In our troubled time of rampant bureaucratic arbitrariness, financial chaos, and even just brazen theft, the problem of army survival has never been more acute. The head of the Rear of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation-Deputy Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation, Colonel-General V. Isakov, frankly admitted that the troops do not have enough basic necessities: food, clothing, medicines. Well, it's time to turn over the pages of Russian history and remember how the issues of logistics support for military personnel were resolved under the tsar-father and in the first years of Soviet power. There is much to think about here, including for those homegrown economists who have led us into a dense forest of economic confusion.

Contrary to the prevailing opinion in society, Russian officers (if they were not from a rich family) always had a difficult life financially, and especially in difficult years for the country. It is no accident that in the middle of the last century, in the interests of helping the military, economic committees under units, officers 'regimental artels, loan and savings banks, uniform capitals, etc. arise. And in the last decade of the outgoing XIX century, when there was a sharp reduction in the military budget, the military press loudly began to talk about the problems of the military:" Military career should not be less attractive than other careers. The amount of payment, combined with the needs of the environment, should be sufficient, "wrote the magazine"Military Collection". The magazine "Scout" concretized: "Junior officers find it difficult to make ends meet. Not only is there not enough money for beer and tobacco, but even for the maintenance of underwear and clothing." From Kiev, it was reported that " almost every officer usually has zero by the 19th." Minister of War P. Vanovsky said to General A. Kuropatkin: "A prisoner in a tavern gets more than an officer ... in Moscow, officers shoot because of embezzlement of 150 rubles."

In military circles, there was a growing belief that the socio - economic processes taking place in society, the capital gaining strength, could not but affect " the society of officers very noticeably? armies". With this in mind, attempts were made to provide social protection for officers. One of its forms was the military-consumer cooperation, which lasted 44 years (26 years under capitalism and 18 under socialism). It proved to be most effective in difficult years.

At the turn of the century, a general economic crisis broke out. In Russia, it was aggravated by the poor harvest of 1891 and its consequence-a two-year famine. Agriculture then accounted for 2/3 of gross output. All this, of course, affected the reduction of the military budget.

In the press of those years, which in Soviet times was considered to be biased, scientific calculations appeared, indicating, for example, that German officers, " against our state content... more than 25%", in the Austro-Hungarian army-almost one and a half times, etc.

In the context of the economic crisis, the government, despite its negative attitude towards any form of public associations, allowed the cooperation of the population, including officers. Of the 189 consumer societies registered in 1891 - 1895, 13 were military. The first Economic Society of Officers of the Guards Corps was formed in December 1891. Its members were officers of the Guard, as well as with a large number of shares of the Emperor Nicholas II, members of the royal family, the Minister of War, officers of the General Staff, 40 senior police officers, gendarmes and border guards. By 1896, the society united 7564 officers of 39 Guard units.

By 1901, there were already 27 officers ' economic societies operating in Russia - "economok", as they were then called. Their goal was "to obtain at all costs, and as soon as possible, an indivisible social capital, and build on the profitability from it to reduce the cost of ordinary but expensive items of expenditure of their members." The charter of such a society read as follows: "To supply its members with the necessary products of consumption, and mainly-items of uniforms, equipment, shoes and underwear (the state did not provide), of quite good quality, at the lowest trade prices; to enable them to make savings from the profits of society..."

Officer economic societies were rapidly gaining creative power. For example, "Gvardeyka" (also called its society by the officers of the Guard) by 1903 had a capital of 130,786 rubles, which made it possible to fully satisfy the consumer needs of officers.

In the conditions of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905, when the Main Quartermaster's Office was forced to admit that "in addition to state holidays, various kinds of monetary allowances ...nothing has yet been done to facilitate the life of officers", when "the food of officers and officials remained in their own care", when "the officer was unable to get anything", the military marching departments of the St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Kiev officer economic societies came to the aid of the officer corps of the active army, which served 17 corps in the Soviet Union. as part of three armies. Gvardeyka sent 381 wagons of goods worth 459 million rubles to Manchuria, while Ekonomka sent 515 wagons for a total of 175,526 rubles and 47 kopecks.

