An Ode to the Unsung Heroes of the Russian Civil War: The Black Marketeers

     Having recently passed the centennial of the end of the Russian Civil War, it is hard not to lament the fact that the Red Army ultimately won and it wouldn't be until 1989 that Russia had any prospect for liberty. All the same, this does not mean that the war's fate was sealed by the time the Bolsheviks first took over. Far from it. The main opposition force, the White Army had numerous heroes, such as the Black Baron, General Pyotr Wrangel, who worked valiantly to keep Crimea out of Bolshevik hands and helped 100,000 people flee for their lives when it tragically fell to the Reds in November 1920. Nestor Makhno's Black Army were a mixed bag in some respects due to their far-left economics, but at least the average rural Ukrainian could feel free in the Free Territory, and the fight they put up against Leon Trotsky could certainly be described as heroic. The Green Armies were certainly the most blameless group in the war, as they were simply fighting for liberty and did not have grandiose visions of rebuilding society, so they are heroes who rightfully get much praise. All the same, one heroic group that has gone unreported are those under the control of the Bolsheviks who did their best to resist their control and the economic insanity they brought during their so-called 1918-1921 War Communism period. The most noteworthy and heroic of these resisters were those who risked their lives to see that Russian cities would be fed: the black marketeers.                                   

    To provide some context for the unfamiliar, the Bolsheviks commanding the Red Army were not content to try to win the Russian Civil War first and worry about implementing their utopian economic ideas later on. Quite the contrary. They were ready to achieve the socialist command economy of their dreams as soon as their control of St. Petersburg and western part of the country was secure. This naturally included such promising-sounding orders by Vladimir Lenin as the nationalization of all industries and central planning to go along with it, particularly the railroads, which were put under military command, government-control of foreign trade, outlawing of strikes (ever fighting for the working class), outlawing of private enterprise, forced labor for the war effort, confiscation from peasants of "excess" grain (known as Prodrazvyorstka), and a strict rationing of food. It is these last two aspects that lead us to the subject of this article: those who, under the penalty of death, worked to get food into the cities in order to sell on the black market.    

       As any economist will tell you, when there is a demand for something, regardless of the legality of that thing, an entrepreneur, attracted by the possible profits, will enter into that market and provide it for those willing to pay the price that is being offered. Even in the midst of a totalitarian dictatorship that included the Cheka secret police who would roll people around in barrels covered in nails, this economic principle did not go away, as the product in question, food, was literally a matter of life or death. Thus, an unsung group of heroes illegally entered the grain black market in order to compete with the Red Army grain requisitioners who were little more than petty bandits. As Soviet economists Nikolai Shmelev and Vladimir Popov explained: “Even at the height of War Communism, speculators and food smugglers at the risk of their lives brought as much grain into the cities as all the state purchases made under prodrazvyorstka.” 

      Although their names and/or lives are likely lost to history, as any detailing of a black market economy by its nature often tends to be, one cannot help but admire the character of these individuals all the same. Madmen had taken over the country in their childish crusade to stomp out the market economy and now not only were they waging a brutal civil war in order to remain in power, but they were also subjecting the population to a horrific economic experiment in which money itself was declared to be abolished and that decree was enforced at the barrel of a gun. All the same, there were brave peasants who hid their grain from the thieves sent by these economic flat-earthers and there were people who were willing to buy it from them and risk their lives to get the product into the cities to keep their countrymen alive and escape a civil war going on around them, and in the face of all this, they still managed to be as successful as the maniacs Lenin unleashed on them. Imagine how successful they would have been had even some of these obstacles not been there. Just imagining the context, it seems clear that something beyond just the profit incentive had to have been at stake here. There not being a legal market economy, it seems unlikely money from sales could have gone very far. These seemed to have been, at least in part, humanitarians out to resist the Red Army in whatever way they could and bringing food into the cities just seemed the most attractive option. 

       With the later introduction of the New Economic Policy and an admission by none other than Leon Trotsky that the War Communism policy had lead to the near total collapse of society, it seems that, until Stalin anyway, these believers in the market economy were validated. In one way, they were even under Stalin, as not even he tried the insanity of abolishing money ever again. If only the slightly pro-market Nikolai Bukharin had gained control and the market would have been allowed to flourish under the Soviets as well as communists would let it, which as seen by Hong Kong under China now, might have been more than you might think. Since that did not happen, let us at least remember the black marketeers under War Communism and imagine what they must have went through and hope that such economic insanity as the Bolsheviks' attempt to abolish money never befalls the world again.