The experience of two wars and the mobilization economy: lessons worth remembering

And therefore, let’s look at the problem of transition to a mobilization economy, which only lazy people do not discuss today, not from the point of view of how we will punish adversaries for sanctions, but from the point of view of what goals the mobilization will pursue and what means will be used, since . What and who will gain, and who and what will lose from the transition to a mobilization economy – two. Will the current system of economic management be able to ensure the transition to a new quality of development – three.

I’ll start with the fact that the mobilization economy is different. Under the conditions of significant external threats or the need to solve extraordinary problems, the transition of the economy to special, so-called mobilization, rails is carried out differently in different economic systems. In the Russian Empire of the early twentieth century, with its power of the royal court, corruption, bureaucracy and the concentration of capital in the hands of the largest corporations, with dependence on foreign (including German) equipment, mobilization under the conditions of the First World War was carried out accordingly. Something was produced for the front, but along the way, corporations working for the state military order grew profits, which they did not forget to share with corrupt officials. As a result, in 1916 (two years after the start of the war), famine began in the country. Let me remind you: the surplus appraisal was introduced in Russia by the tsar-priest, and continued by the provisional government. The Soviet government received from them “inheritance” the starving population of cities. By the way, let me remind you that the February revolution began with mass demonstrations by women who had nothing to feed their children: in Petrograd there was a catastrophic shortage of black bread, although “pineapples in champagne” were in abundance. This is one model of mobilization.

Another model is mobilization on the eve and during the Great Patriotic War. I do not want to idealize the USSR and have written a lot about its contradictions, but the mobilization, despite the fact that we were at war with all of Europe, proceeded as planned and with heroic support from below. Even the worst enemies of Soviet power do not talk about the enrichment of the nomenklatura through the transition to a mobilization economy.

Despite the complexity of the foreign policy situation, modern Russia is not in such a difficult situation as the Russian Empire in the conditions of the First World War and the USSR during the Second. Therefore, the goals of economic transformation today can and should be not only military, and, I would even say, primarily non-military. For a long time, not the first decade, the country has been facing the strategic task of deep reforming the economy, because the model of oligarchic-bureaucratic capitalism that has existed in recent decades has led to an increase, not a decrease, in our lagging behind what is now commonly called the collective West. The problems of the Russian economy cannot be solved by means of fire measures, by the method of patching Trishkin’s caftan.

Let me remind you of the experience of two world wars experienced by our country. In the first case, the fundamental model—the power of the tsarist bureaucracy merged with monopoly capital—did not change and could not solve the country’s problems. The result is first a bourgeois-democratic, then a socialist revolution, which ultimately solved these problems, but through a qualitative change in the system, a transition to a planned market economy of the NEP era.

In the second case, the USSR also did not change the economic model, but, as practice has shown, the planned economy, coupled with the enthusiasm of the population, despite any repressions and bureaucracy, was able to defeat fascism. Yes, half a century after that, the USSR collapsed. But it collapsed precisely because the foundations of our country — the practice of proving that the country’s wealth belongs to its citizens, real social justice and solidarity, internationalism — were corroded, like rust, by the petty-bourgeois petty-bourgeois life of the last years of “developed socialism.”

Therefore, there can be only one answer to the first question. The goal is not mobilization for the sake of current goals, but at least a strategic reform of the system of industrial relations and institutions. By and large, this is a departure from capitalism, a movement towards socialism, but for this modern Russia does not yet have sufficiently powerful social and creative forces.

About what these absolutely necessary at least minimal reforms should be, I wrote more than once, including in MK. There is a need for planning that will ensure the implementation of strategic national priorities in a continuing market economy. Socialization is needed, subordination to the interests of society, and not to the bureaucracy of the public sector and the social responsibility of private business. We need public, high-quality, really free healthcare, education, and culture. We need to reduce at least two times, at least to the level of “decaying” Western Europe, social inequality. Without this minimum, neither the solidarity of society nor the concentration of forces in key areas can be obtained. And without such solidarity, without a strategic breakthrough in technology and the economy, the solution of any foreign policy tasks will, to put it mildly, be in question.

The answer to the second question – who wins, who loses – will be simpler and shorter. By and large, any ordinary citizen of our country can easily formulate it. If the transition to a mobilization economy will be carried out according to the model of the Russian Empire, so that the financing of military orders is increased by reducing social spending and by tightening the belts of the majority of the population – and a considerable part of these mobilized funds ends up in the form of profits from private business, officials, shareholders and top -managers of state campaigns – in this case, we will have to wait indefinitely for positive results, and if the contradictions turn out to be especially deep, then the result will be a social explosion.

If the path of deep reforms is chosen, if Russia begins to accelerate and systematically follow the path of greater social justice, the use of our really large resources for technological, cultural, educational progress, if we prove in practice that our country is faster and better than others, follows the path of solidarity, justice, social liberation, then we will be envied not because our houses are warmer, but because we show all mankind the way to a better life.

And these are not general words – a better life has very specific measures: a measure of social inequality, the level of crime and corruption, the participation of citizens in the management of the country and production, the progress of culture and education, the quality and length of life …

The third question is the most difficult. The economic and political system that has existed in the Russian Federation over the past 20 years is characterized by stability: the country’s leadership, the ruling party, the main institutions that determine the rules of the game in the economy – all this changes insignificantly. Are the current political leaders and owners of the largest private capitals interested in a deep transformation of economic, social and, as an inevitable consequence, political institutions? Until recently, practice has given the answer to this question: there have been no profound changes in the model that has existed in recent decades. Now the situation has changed: more and more sections of the population understand that the former socio-economic model provides a solution to even current problems with difficulty. Not to mention strategic… Therefore…

I will leave the answer to this question open. Not because I don’t know it or I’m afraid to formulate it, but because I really want the reader to answer it slowly after analyzing the facts, the arguments of the parties, various versions of understanding national history.

We all need to independently think, analyze, make decisions, commit civil acts and then bear responsibility for them before our conscience and before history. Our country, and by and large the whole world, is entering the space-time of historical changes. And in such eras as a hundred, and eighty, and thirty years ago, the future of the country depends on everyone. Without exaggeration.