created.”
31
CONCLUSION
A comparative historical analysis of four civil wars (Russia, Finland, Spain, and China) shows
that state breakdown caused by defeat in a prolonged mass-mobilization war was a necessary but
not sufficient condition for successful mobilization of the revolutionary forces and subsequent
communist modernization. A defeat in such war delegitimized the existing authorities and other
institutions of the dominant class. War undermined national economy, created massive social
dislocations, increased class polarization, and generated mass protests from below. In some
cases, such as Russia and China, war resulted in disorganization or serious weakening of the core
institution of the state, the army. In the situations of the utmost disorganization and chaos, radical
socialist parties, insignificant minorities of population in the beginning of war, were able to
mobilize a massive following and rise to the position of the primary contender for state authority.
In their bid for state power, the revolutionary actors relied, in a most direct and
immediate way, on thousands of rank-and -file soldiers who had been mobilized for the combat.
When the war crisis reached enormous proportions, these servicemen switched their allegiance to
the radical movements and, together with the urban proletariat, formed the core of the armed
revolutionary forces. Experience in war provided them with indispensable skills of organization,
coordinated action, subordination to command, strict discipline, endurance, and knowledge how
to use arms.
In absence of external war and social dislocations caused by it, the dominant class was
able to resist the popular radical movements. If the regular armed forces had not been defeated
by the enemy and demoralized in war, the army, under command of the competent officers, has
proven to be an effective institution able to fight revolution. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
provided a vivid example of the military-based counterrevolutionary mobilization led by General
Franco. Despite the fact, that the Popular Front government enjoyed a massive social support, it
was not able to forge a military force that could match the Nationalist troops. Politically, the
Popular Front was fragmented into socialists, communists, anarchist, and republicans, each
group with its own armed militia. In the time when Franco‟s troops advanced to Madrid and
conquered provinces one after the other, the republicans squandered precious time. The
Republican forces fought heroically but have been weakened by low centralization, poor
discipline, and lack of military skills and experience.
32
Incapacitation of armed forces due to defeat in war was a critical condition for
revolutionary success but not the sufficient condition. Even in the most extreme cases of
military-political disorganization, such as Russia‟s turmoil, the ruling class was able to marshal
large military formations to fight the radical challengers. Most of the urban middle classes,
socially and politically associated with the old order, supported the counterrevolutionary forces.
If the White Armies did not confront a major military force, revolutionary troops were likely to
be defeated. The only social class, which could support radicals‟ bid for power was peasantry.
Normally, peasants preferred to stay away from any political controversy as far as
possible. Only major material incentives would induce their collective action. Possession of land
was a life-and-death issue in many peasant societies; if land was scarce, poor peasant families
existed on the brink of starvation. If distribution of land was manifestly inequitable, there would
be strong potential for redistribution of land. A political contender which was willing to provide
such benefits might expect peasants‟ support in conflict. If, on the contrary, land issue was not a
major social problem, peasants would stay neutral or lend their support to the counterrevolutionary forces. The victory of the Mannerheim‟s army over the Red Guards in Finland in
1918 attested importance of the peasant collective choice.
Organized coercion alone could not account for a victory of the revolutionary party. In
Russia both the Reds and the Whites subjected rural population to ruthless mobilization and
requisition campaigns. Peasants resented both sides. There was, however, one important
difference between them. The Bolsheviks gave peasants land and provided a legal guarantee of
their ownership. The Whites, on their part, did not provide such benefits. No matter how strongly
peasants might have resented the Reds they resented the Whites even stronger. That‟s why they
chose to go along with the Bolsheviks‟ rule. But this consent for coercion was not unconditional.
As soon as a threat of the White restoration had disappeared, in many areas of Russia peasants
rebelled against the Bolsheviks‟ rule. Once again, the Bolsheviks had to heed the peasants‟
demands and change their policy from coercive practices of war communism to a more marketfriendly new economic policy.
33
LITERATURE
Alapuro, Risto. 1988. State and Revolution in Finland. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press.
Beevor, Anthony. 2006. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. London:
Penguin.
Bianco, Lucien. 1971. Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 1915-1949. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Bolloten, Burnett. 1991. The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution. Chapel-Hill,
NC: The University of North Carolina Press.
