Leon Trotsky: "A little noticeable, but highly important cog in the state machine"

["Eastern Outlook" N 230, October 15/28, 1900, my own translation of the Russian text. Corrections by English native speakers would be extremely welcome]

Rural society is a legally indivisible element of the Russian state system, a kind of social cell, although this name can only have a purely formal meaning in this case. No one denies that at the present time the village community is far from being an organism that is homogeneous in structure, self-sufficient in functions. Within its formal legal shell, a process of differentiation took place and is taking place, the complication of functions and relations within the community-cell and next to it – a process of increasing interaction of this cell with the entire social organism. This interaction, further complicating, in turn, life within the community, actually erased and erases communal boundaries, revealing a tendency to automatically group social elements both in the city and in the countryside in a completely new way, according to new characteristics.

"... The most superficial glance at the modern village," says the heartfelt artist of the Russian countryside and passionate defender of its interests, "is enough not to 'lump together' all the inhabitants of the village and all village opinions and desires. Basing the homogeneity of village interests on communal land ownership is just as unfair as if to establish on the basis of communal ownership of the St. Petersburg water pipeline ... equality of aims, desires, aspirations, even to a certain extent, among all thousands of people inhabiting thousands of apartments with the same water that is piped through them... " (G. I. Uspensky, "Alignment under One".)

Despite the extreme complexity of village life, its administrative system has not undergone almost any changes; the volost [=rural municipality] board continues to be the ministry of the volost. New requests, needs, tasks of village life receive answers, satisfaction, and solutions with the help of the old volost administrative mechanism, which is less and less able to meet its purpose.

In European Russia, with the complication of the tasks of rural life, many extremely important aspects of it passed into the jurisdiction of the zemstvo, a body more competent, more powerful than the "volost", and there is no doubt that a further healthy development of our social life will lead to the separation of all national or general regional (provincial, district) issues and their transfer to the jurisdiction of government and zemstvo bodies with a further expansion of the powers of the latter.

But even in European Russia, where – partly alongside, partly above the rural and volost government – there is a zemstvo, the sphere of volost government is too versatile, wide, even all-encompassing for the activities of this body to meet all its tasks.

What, then, can be said about Siberia, where there is no zemstvo, but there are entire branches, and, moreover, extremely significant ones, of rural life, completely or almost completely not affecting the "Russian" volost? Take, for example, those exiled to settlement and administrative exiles, school and road affairs ...

To give the reader an idea of ​​the size of the paperwork of the volost board, we will bring to his attention a dry, but instructive list of "books" and "affairs" (of course, not all), the keeping of which lies with the responsibilities of the volost clerk and his assistants (1-4).

Family-related lists (statistics of the volost population); household-related lists (statistics of the household-related economy – inventory, workers, even boarders ...); a levy book of taxes and duties (the most complex financial statistics and next to it – financial policy!); the recording of transfer amounts (the "volost" plays the role of the treasury, which gives out salaries to the district doctor, paramedics, midwife, subsidies to administrative exiles ...); mundane amounts (accounting of the volost "Ministry of Finance"); transactions and contracts (the volost board acts in this case as a notary's office for transactions between peasants or between peasants and persons of other estates); decisions of the volost court: a) in civil cases, b) on minor offences; peasants' criminal records; the confiscation and issue of passports; the dispersal of common horses; the state of food supplies, the securing of property (property left unattended after a death without heirs, property of persons missing, gone to war ...; material evidence stored in the "volost" is also included here); low livestock; trade certificates (available, it is true, not in all volosts); registration of the conscription of young people into active service; militias of I. and II. category; local lower ranks of replacements (in case of conscription, transfer to the militia, etc.); lower ranks of replacements leaving the volost; lower ranks of replacements arriving from other volosts.

All these "books to be kept" are available both in Siberia and in every "Russian" volost. Especially for the Siberian volost, it is necessary to add more books for prisoners and exiles; for the registration of those exiled to settlement assigned to the volost (in some volosts there are more of them than of peasants); females exiled to settlement (a relatively insignificant number); payroll (those exiled to settlement are taxed in favour of the "settlement capital"); peasants exiled by common sentences; prisoners in transit; the arrival and consumption of food allowances for both held and transit prisoners.

These are the main "books". I am afraid, however, that some experienced volost clerk will find many significant gaps in my list. But I think, even the above listed are enough. Volost activity, however, is not limited to "books": besides "books" there are also "cases", which are innumerable.

Here you will find cases about the repair of roads, the opening of schools, about the state of the harvest or about the prospects of it, matters of guardianship, etc., etc., etc. If you were to list everything, then, in the words of the evangelist, the whole world would not be able to grasp the books kept. It is not for nothing, that one volost clerk I know, when the conversation touched his duties, laconically defined them with the following formula: "in one word, alpha and omega", and if there was a fresh person among the interlocutors, the clerk took a crumpled sheet of paper torn from a wall calendar out of a spectacle case, on the reverse side of which, between the list of historical Jubilee events and lunch menus, there was the title borrowed by us as the headline to this note: "A little noticeable, but highly important cog in the state machine", and under the headline we read: "Which department is not in relation to the volost clerk? Not to mention the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the ranks of almost all departments refer to the volost board: military – with the different draft lists, financial – in the person of tax inspectors, judicial – in the person of investigators and bailiffs, public education – in the person of inspectors, spiritual – in the person of the deans, the department of agriculture – for statistics. Except for Naval and Foreign Affairs, all of them refer to the volost board with demands and instructions – and the clerk must give an answer to all of them."

"And that is still not true," added the clerk, hiding the precious document at the bottom of the case. "We have also relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When our sailors got drunk in England and were late for the departure of the steamer, the consul then sent them home, and the consul and I we had correspondence on this matter ... And the naval replacement people? After all, we keep the alphabetical list of them, which means that we are also related to the Navy Ministry. In one word, alpha and omega! .. "

So, the volost clerk unites in his person: a financier, a statistician, an agronomist, a railway engineer, an architect, a notary, a judicial investigator ...

It is understandable, then, if all the clerk's worries go to the casual side of the matter. He determines in precise numbers the size of the crop "on the basis of tests", which he did not actually carry out. He draws up projects for the repair of roads, the construction and repair of bridges, sitting in the building of the volost board, and then he reports on the work done on the basis of his own project, while in fact no one repaired any roads, no bridges have been built or repaired. And many other branches of his activity, of necessity, are simplified by the volost clerk in the same way.

And the semi-fictional figures delivered by him go to the superior, are processed, form the basis of many official and zemstvo statistical reviews and studies, which, in turn, constitute the subject of fierce polemics of patriotic publicists.

We would like to point out, however, that the case work, i.e. purely clerical work of the volost is done in most cases flawlessly ... "Accuracy in the performance of their paperwork", says the writer quoted above, "is currently the most prominent feature of village life." After giving a description of the complex, but, so to speak, organized turmoil that was caused in the volost by the "urgently important" papers "during the mobilization" (in the summer of 1877), G. I. Uspensky says:

"And all this literally 'without talking' about the reason, without asking about where to and why they will drive. Of course, women, mothers, brides cry; the shoemaker Peter also regrets that he has to give up his skill and sell the instrument for whatever; but no one for a single minute will stop to ask: why and where to? The order came from the volost. But all these questions, why they are being driven and where to they are driven, no one will answer – neither the village elder, nor the volost foreman, nor the clerk. none of them will ask, or rather, they have lost the habit of asking and sorting out what comes here, to the village, in the form of a commanding, but never explanatory paper. "

A quarter of a century has passed since then. How much has changed in this side of life? …