The Heads of the Logging Industry during the Russian Civil War

Abstract

The article examines under-researched aspects of the activity of managers of the forest industry during the Civil war. It is mainly based on archival documents that are introduced into the scholarship for the first time. The author used materials from two central and four regional archives. The territorial scope of the study covers the Penza, Samara, Saratov, Simbirsk provinces, and the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1918–1921, logging managers were under severe pressure from Cheka. The article deals in detail with the example of investigation on the implementation of the decree of 1919 on the procurement of wood by forest workers by personal labor in the provinces of the Volga region conducted in the summer of 1920 by the provincial emergency commissions. Frequently, in the context of the economic crisis and the legal chaos of the Civil war, some of the leading personnel of the forest industry were tempted to break the law for personal gain. However, both real criminals and falsely accused employees were arrested. According to the author, despite the spread of cases of crime among managers, most of the logging managers in extreme wartime conditions honestly fulfilled their official and civil duty, providing the country with fuel. The author comes to the conclusion that the business manager in Russia inevitably finds himself in a situation of balancing between finding the solution to the problem and malpractice bordering on a crime.