One of the main resolutions of the Party conference held in late March and early April, 1920, the last held under ‘War Communism,’ with its food requisitioning and militarization of labor. At the congress the following year, as the Red Army’s victory in the Civil War was accompanied by famine and economic dislocation, the New Economic Policy would be formally instituted.

‘The Immediate Problems of Economic Construction’ from Resolutions of the Ninth Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1920.

I. The Increased Productivity of Labour.

The Congress is pleased to recognize the undoubted signs of increased productivity of labour among the leading workers; it, however, considers it its duty to warn all local and central institutions of the Soviet Republic against exaggerating the value of the results attained.

The only condition under which labour can gain really important results is firstly, if every attempt will be made by further agitation and organisation of our party and of the trade unions to inspire the many-millioned labour masses of town and country with the necessity for energetic, enthusiastic work and increased productivity of labour, and, secondly, if the central and local economic organisations will take all the necessary measures to keep a sharp eye on all the manifestations of the increased productivity of labour, both quantitatively and qualitatively; in due time and correctly to effect a complete utilisation of the flow of labour power, to eliminate disunited efforts, small kustar industries, labour partisanship, without entirely and harmfully suppressing all these but by leading them and establishing them within the limits of the general state plan.

II. Uniformity of the Economic Plan.

The basic condition of the economic regeneration of the country is the undeviating introduction of a uniform economic plan to be carried out in the nearest historic epoch. This economic plan is naturally enough, owing to the general economic collapse and impoverishment of the country divided into a number of consistent interdependent main problems:

a) first and foremost the improvement in the state of transport, formation and delivery of an indispensable reserve of corn, fuel and raw materials;

b) machine construction in connection with transport and for purposes of obtaining fuel, raw material and corn;

c) an increased production in machine construction for the manufacture of products of general consumption;

d) an increased production of articles for general consumption.

The cornerstone of the technical side should be the wide utilisation of electric power and all its latest improvements; this should be applied in the various stages of the general economic plan according to their respective importance:

1. The elaboration of the plan for the electrification of social production and the realisation of the minimum programme of electrification; that is to say, the utilisation of the principal sources of electric supply and of the existing electric stations as well as of a part of those which are now being erected in the various central towns.

2. The erection of district electric stations and main cables of electric transmission with a corresponding increase of the productivity of all manufactures connected with electric supply, etc.

3. The next step is the construction of electric stations in the various urban districts, the further development of an electric network and the gradual electrification of the most important industrial processes.

4. The electrification of industry, transport and agriculture. The economic centres of the Soviet Republic should lay all their plans in connection with the above chief economic plan; all the principal powers and means should in the first place be mobilised consistently and systematically to carry out the immediate economic needs.

As far as possibilities are arising in Soviet Russia for foreign trade, this should be entirely subjected to the requirements of the principal economic plan.

All auxiliary industrial processes–the need for which arises for the execution of the principal tasks–should be developed as far as there is real necessity. Productions which are not indispensable to the general plan of the economic period should be maintained only in so far as that can in no way interfere with the execution of the chief problems. In view of all this the current economic task of the Soviet economic centres must represent not only the mere sum-total of registered needs and requirement; but should emanate with an iron consistency from the whole economic plan which has been drawn up with a view to the forthcoming period.

The realisation of this plan is possible not by means of a casual, individual heroic effort of the leading elements of the working class, but by means of stubborn, systematic, organised labour attracting ever greater masses of workers. The success of this kind of gradually increasing mobilisation and labour education is only possible by a constant elucidation to the mass of the urban and rural workers of the essence of the economic plan, its consistency and its tangible results, which, however, become possible only after a long term of intense work and great sacrifices.

III. Mobilisation of Skilled Workers.

The 9th. Congress approves of the theses of the Central Committee of the R.C.P. on the mobilisation of the industrial proletariat, compulsory labour service, militarisation of industry and the application of military detachments to economic needs.

