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War communism or military communism (russian: Военный коммунизм, ''Voyennyy kommunizm'') was the economic and political system that existed in
Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...
during the
Russian Civil War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Russian Civil War , partof = the Russian Revolution and the aftermath of World War I , image = , caption = Clockwise from top left: {{flatlist, *Soldiers ...
from 1918 to 1921. According to
Soviet historiography Soviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union (USSR). In the USSR, the study of history was marked by restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Soviet historiography i ...
, the ruling
Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
administration adopted this policy with the goal of keeping towns (the
proletarian The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philoso ...
power-base) and the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
stocked with food and weapons since circumstances dictated new economic measures. During the civil war, the old
capitalist Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, private ...
market-based system was unable to produce food and expand the industrial base. War communism has often been described as simple
authoritarian Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic vot ...
control by the ruling and military castes to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology. War communism began in June 1918, enforced by the Supreme Economic Council (russian: Высший Совет Народного Хозяйства), known as the Vesenkha. It ended on 21 March 1921 with the beginning of the
New Economic Policy The New Economic Policy (NEP) () was an economic policy of the Soviet Union proposed by Vladimir Lenin in 1921 as a temporary expedient. Lenin characterized the NEP in 1922 as an economic system that would include "a free market and capitalism, ...
, which lasted until 1928.


Policies

War communism included the following policies: #
Nationalization Nationalization (nationalisation in British English) is the process of transforming privately-owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to p ...
of all industries and the introduction of strict
centralized Centralisation or centralization (see spelling differences) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning and decision-making, framing strategy and policies become concentrated within a particu ...
management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activitie ...
# State control of foreign trade # Strict discipline for workers, with strikes forbidden # Obligatory labor duty by non-working classes (" militarization of labor", including an early version of the
Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the State Political Directorate, GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= ...
) # ''
Prodrazvyorstka ''Prodrazvyorstka'', also transliterated ''Prodrazverstka'' ( rus, продразвёрстка, p=prədrɐˈzvʲɵrstkə, short for , ) was a policy and campaign of confiscation of grain and other agricultural products from peasants at nominal ...
'' – requisition of agricultural surplus (in excess of an absolute minimum) from peasants for centralized distribution among the remaining population #
Rationing Rationing is the controlled distribution of scarce resources, goods, services, or an artificial restriction of demand. Rationing controls the size of the ration, which is one's allowed portion of the resources being distributed on a particular ...
of food and most commodities, with centralized distribution in urban centers #
Private enterprise A privately held company (or simply a private company) is a company whose shares and related rights or obligations are not offered for public subscription or publicly negotiated in the respective listed markets, but rather the company's stock is ...
banned # Military-style control of the railways Because the Bolshevik government implemented all these measures in a time of civil war, they were far less coherent and coordinated in practice than they might appear on paper. Large areas of Russia remained outside Bolshevik control, and poor communications meant that even those regions loyal to the Bolshevik government often had to act on their own, lacking orders or coordination from Moscow. It has long been debated whether "war communism" represented an actual economic policy in the proper sense of the phrase, or merely a set of measures intended to win the civil war.


Aims

The goals of the Bolsheviks in implementing war communism are a matter of controversy. Some commentators, including a number of Bolsheviks, have argued that its sole purpose was to win the war.
Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...
, for instance, said that "the confiscation of surpluses from the peasants was a measure with which we were saddled by the imperative conditions of war-time." Other Bolsheviks, such as Yurii Larin, Lev Kritzman,
Leonid Krasin Leonid Borisovich Krasin (russian: Леони́д Бори́сович Кра́син; 15 July 1870 – 24 November 1926) was a Russian Soviet politician, engineer, social entrepreneur, Bolshevik revolutionary politician and a Soviet diplomat. In ...
, and
Nikolai Bukharin Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin (russian: Никола́й Ива́нович Буха́рин) ( – 15 March 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, Marxist philosopher and economist and prolific author on revolutionary theory. ...
, argued that it was a transitional step towards socialism. Commentators, such as the historian
Richard Pipes Richard Edgar Pipes ( yi, ריכארד פּיִפּעץ ''Rikhard Pipets'', the surname literally means 'beak'; pl, Ryszard Pipes; July 11, 1923 – May 17, 2018) was an American academic who specialized in Russian and Soviet history. He publi ...
, the philosopher Michael Polanyi, and economists such as Paul Craig Roberts or Sheldon L. Richman, have argued that war communism was actually an attempt to immediately eliminate private property, commodity production and market exchange, and in that way to implement communist economics, and that the Bolshevik leaders expected an immediate and large-scale increase in economic output. This view was also held by Bukharin, who said that "We conceived War Communism as the universal, so to say 'normal' form of the economic policy of the victorious proletariat and not as being related to the war, that is, conforming to a definite state of the civil war".