The absolute majority of officers who participated in the war highly appreciated the activities of military marching departments. General B. Gerois wrote in Memoirs of My Life (Paris, 1969):: "In these "shops" you could buy not only what you needed, but also something extra." The commander of the troops in Manchuria, General A. Kuropatkin, reported on November 7, 1904. To His Highness the Commander-in-Chief: "On the sixth of November, I visited Gujiazi on the road... branch of the Society of Officers of the Guards Corps. I'm glad to witness it... on the highly useful activities of this institution for the Active Army. They work successfully and energetically in difficult situations. Further development of the company's activities is highly desirable."

During the First World War, when the size of the mobilized army reached 4 million people (later - 10 million), the country needed a huge amount of food. For example, 12 million pounds of grain, 6 million pounds of meat and 30 pounds of grain fodder were needed to maintain the army for two months. Naturally, the state was not able to meet such requests.

Military-economic societies have revised their mobilization plans based on the experience of the last war. According to them, the Moscow "housekeeper" deployed 41 military marching units: 14 - on the Southern, 16 - on the Western and 11 - on the Northern fronts. The number of members of the society has doubled in comparison with 1913 and reached 11 thousand people. Accordingly, net profit from commercial operations increased to RUB 1,375,625. 81 kopecks.

During the war, officers ' economic societies were increasingly transformed from caste societies into all-genealogical societies. Top military officials in 1916 went to create their own new elite organization - the "Economic Society of the Main departments of the Ministry of War". In another law enforcement agency, the "Consumer Society of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Employees)" was created. This happened at a time when the army switched to the 400-gram norm of bread, when, by the decision of a Special Meeting, parts of the troops and even hospitals began to be withdrawn from the capital, and the bread ration for the population was reduced to 200 grams. At the same time, the organizers of the cooperative movement in the army, with the help of the committees of the "Zemsky Union", launched work on creating all-family consumer "dugouts". In 1916, there were 216 of them. The turnover per shop averaged 10 thousand rubles per month.

Officers 'economic societies, which grew out of simple economic formations, turned into solid "economic organizations". This conclusion belongs to A. Kapitokhin , an economist who worked in the Soviet era (1928), and who is hardly suspected of having a special liking for bourgeois "housekeepers".

In the period between the revolutions of 1917 The Provisional Government has been left with an extremely frustrated economy. The supply of the front was sharply reduced. Officers '"housekeepers" were not able to carry out unscheduled supply of food and consumer goods to officers. Within the framework of the "Regulations on Cooperative partnerships and their Unions" adopted by the Provisional Government (20.03.1917) and "Regulations on the All-Russian Zemstvo Union" (07.07.1917), consumer societies are being created on the fronts with a network of the already mentioned "dugouts", the average monthly turnover of which on all fronts reached 7 million rubles.

The regimental shops were not fully cooperative entities, but they adhered to firm rules: products were procured as much as possible in bulk and without intermediaries, they were distributed collectively among the members, each member of the cooperative had one vote, the cooperative was publicly accessible, the admission of new members was not limited, the release of goods was made at average market prices, without competing with private entrepreneurs. The cooperative had its own elected governing body. The Congress of Divisional Deputies of the South-Western Front stated: "The regimental shops have based their work on the principles of people's cooperation," and the resolution adopted read:: "Our consumer soldier shops should be united in one powerful union, which will give them a powerful and unified force and will merge them into the common channel of the great people's cooperation." The regimental cooperatives, despite the short-term nature of their existence, did a lot in economic and political terms, but the civil war prevented them from developing in full force.

