Catholic and Polish patriotic environment. A sheltered child, Dzerzhin-sky was earmarked by his mother for the priesthood, but his participation in a series of progressively radical student circles in Vilnius led to his expulsion from the gymnasium two months before graduation in 1896. His subsequent in volvement with the fledgling Lithuanian Social Democratic Party ended with his arrest in Kaunas in 1897, the first of six arrests in his revolutionary career.
Dzerzhinsky was exiled to and escaped from Siberia on three different occasions. Following his first escape in 1899, he resurfaced in Warsaw, where he founded the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) by merging remnants of previously existing social democratic organizations in Warsaw and Vilnius. Over the next dozen years, despite long periods of confinement, Dzerzhinsky constructed the apparatus of a conspiratorial organization that guided the SDKPiL through and beyond the revolutionary turmoil of 1905-1907. An ideological disciple of Rosa Luxemburg, Dzerzhinsky was a permanent fixture on the party’s executive committee and played a principal role in defining the SDKPiL’s relations with the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDRP). Following the SDKPiL’s formal unification with the Russian party in 1906, Dzerzhinsky represented the former on the RSDRP Central Committee and editorial board.
Dzerzhinsky’s final arrest in Warsaw in 1912 resulted in successive sentences to hard labor. He was released from the Moscow Butyrki prison by the March 1917 revolution. Dzerzhinsky was soon caught up in the Russian revolutionary whirlwind, first in Moscow, then in Petrograd, at which time he entered the Bolshevik Central Committee. Dzerzhinsky played a key role in the Military Revolutionary Committee that carried out the October 1917 coup d’?tat, and he assumed responsibility for security of the Bolshevik headquarters at the Smolny Institute. From there it was a logical step for Dzerzhinsky to head an extraordinary commission, the Cheka, to act as the shield and sword of the Bolshevik regime against its enemies and opponents. Under Dzerzhinsky, the Cheka became more than a political police force and instrument of terror. Instead, Dzerzhinsky’s obsessive personality and dynamic organizational talents drove the Cheka into almost every area of Soviet life, from disease control and social philanthropy to labor mobilization and management of the railroads. Following the civil war, Dzerzhin-sky aligned himself with Bukharin’s faction and, as Chairman of the Supreme Economic Council, became a vigorous proponent of the New Economic Policy. Physically weakened by years spent in varDZERZHINSKY, FELIX EDMUNDOVICH ious prisons, Dzerzhinsky collapsed and died in Boulder, CO: East European Monographs (dist. CoJuly 1926 following an impassioned public defense lumbia University Press). of the policies of the existing Politburo majority. Gerson, Leonard D. (1976). The Secret Police in Lenin’s Rus sia. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. See also: NEW ECONOMIC POLICY; RED TERROR; STATE SE CURITY, ORGANS OF Leggett, George. (1981). The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Po lice. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blobaum, Robert. (1984). Feliks Dzierzynski and the SD- ROBERT E. BLOBAUM KPiL: A Study of the Origins of Polish Communism.
This page intentionally left blank EARLY RUSSIA See KIEVAN RUS; MUSCOVY; NOVGOROD THE GREAT.
In the quantitative analysis of aggregate economic development, modern economists commonly distinguish extensive from intensive growth. Extensive economic growth comes from the expansion of ordinary inputs of labor, reproducible capital (i.e., machines and livestock) and natural resources. Intensive growth, by contrast, involves increased effectiveness, quality, or efficiency of these inputs- usually measured as a growth of total factor productivity.
The early development of the USSR was primarily of the extensive sort. Increased application of labor inputs came from reduced unemployment, use of women previously engaged within the household, diminished leisure (e.g., communist sabbaticals or subotniki), and forced or prison labor. Increased capital investments were a result of forced savings of the population, taxes and compulsory loans, deferred consumption, and a small and varying amount of foreign investment in the country. Natural resources were expanded by new mines and arable acreage, most notably the “virgin lands” opened up in semiarid zones of Kazakhstan during the 1950s. But shifting resources from the backward peasant sector to modern industry, as well as to borrowed technology, also accounted for some intensive growth.
During the 1950s total growth of gross domestic product (GDP) was an impressive 5.7 percent annually, adjusted for inflation, of which approximately 3.3 percent came from increased inputs and only about 2.4 percent from increased productivity. Growth rates declined to 5.1 percent during the 1960s, 3.2 percent during the 1970s, and a mere 1.9 percent during the 1980s. Less than 1 percent of these growth rates came from intensive sources. The increased share of extensive sources meant that growth could not be sustained for several reasons. Population growth was slowing in Russia. Most of the increased labor supplies came from the less educated populations of Soviet Central Asia, where industrial productivity was considerably lower than in the traditional heartland of Russia and Ukraine. These Muslim populations did not move readily to, or were not welcome in, the most productive areas of the USSR,
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such as the Baltic states. Some economists, including Martin Weitzman and Stanley Fischer, attributed the slowdown to the difficulty of substituting new investments for labor, as well. Depletion of oil and ore fields also played a role in reduced growth.
For systemic reasons, the Soviet command economy could not develop the new goods, higher quality, and innovative processes that increasingly characterized the economies of the developed West. Nor could it keep up with the newly industrializing economies of southeast Asia, which by the 1980s displayed higher growth rates, predominantly from intensive sources. See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, IMPERIAL; ECONOMIC GROWTH, INTENSIVE; ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET
Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (1986). Soviet Economic Structure and Performance, 3rd rev. ed. New York: Harper amp; Row. Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (1999). Comparative Economics Systems, 6th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
MARTIN C. SPECHLER
The economic development of the Russian Empire can be traced back to the reign of Peter the Great (1682- 1725), who was determined to industrialize Russia by borrowing contemporary technology from Western Europe and attracting foreign specialists. While military considerations played an important role in this drive, they combined with vast natural resources and large labor pool to develop an increasingly modern industrial sector by eighteenth- century standards. The less progressive policies of Peter’s successors lead to a growing gap between Russia and its industrializing European competitors that became evident in the nineteenth century. Peter’s most significant policy was his entrenchment of serfdom in the village, which was abolished in 1861. After the Crimean War (1854-1856), especially during the tenure of the Minister of Finance Count Sergei Witte (1892-1903), recognition of the dangers of the economic gap bolstered the accelerated industrialization of the Russian Empire. Large government investments in the rail network development expanded the transportation network from 2,000 kilometers in 1861 to more than 70,000 kilometers in 1913. This development helped to open up the iron and coal resources of the Southern regions (Ukraine) and facilitated the marketing of wheat, the major export commodity of the Russian empire. A vibrant textile industry grew in Moscow, and metalworking blossomed in St. Petersburg.
Government policy favored the influx of foreign capital, primarily from England, France, and Belgium, which were attracted by Russia’s vast economic potential. The stabilized ruble exchange rate allowed Russia to join the international gold standard in 1897. The expansion of domestic heavy industries was promoted by government protectionist policies such as high tariffs, profit guarantees, tax reductions and exemptions, and government orders at high prices to insure domestic demand. The ministry of finance was the major agent in this strategy. Bureaucratic intervention into economic matters and bribery were among the numerous limitations on the development of a modern entrepreneurial class in Russia. More recent data suggest that the state was not as