In connection with the above the Congress decrees that the Party organisations should in every way assist the trade unions and the labour department in registering all skilled workers with a view to employ them in the various branches of production with the same consistency and strictness as was done and is being carried out to the present time with regard to the commanding staff for army needs.

Every skilled worker is to return to his particular trade. Exceptions, i.e. the retention of skilled workers in any other branch of Soviet service is allowed only with the sanction of the corresponding central and local authorities.

VI. Mass Mobilisation for Compulsory Labour Service.

It is necessary from the very beginning to place the mass mobilisation for labour service on a proper footing; that is to say to establish upon every occasion an as exact as possible proportion between the number of mobilised, their place of concentration, the extent of the labour problem in hand and the requisite amount of tools and appliances. It is equally necessary to secure technically competent and politically firm trainers and organisers for all mobilised labour sections; such organisers are to be selected by party mobilisation of communist labour circles, just as that was done in the establishment of the Red Army.

V. Labour Rivalry.

Every social system whether based on slavery, feudalism or capitalism had its ways and means of labour compulsion and labour education in the interests of exploiters.

The Soviet system is faced with the tasks of developing its own methods of labour compulsion to attain an increase of the intensity and wholesomeness of labour; this method is to be based on the socialisation of public economy in the interests of the whole nation.

In addition to the propaganda by which the people are to be influenced and the repressions which are to be applied to all idlers, parasites and disorganizers who strive to undermine public zeal–the principal method for the increase of production will become the introduction of the system of labour rivalry.

In capitalist society rivalry assumed the character of competition and led to the exploitation of man by man. In society where the means of production are nationalised labour rivalry is to increase the total of the products of labour without impairing its solidarity.

Rivalry between factories, regions, guilds, workshops and individual workers should become the subject of careful organisation and of close study on the side of the trade unions and the economic organs.

The system of premiums which is to be introduced should become one of the most powerful means of exciting rivalry. The system of rationing of food supply is to get into line with it: so long as Soviet Russia suffers from an insufficiency of provisions it is only just that the industrious and conscientious worker receive more than the indigent worker.

VI. From Trust Centralisation to Socialist Centralisation.

The present form of industrial organisation is the form characteristic of a transition period. The Labour State has nationalised the capitalist trusts, complemented them with all individual enterprises of the same branch of industry and has combined after the same method all the branches of industry which were not formed into trusts under capitalism. This re-organisation has resulted in the entire industry of the country becoming a number of concurrent combines economically independent though united by the Supreme Council of Public Economy.

Under capitalism every trust was in a position to acquire the requisite quantity of material and labour power at the nearest goods market and labour exchange, whereas, under the present conditions these enterprises can receive all that they require both in material and in men only by order of the Central organs of the united organisation of public economy. Unfortunately the methods of the centralisation which were applied immediately after the expropriation of the bourgeoisie led to the monstrous form of red tape and de ay which are of course of great harm to our industry. Under the conditions which existed at the time of the revolution and taking into consideration the vastness of the country, the extreme indefiniteness and changeableness of the principal factors of production, the disorganised transport and communication, the uncertain methods and equally uncertain results of economic registration–the imperfection and delay resultant was unavoidable.

The task of organisation consists in preserving and developing the vertical centralisation of Head State Departments combining it with the horizontal submission of the various enterprises to economic regions, where the enterprises of the various branches of industry of diverse economic importance have to draw their raw material, transport means, and labour power from the same sources.

VII. Oblast Economic Organisations.

(An oblast is an area uniting more than one goubernia (province) under one local organisation.)

With regard to the extensive regions, which are situated far from the centre and where peculiar economic conditions prevail, the Congress finds it necessary to establish in the most immediate future competent and strong economic oblast organs which are to be represented by the state centres.

These oblast bureaux, composed of experienced men adhering to the general State policy, should be endowed with full authority for the control of local economic life, for on the purpose of uniting both the Provincial Councils of Economy and the Regional administrations, to carry out on the basis of a plan approved by the centre all the necessary alterations, transfer of raw material and labour power, etc., as circumstances may require.