After October 1917, the leading Economic Society of Officers of the Guards Corps in the army was nationalized, its trade and production enterprises were transferred to the People's Commissariat of Food. The same fate befell other societies, reflecting the general negative attitude towards trade, entrepreneurship, and cooperation as manifestations of capitalist relations at that time. The new "management" issued an announcement to the trade unions and factory committees, which read: "It is hereby announced that the former Guards Economic Society has passed into the hands of the people, and therefore the new Board of the Society requests the Trade Unions and Factory Committees to notify the comrades of the members that the latter can receive all the basic necessities and household items in the Society, considering it a bourgeois enterprise." According to V. Lenin, in nationalization "a lot was done simply wrong... they didn't comply with the measures, they didn't know how to comply with it." Military cooperation was no exception. In order to support the young Red Army during the difficult years of the Civil War, the former military-cooperative organizations underwent a number of reorganizations that significantly reduced the effectiveness of their work.

In the conditions of strict centralization of the supply of the population, excluding any procurement operations by anyone other than the People's Commissariat of Food, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee considered it possible to decide in the interests of obtaining non-standardized food and consumer goods by the army itself to organize a number of cooperatives: the "United Military Cooperative" (EVKO), then the "Central Management of Cooperative Shops" (ZUKL) Central Administration of Maritime Cooperatives (CENUMORKOOP) and a semi-cooperative organization-the Petrograd District Military Procurement Commission (POVZAK).

The following figures indicate the composition and work done by some of these organizations. "EVKO" by December 1920 united 195 organizations with 47 thousand members served by it. By the beginning of 1920, ZUKL had 20 warehouses and bases, 10 food points, over 100 tea shops, 40 hairdressers, about 158 car counters, shoemakers', tailors ' workshops, and even a candy factory. In case of a shortage of goods stock, a breakdown of transport, military units and institutions of the military department were delivered goods in the amount of 170241 790 rubles. 64 kopecks.

However, in the conditions of the policy of "war communism" and the increase in the size of the army to 5.3 million people (1920), these organizations could not resist, and EVKO also declared that "it cannot continue to work due to the conditions of the communist system."

With the end of the civil war and in the context of a new economic policy, the Central Committee of the RCP(b), under the pressure of the spontaneous movement of the Red Army masses, went to revive the military-consumer system in the Red Army on a new, socialist basis. Its official recognition was the resolution of the Central Committee of the Party of August 9, 1921 "On the state of the Army", adopted in an unplanned manner, and the resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of August 16, 1921 "On military cooperation". On May 24, 1922, the decision of the Council of People's Commissars was extended to the police.

Having partially returned some of the previously nationalized ekonomok objects through the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars or sued them, having received useless military property from the military department, the military cooperation launched an intensive, huge-scale work in the interests of meeting the consumer requests of shareholders. In 1923-1924 it had: 351 stores, 127 branches, 470 military stores, 188 industrial and agricultural enterprises (in 1922 there were 580 of them). This cooperative system lived off its "labor forces", procurement and trade, supplies for the army on a counter-contract basis of food, some materials, colonial goods, etc.

The military and paramilitary departments thus received reliable socio-economic support. By 1929, more than 70 percent of the budget of people in overcoats was spent through the military-cooperative trade network and social and cultural facilities.

In the context of the collapse of the NEP, when the country's consumer cooperation was extremely nationalized, when the government introduced a card system and the army had almost nothing to feed and clothe, the RVS of the USSR, the OGPU, in response to the call of the Central Committee of the Party and the Soviet Government for self-supply of the population, developed a new, more advanced concept of military-cooperative service for the Red Army and OGPU command staff. Closed military cooperatives and military farms were established locally, the Central Military Cooperative Department (CVCU) was established at the Centrosoyuz; an independent system was established in the OGPU, headed by the Cooperative Management of troops, OGPU employees and police.

The new structures, with the increased assistance and organizational support of the Central Union, launched active work to supply the command staff with food and consumer goods, organize public canteens, health camps for children, etc.However, democratic cooperative principles and state-planned principles came into conflict. Logical for the Stalinist leadership was the reorganization of cooperation. The subsequent course of events was completely unnatural...