Results


Military

War communism was largely successful at its primary purpose of aiding the
Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army (Russian language, Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist R ...
in halting the advance of the
White Army The White Army (russian: Белая армия, Belaya armiya) or White Guard (russian: Бѣлая гвардія/Белая гвардия, Belaya gvardiya, label=none), also referred to as the Whites or White Guardsmen (russian: Бѣлогв� ...
and in reclaiming most of the territory of the former
Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War ...
thereafter.


Social

In the cities and surrounding countryside, the population experienced hardships as a result of the war. Peasants, because of the extreme scarcity, were beginning to refuse to co-operate in giving food for the war effort. Workers began migrating from the cities to the countryside, where the chances to feed themselves were higher, thus further decreasing the possibility of barter of industrial goods for food and worsening the plight of the remaining urban population, economy and industrial production. Between 1918 and 1920,
Petrograd Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
lost 70% of its population, while Moscow lost over 50%. A series of workers' strikes and peasants' rebellions broke out all over the country, such as the Tambov rebellion (1920–1921). A turning point came with the
Kronstadt rebellion The Kronstadt rebellion ( rus, Кронштадтское восстание, Kronshtadtskoye vosstaniye) was a 1921 insurrection of Soviet sailors and civilians against the Bolshevik government in the Russian SFSR port city of Kronstadt. Loc ...
at the
Kronstadt Kronstadt (russian: Кроншта́дт, Kronshtadt ), also spelled Kronshtadt, Cronstadt or Kronštádt (from german: link=no, Krone for " crown" and ''Stadt'' for "city") is a Russian port city in Kronshtadtsky District of the federal city ...
naval base in early March 1921. The rebellion startled Lenin because Bolsheviks considered Kronstadt sailors the "reddest of the reds". The nature of these uprisings and their leadership were also of significant concern because they were generally left-wing uprisings led by oppositionist leftists, thus creating competition with the Bolsheviks. According to David Christian, the Cheka, the state Communist Party secret police, reported 118 peasant uprisings in February 1921. David Christian, in his book ''Imperial and Soviet Russia'', summarises the state of Russia in 1921 after years of War communism:
A government claiming to represent the people now found itself on the verge of being overthrown by that same working class. The crisis had undermined the loyalty of the villages, the towns and finally sections of the army. It was fully as serious as the crises faced by the tsarist government in 1905 and February 1917.
Bolshevik officials were paralyzed by the
Russian famine of 1921–22 Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: * Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and pe ...
which coincided with the catastrophic crisis of the war and economic difficulties faced by the new regime. These militarization efforts were taken to sustain the Red Army for the war effort and the defence of the new state, for proper logistics, and to distribute the scarce supplies to people that the regime considered needed it more than others, such as the Red Army.


Economic

A
black market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the ...
emerged in Russia, despite the threat of
martial law Martial law is the imposition of direct military control of normal civil functions or suspension of civil law by a government, especially in response to an emergency where civil forces are overwhelmed, or in an occupied territory. Use Martia ...
against profiteering. The
ruble The ruble (American English) or rouble (Commonwealth English) (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is the currency unit of Belarus and Russia. Historically, it was the currency of the Russian Empire and of the Soviet Union. , currencies named ''rub ...
collapsed and
barter In trade, barter (derived from ''baretor'') is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Economists disti ...
increasingly replaced money as a medium of exchange and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money. 70% of locomotives were in need of repair, and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to a famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths. Coal production decreased from 27.5 million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000 million roubles to 1,000 million roubles. According to the noted historian David Christian, the grain harvest was also slashed from 80.1 million tons (1913) to 46.5 million tons (1920).


See also

* Barracks communism *
Council of Labor and Defense The Council of Labor and Defense (Russian: Совет труда и обороны (СТО) Sovet Truda i Oborony, Latin acronym: STO), first established as the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense in November 1918, was an agency responsible fo ...
* Family in the Soviet Union *
Kronstadt rebellion The Kronstadt rebellion ( rus, Кронштадтское восстание, Kronshtadtskoye vosstaniye) was a 1921 insurrection of Soviet sailors and civilians against the Bolshevik government in the Russian SFSR port city of Kronstadt. Loc ...


Footnotes


Further reading

* Ball, Alan M. ''Russia's Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921-1929'' (U of California Press, 1990
online free
pp 10–38. * * Markevich, Andrei, and Mark Harrison. "Great War, Civil War, and recovery: Russia's national income, 1913 to 1928." ''Journal of Economic History'' 71.3 (2011): 672–703
online
* Malle, Silvana. '' The Economic Organization of War Communism 1918—1921'' (Cambridge University Press, 2002. — 568 p.) . * Roberts, Paul C. "'War Communism': A Re-examination," ''Slavic Review'' 29 (June 1970): 238–261 * {{Authority control 1918 establishments in Russia 1921 disestablishments in Russia 1910s economic history 1920s economic history Russian Civil War Soviet phraseology Economic history of the Soviet Union