In accordance with these tasks the staffs of the oblast bureaux should also comprise authorised delegates connected with the economic central administrations.

In view of the fact that oblast economic bureaux act in accordance with the powers with which they are authorised by the Soviet Government the regulations of the 7th. Congress of the Party apply also to the relations between the above oblast bureaux and the government (Provincial) Executive Committees.

The definition of the extent and frontier of those oblasts where oblasts agencies of the Centre are to be established is to be based on economic considerations. The oblast agency is to be represented also by the Labour Army in connection with questions of the utilisation of labour power at its disposal.

In view of the fact that in certain localities the Labour Ariny Councils, to a great extent fulfil the functions of oblast economic organs, it is decided that in the future they should also deal with the same questions. If that will become necessary they may carry out all the necessary changes with regard to the administrative apparatus without resorting to the formation of other parallel oblast organs.

VIII. The Elaboration of a System of Socialist Centralisation.

A special commission is to be established at the Supreme Council of Public Economy and its local sections for the study of the question of coordination and the interrelationship between the various economic organs, central and local; the simplest methods of obtainig the requisite quantity of raw material or amount of labour power for various enterprises; how to secure additional labour power and so forth, without applying in every individual case to the centre and without infringing the general State plans. Soviet Public Economy will change from the present form of centralisation, the kind which still bears traces of capitalist trusts, to an actual socialist centralisation which embraces under a single plan every sphere of public production in every part of the country. The following are the conditions: that improvement based on actual experience is constantly introduced, that the shortest possible distances are chosen for the transport of raw material and manufactured products and that the best methods are utilised for the application of the labour power of the oblast for the needs of the province, town and every district.

IX. The Organisation of Industrial Administration.

The chief problem in the organisation of industry is to create a competent, firm and energetic directorship, whether the question is one of an individual enterprise or of an entire sphere of production.

For the purposes of attaining a less complex and more exact form of industrial administration as well as in the interests of the economic management of the organising powers of the country the Congress finds it necessary to introduce in industrial administration instead of the hitherto prevailing management by collegiates and boards a management by single persons; the Congress therefore decrees the establishment of a one-man management in work shops and guilds and in factory and works administrations as well as decreasing the collegiates and boards in all the average-sized and more important links of the administrative productive apparatus.

The extremely important question of the drafting into industrial management of ever increasing circles of the working class should be solved by the application of a number of measures; the most important of which will be enumerated below, but none of which are to be carried out at the cost of the stability, competency and the simplicity of the apparatus.

Taking into consideration the fact that no absolute type of administration of Soviet enterprises, of combines of enterprises and of entire spheres of production has yet been established and also that the formation of the requisite cadres of administrators, directors, and so forth, is still in its initial stages–the Congress recognizes it both as possible and admissible, for the purposes of ultimately arriving at one-man management, to employ the following system in industrial administration, viz:”

a) a trade-unionist working man managing director, one possessing a firm will, the quality of persistence and in particular the capacity of selecting and employing specialists, engineers, mechanics, etc.–is to have the technical assistance of an engineer;

b) a fully competent specialist engineer in the quality of actual managing director of the enterprise who is to be assisted by a trade union worker commissary fully authorised and bound to participate in every detail of the concern;

c) two or three workers, members of trade unions, in the quality of assistants to the managing director who must necessarily be a specialist; these assistants enjoy the right of control of every branch of factory administration, but are not entitled to suspend the orders of the managing director;

d) where there are small collegiates or boards working in close and harmonious contact, the several members of which form a complement to each other and who have proved by actual experience their efficient working capacity, are to be retained with the introduction of an extension of the rights and privileges of the president who is to be responsible for the work of the entire board. Collegiates or boards of the medium and higher organs of economic administration, such as government (provincial) Councils of Public Economy, regional administrations, chief departments and sections should be limited to a minimum number of members with a president responsible for the work of the entire administration.

