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The University of Chicago Smuggler States: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Contraband Trade Across the Soviet Frontier, 1919-1924

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The University of Chicago Smuggler States: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Contraband Trade Across the Soviet Frontier, 1919-1924 THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO SMUGGLER STATES: POLAND, LATVIA, ESTONIA, AND CONTRABAND TRADE ACROSS THE SOVIET FRONTIER, 1919-1924 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY ANDREY ALEXANDER SHLYAKHTER CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2020 Илюше Abstract Smuggler States: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Contraband Trade Across the Soviet Frontier, 1919-1924 What happens to an imperial economy after empire? How do economics, security, power, and ideology interact at the new state frontiers? Does trade always break down ideological barriers? The eastern borders of Poland, Latvia, and Estonia comprised much of the interwar Soviet state’s western frontier – the focus of Moscow’s revolutionary aspirations and security concerns. These young nations paid for their independence with the loss of the Imperial Russian market. Łódź, the “Polish Manchester,” had fashioned its textiles for Russian and Ukrainian consumers; Riga had been the Empire’s busiest commercial port; Tallinn had been one of the busiest – and Russians drank nine-tenths of the potato vodka distilled on Estonian estates. Eager to reclaim their traditional market, but stymied by the Soviet state monopoly on foreign trade and impatient with the slow grind of trade talks, these countries’ businessmen turned to the porous Soviet frontier. The dissertation reveals how, despite considerable misgivings, their governments actively abetted this traffic. The Polish and Baltic struggles to balance the heady profits of the “border trade” against a host of security concerns shaped everyday lives and government decisions on both sides of the Soviet frontier. Drawing on government archives, business records, and periodicals from seven countries, the dissertation uncovers the changing composition and scale of these “semi-contraband” (and fully- contraband) flows that Soviet authorities struggled to stem. It reveals the centrality of cross-border Jewish networks to this trade, and the implications of this centrality for Polish and Latvian Jews. It traces (and maps) the proliferation of hundreds of government-sanctioned “barter stations” along iii Poland’s, Latvia’s, and Estonia’s Soviet frontiers, and profiles their operators and visitors. While these bustling shops supplied smugglers with goods, they supplied the Bolsheviks with a tangible, everyday manifestation of hostile capitalist encirclement. In the end, the dissertation suggests that by linking Soviet consumers with the outside world against Moscow’s wishes, the ports and distilleries of Riga, Tallinn, and Tartu and the cloth factories of Łódź inadvertently fashioned the foundations of the interwar Iron Curtain. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract … iii Acknowledgments … viii List of Figures … xix List of Graphs … xxi List of Tables … xxii List of Maps … xxiii Introduction … 1 PART I. The Soviet Smuggler State, 1919-20 Chapter One. Solomon’s Smugglers, Hermes’s Spies: “State Contraband,” Intelligence, and Power on the Soviet Frontier … 26 ● The Proposal … 26 ● Preludes … 29 ● The Ministry of State Contraband … 34 ● Comrade Eiduk … 40 ● “Contraband Agencies of a Permanent Nature” … 44 ● A “Free Port” Between the Frontlines … 50 ● Solomon’s Smugglers, Hermes’s Spies … 53 ● “Contraband Camouflage” … 61 ● Eiduk’s Empire: the Cheka Consolidates Control over the Traffic … 65 ● Risky Opportunism: the Narkomvneshtorg and the May 1920 Decree “On the Struggle with Contraband Trade” … 68 ● Conclusion … 75 PART II. A Schizoid Frontier: New Nations, Smuggler States, 1920-21 Introduction … 82 Chapter Two. Fear and Longing in the Baltics … 86 ● Foodstuffs Fears … 86 ● Latvia’s Longing … 91 ● Estonia’s Experiment … 94 ○ A Salty Start … 94 ○ The Land Captain’s Proposal … 98 ○ Baltic Leapfrog … 102 ○ Implementation … 103 ○ Disillusionment … 108 v ● Latvia: Riga’s Reforms … 120 ○ The Frontier as a Site of “Speculation” … 120 ○ Political Patronage … 123 ○ The Debate … 125 ○ Latvia’s System and its Discontents … 132 ○ Implementation … 136 Chapter Three. Poland: Longing, Deluge, and Doubts … 143 ● Łódź’s Longing … 143 ● Deluge … 146 ● Doubts … 157 ● Accommodation … 162 ● The Red and the Gray … 167 ● Scale and Significance … 175 ● Doubts Resurgent and Guerillas Insurgent … 183 Conclusion to Part II … 191 PART III. Border Boom: Banner Year on the Soviet Frontier, 1922 Introduction … 194 Chapter Four. Poland: Back to Business Unusual … 198 ● Downarowicz’s Retreat … 198 ● Trust and Suspicion: Jews and Smuggling on the Soviet-Polish Frontier … 207 ● Border Boom … 223 ● The Red and