influence in their particular sphere and to protect themselves against the centre. Behind the facade of bureaucratic hierarchy, power was frequently transacted through 'family influence', with local bosses, such as G. K. Ordzhonikidze in Tbilisi, Kirov in Baku, or F. I. Goloshchekin in Kazakhstan, presiding over extensive personal fiefdoms.
One key difference that marked the period of NEP out from both the civil war and the 1930s was the abandonment of terror as an instrument of political rule. The secret police was not eliminated, but the OGPU, ? which replaced the Cheka, confined itself to routine surveillance of the g population and to external state security. More importantly, a conscious e effort was made to broaden the scope of law. In 1922 a Criminal Code g was enacted, that drew to a surprising degree on elements of tsarist
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The countryside remained as under-governed as in the tsarist period: indeed the ratio of police to population was actually lower than before 1917. Party control was secure only down to the level of the county executives of the Soviets, although during the 1920s rapid headway was made in bolstering party control of township executives. In the village Soviets the party's influence was negligible. Even by 1928 there was only one party organization for every 26 rural centres of population. Peasants took some interest in the village Soviets and township executives, since these influenced the allocation of taxes and land; but they were generally indifferent to the county Soviets: 'We have no objection to government; we need authority, but we don't care how it's organized.' Barely a quarter of members of county executives were peasants, compared with 44% who were 'employees', most of whom had formerly worked for the zemstvos. The members of the township executives and village Soviets, by contrast, consisted overwhelmingly of peasants, generally but not always drawn from the poorer strata. The 'youth who doesn't yet shave', with a record of service in the Red Army and limited primary education, was the archetypal representative of the rural Soviets. Despite efforts to increase female representation in the village Soviets, this only rose from 1% in 1922 to 12% by 1927. The personnel in the lower Soviets did not command much respect, partly because they were seen by older villagers as callow and ignorant of farming, partly because they compensated for their poor salaries with corruption and embezzlement. Complaints against them were legion. Nevertheless peasants also comment on the absence of 'nobs' in local government and on the fact that the Soviets were led by 'our people whom we can scold and have a cigarette with', which suggests that the boundary between state and society had become more porous since the tsarist period.
At the start of NEP the profound alienation of the peasants from the regime was reflected in the fact that only 22% of rural voters (and only 14% of women) took part in the soviet elections of 1922. The'Face to the Countryside' campaign of autumn 1924 sought to revitalize rural
Soviets, exhorting them to be 'polite, attentive, listening to the voice of the peasantry', with the result that participation rose to 47% in 1926-7. In the unprecedentedly free election of 1925, communists were voted out of Soviets in some areas and there were widespread calls for the establishment of peasant unions. The increased assertiveness of the peasantry made the regime uneasy, fuelling anxiety about the kulak threat. It is foolhardy to generalize about the political attitudes of 100 million peasants, except to say that they were far from being a cowed mass. Moreover, in spite of its fears about kulaks, the regime encouraged them to speak out. With some certainty, one can say that enthusiastic supporters of the regime were in a minority, as were its implacable foes. The majority in between probably considered authority in any form oppressive and no doubt felt that the revolution had changed little in the way that government acted upon the governed. Nevertheless tension between peasants and government eased after 1923. A sample of 407 letters from peasants to Red Army soldiers, intercepted by military censors between 1924 and 1925, shows that almost two-thirds were positively disposed to the soviet government - probably a peak figure - but that virtually all were critical of local authorities. Analysis of letters sent to the
Esteemed Mikhail Ivanovich!
I send you greetings from the distant and poor Kirghiz autonomous oblast, greetings from a peasant woman from the Samara steppe. I am writing to you only because you also are a peasant and a worker and at present are the defender and mediator of the poor. Mikhail Ivanovich, we struggled, much blood was spilt, many innocent people perished. They fought for social equality. But where is it? I have seen in our proletarian country, alongside terrifying luxury, even more terrifying poverty. Once again I feel hatred in my breast, as I did in the past, but then I knew at whom to direct my hatred and in whose downfall to rejoice. Our financial director receives 140 rubles a month, plus a furnished apartment with lighting and heating. But the caretaker who has to stoke six boilers each day, cart 12 puds of fuel, carry water on her shoulders so that staff can wash their hands, she receives 12 rubles, has no work clothes, no day off, and no holidays. I have quarrelled with some who call themselves party members, but all they can say in answer to my questions is that it's impossible to make everyone equal. There are some who are clever and some who are fools. But I heard all that under Nicholas. When I was a child I would spend sleepless nights wanting to express my thoughts to that dear old man, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, but I didn't have the courage to write to him and in any case it was dangerous. Now I am 34 and have three children and am almost an invalid, but am still as anxious as before.
K. I. Tokareva to M. I. Kalinin, 9 March 1926, Town Hospital, Urda Bukeevskaia
no stretch of the imagination did this mean that they felt satisfied: indeed the gap between Soviet ideal and quotidian reality probably intensified their disillusionment in a government that fell so short of its own standards. Yet in criticizing the regime forfailing to live up to its ideals, they implicitly ascribed a certain legitimacy to it.
Nation-building
The idea of a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, in which the RSFSR would be one republic among several, was not formalized until 1922. By that date, a series of bilateral treaties between the RSFSR and the republics of