At all events an imperative condition in the improvement of economic organisation and the increase of production is the actual establishment in every sphere of life of the repeatedly proclaimed principle of final and absolute responsibility of a given person for a definite branch, section or piece of work. The form of boards as practised in the process of discussions and framing of resolutions are unconditionally to give place to one-man responsibility and management in the process of execution. The degree of fitness of an organisation is to be judged by the measure to which functions, duties and responsibilities are strictly divided.

Note. A careful control of all work of administrations both with the aim of a constant selection of personnel and of a practical establishment of the best means of combining the activity of workers and specialists in administration is to be established by a special organ under the Supreme Council of Public Economy.

The organisation of leading industrial institutions whether managed by board or under single management must be carried on in agreement with the organs of the Supreme Council of Public Economy and the corresponding organs of the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions.

Specialists who carry out the duties of directors or occupy analogous posts are to be appointed in the same way.

X. Mass Workers to be Attracted into Industrial Administration.

The Congress considers it indispensable to take energetic measures for the industrial organisation of the education of the whole masses of working circles and the constant attraction of fresh elements from the midst of the working class capable of carrying out organising work in production.

For this purpose:

a) to perfect the propaganda for the increase of production under the assistance of the trade unions and of the Supreme Council of Public Economy, not limiting it to appeals for increased production of labour only, but raising questions of a concrete and technical nature in connection with various spheres of industry and individual enterprises; to insist that every individual worker of a factory have a perfect idea of the character and place occupied by his particular factory in the general system of public economy; to introduce a systematic periodical (monthly, for instance) discussion of the report of the administration of the amount of work performed for the preceding month and of the industrial plan for the forthcoming month by a general meeting of all the workers of the factory;

b) to organise in connection with large individual enterprises or in connection with combines classes for the study of industrial administration, where the more able workmen should be given an opportunity to acquire a practical training in the necessary elements of administration without interfering with their own productive work;

c) workers who have acquired such training are to appointed as assistant foremen or assistants to the managing director of the factory;

d) workers who have acquired the preliminary practical qualifications are to be appointed to independent posts in connection with industrial administration, first in enterprises of secondary size and later on in more important concerns.

XI. Specialists in Industry.

Being of opinion that without a scientific organisation of industry even the widest application of compulsory labour service and the greatest labour heroism of the working class will not only tail to secure the establishment of a powerful socialist production but will also fail to assist the country to free itself from the clutches of poverty, the congress considers it imperative to register all able specialists of the various departments of public economy and widely to utilise them for purposes of industrial organisation.

Without altogether abolishing the further necessary control over and severe punishment of all counter-revolutionary elements striving to utilise their offices for purposes of hindering and undermining the economic regime–the Congress at the same time reminds all the members of the party and in the most categorical form of the necessity of ideologically interesting and attracting all specialists into the sphere of the industrial interests of the Soviet Republic. The Congress makes it incumbent upon all party members to strive, in strict correspondence with the spirit and the letter of our programme, to establish an atmosphere of comradely collaboration between workers and specialists whom the proletarian regime has inherited from the bourgeois system.

The Congress considers the elucidation to the wide masses of the workers of the tremendous character of the economic problems of the country to be one of the chief problems of industrial and general political agitation and propaganda; of equal importance is technical education, administrative and scientific technical experience. The Congress makes it obligatory to all the members of the party mercilessly to fight that particularly obnoxious form of ignorant conceit which deems the working class capable of solving all problems without the assistance in the most responsible cases of specialists of the bourgeois school. The demagogic elements who speculate on this kind of prejudice of the more backward section of our working classes can have no place in the ranks of the party of scientific socialism.

Registration of individual output or productivity of labour and the granting of corresponding individual premiums must also be carried out in a way suitable to administrative technical staff. Better conditions must be secured for our best administrators and engineers to enable then to make full use of their capacities in the interests of socialist economy.

A special system of premiums is to be established for those specialists under whose guidance the workers can attain the necessary qualifications to make them capable to accept further independent posts.