Chassin, Lionel Max. 1965. The Communist Conquest of China: A History of the Civil War,
1945-1949. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Chen, Young-fa. 1986. Making Revolution: The Communist Movement in Eastern and Central
China, 1937-1945. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Collins, Randall. 1999. Macrohistory: Essays in Sociology of the Long Run. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
Eastman, Lloyd E. 1984. Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 19371949. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Esenwein, George and Adrian Shubert. 1995. Spain at War: The Spanish Civil War in Context,
1931-1939. London and New York: Longman.
Esherick, Joseph W. 1995. „Ten Theses on the Chinese Revolution.‟ Modern China 21: 45-76.
Figes, Orlando. 1996. A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924. London:
Penguin.
Goldstone, Jack. 1991. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Hinton, William. 1966. Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village. Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Hodgson, John H. 1967. Communism in Finland: A History and Interpretation. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Kalyvas, Stathis N. 2008. The Logic of Violence in Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Kirby, David. 1986. “The Workers‟ Cause”: Rank-and-File Attitudes and Opinions in the
34
Finnish Social Democratic Party, 1905-1918 // Past & Present 111: 130-164
Mawdsley, Evan. 2008. The Russian Civil War. New York: Pegasus Books.
McDaniel, Tim. 1988. Autocracy, Capitalism, and Revolution in Russia. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Migdal, Joel S. 1974. Peasants, Politics, and Revolution: Pressures toward Political and Social
Change in the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Moore, Barrington, Jr. 1966. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant
in the Making of the Modern World. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Oberschall, Anthony and Michael Seidman. 2005. Food Coercion in Revolution and Civil War
Who Wins and How They Do It // Comparative Studies of Society and History: 372-402
Osinsky, Pavel. 2008. “War, State Collapse, Redistribution: Russian and German Revolution
Revisited.” Political Power and Social Theory 19: 3-38.
Osinsky, Pavel. 2010. “Modernization Interrupted? Total War, State Breakdown, and the
Communist Conquest of China” // The Sociological Quarterly 51: 576-299
Payne, Stanley G. 1970. The Spanish Revolution. New York: W.W. Norton.
Pepper, Suzanne. 1999. Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945-1949. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Pipes, Richard. 1990. The Russian Revolution. New York: Vintage Books.
Pipes, Richard. 1993. Russia under the Bolshevik Regime. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Preston, Paul. 2006. The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution, and Revenge. New York:
W.W. Norton.
Seidman, Michael. 2002. Republic of Egos: A Social History of the Spanish Civil War. Madison,
WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Scott, James C. 1976. The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in
Southeast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France,
Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skocpol, Theda. 1982. What Makes Peasants Revolutionary? // Theory and Society11: 265-283.
Smith, C. Jay. 1955. “Russia and the Origins of the Finnish Civil War of 1918 // American
35
Slavic and East European Review 14: 481-502.
Smith, C. Jay. 1958. Finland and the Russian Revolution, 1917-1922. Athens, GA: University of
Georgia Press.
Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1999. „Ending Revolutions and Building New Governments.‟ Annual
Review of Political Science 2: 49-73.
Thomas, Hugh. 2001. The Spanish Civil War. New York: The Modern Library.
Upton, Anthony F. 1980. The Finnish Revolution, 1917-1918. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Van Slyke, Lyman P. „The Chinese Communist Movement during the Sino-Japanese War, 19371945.‟ Pp. 177-290 in The Nationalist Era in China, 1927-1949. Edited by Lloyd E.
Eastman, Jerome Ch‟en, Suzanne Pepper, and Lyman P. Van Slyke. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Von Hagen, Mark. 1990. Soldiers in the Proletarian Dictatorship: The Red Army and the Soviet
Socialist State, 1917-1930. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Westad, Odd Arne. 2003. Decisive Encounters: The Chinese Civil War, 1946-1950. Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Wickham-Crowley, Timothy P. 1991. Exploring Revolution: Essays on Latin American
Insurgency and Revolutionary Theory. New York: M.E. Sharpe.
Wolf, Eric R. 1968. Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century. Norman, OK: University off
Oklahoma Press.
Yaney, George. 1981. The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861-1930. Urbana, Il:
University of Illinois Press.
36