the Gray, Part Two … 230 ● Border Boom Continued … 237 ● A Tale of Two Columns: Determining the Scale and Contents of the Polish Traffic … 245 Chapter Five. The Baltics: Stills, Smugglers, and Shareholders … 251 ● Estonia: a False Retreat … 251 ● The Stuff in Demand: Determining the Contents and Scale of the Estonian Traffic … 256 ● Latvia: Smugglers and Shareholders … 268 ● Profit and Plunder … 291 Conclusion to Part III … 296 PART IV. Rebalancing the Scales, 1923-24 Introduction … 302 Chapter Six. Gaslighting Moscow: Soviet Protests, Baltic Evasions … 307 ● Riga’s Retreat … 307 ● Latvian Legerdemain … 310 vi ● Estonian Evasions … 315 ● Latvia: Denying and Dealing … 322 Chapter Seven. Rebalancing the Scales in the Baltics … 329 ● Estonia: From Polite Evasion to Hostile Accommodation … 329 ○ Moscow Renews its Pressure … 329 ○ The Traffic Declines and Loses Support … 334 ○ Tallinn’s Final Straw: the December Uprising … 340 ● Latvia: Rebalancing the Scales … 346 ○ Worries and Hopes … 346 ○ Smugglers, Spies, and Raiders … 350 ○ Diminishing Fortunes on the Frontier … 356 ○ Riga’s Qualified Retreat … 363 Chapter Eight. Poland: Persisting in the Balancing Act … 371 ● Łódź: a Lasting Longing … 371 ● Polish Impunity: Causes and Consequences … 383 ● Bolsheviks, “Bandits,” and Business at the Border … 388 Conclusion to Part IV … 406 Conclusion … 398 Bibliography … 417 vii Acknowledgments The research and writing of this dissertation, as well as my graduate training, were made possible by generous financial, intellectual, and emotional support from many quarters. The sources of financial support are the easiest to identify. My research, writing, graduate training, and language learning have been supported by an International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council; a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award and two Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships from the United States Department of Education; an Individual Advanced Research Opportunity grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board; a Dissertation Fellowship from the Doris G. Quinn Foundation; a University Center for International Studies American Council of Learned Societies Matching Scholarship from the Summer Language Institute, University of Pittsburgh; and a University Fellowship, Overseas Dissertation Research Grant, Kunstadter Research Travel Grant, and Doolittle-Harrison Award from the University of Chicago. I am deeply grateful to all of these institutions, and the people behind them, for making this work possible; needless to say, they bear no responsibility for the views expressed here. The intellectual and emotional debts that I have accumulated are harder to fathom. My deepest gratitude is reserved for my dissertation committee chair, Eleonory Gilburd. When I reemerged two years ago after a multiyear hiatus in the private sector and declared my intention to complete the dissertation, Eleonory responded within hours, graciously agreeing to take on the role even as she herself was navigating the uncertain terrain of the tenure track. Since then, she has offered me a level of support, understanding, and grace which, while entirely unsurprising to those who know her, still feels extraordinary: taking the time to write tailored recommendation letters; responding quickly and thoughtfully to every email; offering generous feedback on drafts; viii giving encouragement when needed; advocating on my behalf; and generally guiding me through my return to academia. Had she done any one of those things while parenting and home-schooling her son alone amid a once-in-a-century pandemic, it would have been, as the Passover song goes, dayenu – enough. By doing all of them, she has managed to give me something that few can give: the feeling that I, and this project, are worth fighting for. Thank you, Eleonory. I am so grateful that you are in my corner. Whatever abilities I have developed as a historian – above all, the ability to question assumptions – are due in large measure to Sheila Fitzpatrick, who served as my advisor prior to her retirement. This dissertation, and the larger project of which it is part, grew out of an April afternoon conversation in her office. Sheila’s own research interests had, by that point, moved into the postwar period, and she encouraged her students to explore its largely uncharted waters. Listing possible avenues of inquiry, she mentioned drugs in the 1960s. “What about smuggling?” I asked. “What about smuggling?” Sheila echoed, with a signature lift of the eyebrows. I had a topic. For a mix of intellectual and emotional reasons, I resisted Sheila’s postwar invitation. I wanted to experience Soviet history firsthand, from its beginnings, through archives rather than books. I wanted my archival documents yellowed and crumbling, and the streets they describe to be filled with horse-drawn wagons as well as automobiles. To her credit, Sheila unstintingly
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