The prejudice against joining trade unions still held by the higher technical staff of our concerns and institutions must be completely eradicated. By including in their organisations doctors, engineers, surveyors, etc., the trade unions will, with the comradely collaboration of the organised proletariat, assist these elements to take an active part in the work of Soviet construction and will at the same time acquire the specific training and scientific knowledge and experience necessary to the workers.

XII. Chief Section of Political Propaganda of Ways and Communications.

For the most immediate future transport remains the centre of the attention and efforts of the Soviet Government. The improvement of transport is the indispensable basis upon which even the most moderate success in all other spheres of production and first of all in the food question can be gained.

The chief difficulty with regard to the improvement of transport is the fragility of the transport workers’ union, which is due in the first case to the heterogeneity of the personnel of the railways amongst whom there are still a number of those who belong to the period of disorganisation, and, secondly, to the fact that the most class-conscious and best elements of the railway workers were at the various fronts of the civil war.

Considering wide trade union assistance to the railway workers to be one of the principal tasks of the party, which is the only condition under which transport can be raised to its due height–the Congress at the same time recognizes the inflexible necessity of employing exclusive and extraordinary measures (martial law and so forth). Such necessity is the result of the terrible collapse of the transport and of the railway system and is to introduce measures which cannot be delayed and which are to obviate the complete paralysis of the railway system and together with this the ruin of the Soviet Republic.

Appreciating the Chief Section of Political Propaganda of Ways and Communications from this aspect the Congress looks upon this Section as a temporary organ of the Communist Party and of the Soviet Government, pursuing simultaneously two inseparable aims, viz, the immediate improvement of the state of our transport by means of the organised activity of our trusted communists, the best representatives of the working class, and enlarging the trade union railway organisation by infusing in it the best workers whom the above section despatches to various railway points, as well as by assisting the trade union itself to establish in its organisation an iron discipline, thus changing the railway union into an indispensable instrument for effecting an improvement in the railway transport.

Upon the execution of this work the Chief Section for Political Propaganda of Ways and Communications and its local organs should in the shortest time possible be merged with the trade union organisation of the railway proletariat on the one hand and on the other hand with the normal institutions of the Peoples’ Commissariat for Ways and Communications.

XIII. Food Problems.

The following are the prominent problems of the food policy:

To collect at the cost of the greatest possible exertion of our forces a food reserve of a few hundred million poods.

2. To distribute this reserve to the food bases of the principal districts of industrial concentration.

3. Closely and strictly to subject the Food policy especially as far as distribution is concerned, to the interests of the revival of industry and transport. (It is necessary in the first place to supply the most important industrial enterprises and the transport apparatus; a more flexible manoeuvring must be employed in connection with the changes arising in industrial undertakings, the introduction of a system of premiums in kind and so on). One of the most important problems both as regards the reestablishment of industry as well as in the interests of foreign commercial exchange is the formation of a reserve of raw material. The supply of raw material must be based on the system of government levy and the obligatory delivery of raw material in accordance with the government rules. At the same time wherever raw material is supplied a system for the payment of goods thus supplied should be introduced by products and semi-manufactures to the extent and in a form to be established in each individual case, as that is already being practised with regard to hemp, flax and so forth.

XIV. The Labour Armies.

The utilisation of military detachments for labour is of equal importance from a practical economic and socialist educational aspect. The following are the conditions for a beneficial and extensive application of military labour:

a) simple character of work, for which all the Red Army soldiers are equally fit;

b) the application of a system of allotted tasks, the non-fulfillment of which leads to a decrease of rations;

c) the introduction of the premium system;

d) the participation in the work in the same labour district of a number of communists whose example is to influence the Red Army detachments.

The drafting into the labour army of larger military units will inevitably result in a higher percentage of Red Army men not being engaged in production. Therefore the utilisation of entire labour armies under conditions of preservation of the military apparatus is justifiable only where is necessary for military purposes to preserve the army in its entirety. But as soon as necessity disappears in this direction the usual large staffs and administrations are to be dismissed and its best elements consisting of skilled workers to be utilised for the formation of small pioneer labour detachments to be sent to the most important industrial enterprises.