In accordance with the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU(b) of September 29, 1935 "On the work of consumer cooperation in the countryside", the Centrosoyuz was reorganized, and the military cooperative system of the Red Army and the similar system of the NKVD, together with the entire urban general consumer cooperation, were transferred to the People's Commissariat of

In the conditions of modern market relations, law enforcement agencies, and above all the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, in terms of economic support for personnel, could not adapt to the economic conditions of the transition period, and the relevant research institutes and other scientific forces did not help them in this. The domestic and foreign experience of military-cooperative construction turned out to be completely unclaimed. It seems that they don't even want to know about it. The President of the Russian Federation stated at a meeting of the command staff:: "The Armed Forces themselves will not solve the problem of financing... they should not be pushed to the path of commerce - they have their own tasks." The fact that" it is impossible to push " was understood by both Nicholas II, V. Lenin, and I. Stalin, and their assistants - the most prominent economists. Nevertheless, as already mentioned, the military cooperative movement proved to be useful. In a number of countries in Europe and Asia (England, Germany, Italy, Turkey, China), military and economic societies are still working successfully with the support of governments, army and navy commands, effectively using their internal potential and economic resources of their countries.

The situation with the material and financial support of the army and navy is now catastrophic. The Ministry of Defense made an application for 1996 in the amount of 8 trillion rubles. However, only 6.2 trillion rubles were allocated in the budget, and in reality, by November 1, 1996, the Ministry of Defense received only 2.9 trillion rubles. In the first quarter of 1997, 11 trillion rubles (53.7 percent) were actually allocated out of the 20.7 trillion rubles provided for by law in the budget. Only 40 percent of the required amount was allocated for production needs. Only one out of ten servicemen was fully equipped with the required uniforms. Sociological studies have shown that 64 percent of military personnel are constantly experiencing financial difficulties, 29 percent are below the poverty line, and 50 percent of officers have decided to leave the army after the contract expires. This is the price of a financial squeeze.

A semi-official "officer labor market" has been formed and operates in the country, "brokers" and "merchants" in uniform, "home-based cooperators" have appeared, and part-time work on the side (as watchmen in stores and offices, movers in markets and commodity bases, etc.) is almost universal. Retired military officers are often served in security agencies on a commercial basis and as personal bodyguards to the "new Russians". Independent intermediary and commercial organizations with a criminal connotation are emerging. The Main Military Prosecutor's Office states that the number of economic crimes among officers is growing: abuse of power, embezzlement, fraud, etc. What becomes public knowledge is only a small part of the huge iceberg of economic crime, the true extent of which no one knows.

Military cooperation, being generally accessible and "transparent" in its activities, has been working creatively in Russia for 70 years and only because of not so much objective as subjective reasons could it not be fully revealed. In modern conditions, taking into account the critical state of the army, navy, troops and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, it could become one of the most effective means of socio-economic protection for those who serve and those who are old (or prematurely) in the reserve. Of course, this is not a panacea for all material misery, but I would like to hope that the topic raised in the article will attract the attention of the authorities in power.

Officer maintenance* in the Russian and foreign armies (rub.)

Rank and position

Russia

Germany

Austria

France

Full General (Corps Commander)

10595

14694

11934

11938

Lieutenant General (Division Chief)

6756

8838

6953

10615

Major General (Brigade Commander)

4717

5669

4668

6326

Colonel (Regimental commander)

4511

4449

3526

4103

Lieutenant Colonel (Battalion commander)

1880

3318

2530

2635

Captain (company commander)

1332

2421

1550

1512

Staff Captain (Company commander)

1305

1884

1397

-

Lieutenant

695

1071

1017

1044

Second lieutenant

677

895

915

936

* All types of payments are included and the average figures for all branches of the armed forces are taken; the comparison is given in terms of rubles.

Permanent link to this publication: