Land and Food, Sickle and Hammer: The Rise and Fall of the Left SR-Bolshevik Coalition in Penza Province, December 1917-August 1918

• In Event: All Power to the Soviets: Power and Authority in the Russian Revolution

Abstract

From December 1917, when Soviet Power came to the Middle Volga province of Penza, to mid July 1918, the Bolsheviks and Left SRs ruled the province in coalition. This involved a division of labor whereby the Left SRs presided over land reform and the Bolsheviks sought to implement the grain monopoly they had inherited from the Provisional government. This paper explores the dynamics and tensions between the parties as they played out between district and provincial officials. While the Treaty of Brest Litovsk brought an end to the PLSR role in Moscow, in Penza the coalition continued through the Spring of 1918 and into the summer. Left SR efforts to normatize land holding are contrasted with Bolshevik struggles to maintain adequate provisioning of the province, which resulted in a result of district commissars against the grain monopoly. When the Bolsheviks sought to persuade their coalition partners of the necessity of the Food Supply dictatorship, including the formation of committees of the rural poor, Left SR opposition resulted to compromise language that diluted Bolshevik mobilization efforts. This paper examines the fraying coalition relationship as the civil war front approached Penza in July, the 1918 harvest turned Penza into one of the few producing provinces remaining under Soviet control, and Moscow dispatched a cohort of militant Bolsheviks to Penza to take control of the provincial soviet and implement central directives, particularly in the realm of grain procurement.

Author

• Peter Fraunholtz, Northeastern U