XV. Labour Desertion.

Owing to the fact that a considerable part of the workers either in search of better food conditions or often or purposes of speculation voluntarily leave their places of employment or change from place to place, which inevitably impairs production and deteriorates the general position of the working class–the Congress considers one of the most important problems of the Soviet Government and of the trade union organisations to be the establishment of a firm, systematic and insistent struggle against labour desertion. The way to fight this is to publish a column of desertion fines, the formation of labour detachments of deserters under fine and finally, internment in concentration camps.

XVI. Subotniki.

More attention should be given to the free labour (Subotniki) Saturdays taking place in the provinces. Such work should be selected for the Subotniki as is of greater interest o the local population; this work should be given the character of a collective labour effort for widely understood aims, and attempts should be made not only to attract non-party men to this work but even the general local population, men and women. A carefully elaborated technical plan of every Subotnik is of equal importance, as well as a strict and most advantageous distribution of forces and an essentially economical utilisation of such forces Only under such conditions will the Subotniki take root, attract ever new masses and enthuse the ordinary work with new initiative and a renewed will.

XVI. Locomotive Repairs and the Construction of New Locomotives.

In addition to the encouragement which is given to the initiative of every individual group of workers in the work of repairing our rolling stock it is, however, also necessary to understand that this makeshift, method of helping the transport can only bear a temporary character, as this method absorbs too much skilled labour and employs factory plants which have originally been set aside for other purposes.

In view of the fact that little hope can justifiably be entertained for obtaining in the nearest few months or even years a large number of locomotives from abroad the inevitable necessity arises for a large-scale manufacture of the most indispensable reserve parts, and later on also of locomotives to an extent far exceeding the pre-war output. The one condition of success in this direction is the exact elaboration and the energetic realisation of a wide plan calculated for a considerable number of the most suitable works on the American system of production, i.e. of a strict division of the process of production to detailed functions, with the substitution of skilled workers by others who are only partly skilled but who are to work under the guidance of trainers.

XVIII. Model Enterprises.

Along with the general measures for raising the economic production of the country and the industrial output of labour the Congress also deems it very important to introduce in suitable districts the establishment of model enterprises of the principal branches of industry. These enterprises which are to be selected in accordance with the general economic plan for technical, geographical and other considerations are to be speedily supplied with additional plans, with the necessary amount of labour power and engineers, as well as with provisions, fuel and raw material. The best administrators and engineers are to be placed at the head of these enterprises. All the political propaganda and other such needs of these model enterprises are to be supplied by the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party under its direct supervision and control. Reports of the progress of work on these model enterprises are to be periodically supplied to and published by the press. As soon as that will become possible technical and administrative courses of study are to be established in connection with the above enterprises, becoming a school of industrial education and the hearth of technical and economic creative genius for an extensive region and a vast industrial sphere if, not even for the entire country.

XIX. Paper and Printing.

In view of the fact that the first condition of the success of the Soviet Republic in all departments, including the economic, is chiefly a printed systematic agitation the Congress draws the attention of the Soviet Government to the deplorable state in which our paper and printing industries find themselves. The ever decreasing number of newspapers fail to reach not only the peasant but even the worker, in addition to which our poo technical means render the papers hardly readable. The Congress strongly appeals to the Supreme Council of Public Economy, to the corresponding trade unions and to other interested institutions to apply all efforts to raise the quantity of paper manufactures, to improve its quality, to introduce general system and order in the printing bus ness which will secure for worker-peasant Russia a supply of socialist printed matter.

XX. The First of May.

In keeping with the great immediate problems with which the socialist revolution is faced the Congress decrees:

That the International Proletarian Festival of the 1st. of May, the date of which falls this year upon a Saturday, should be transformed into a grand All-Russian Labour Saturday (Subotnik).

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