Concession Policy in the Crosshairs of Revolutionary Self-Consciousness: Labor and Departmental Conflicts

Abstract

The New Economic Policy solved a number of economic and production problems for early the Soviet Union. At the same time, it caused a series of conflicts associated with the delays of the reconstruction period, as well as with the disappointment of the more political active part of the population as it undermined the slogans of the socialist revolution as too distantly obtainable a prospect. The article examines the relations of a specific group of foreign concessionaires with local authorities, and the population of the territories handed over to them by the Soviet authorities for the exploitation of natural resources by utilizing a large number of diverse sources. The emphasis of the authors is placed on two types of non-industrial concessions - foresting (in Northern provinces) and agriculture, practices which continued, to some extent, the tradition of German colonization of southern Russian lands. The authors reveal common and different behavioral strategies of the concessionaires in their relations with the workers, and with the trade union activists; as well as in the attitude of the population and the local party and Soviet authorities to them. Without dwelling on the “predatory” forms of exploitation of the conceded natural resources, or the state line of gradually winding down the concession program, the authors consider another reason for the liquidation of concessions - protest by workers as their self-consciousness was awakened by the “return” of elements of Western capitalism by local party functionaries.