War communism

War communism was an economic and political system instituted by Vladimir Lenin from 1918 to 1921 in Soviet Russia. The policies of war communism were established as a combined consequence of the Russian Civil War (1917–1920) and Lenin's own political beliefs. However, these initiatives had a devastating economic and social impact on the country, leading to widespread famine and social suffering.

Between 1914 and 1922, Russia suffered through a seemingly never-ending series of revolutions and military conflicts. When Lenin seized power in 1917, he instilled a series of leftist proto-Communist policies that had been inspired by Karl Marx's socialist writings and Kaiser Wilhelm II's war socialism. These included the forced conscription of peasants into industry and armies, as well as the nationalization of most industries. Unsurprisingly, these proved unpopular, and after finally gaining complete political control of Russia, Lenin phased out aspects of these policies. Although these policies reflected Lenin's true political leanings, he recognized their unpopularity and instead later labeled them as merely "war communism" and a past, temporary necessity of war. However, these policies would prove to be a foreshadowing of the later autocratic Marxist-Leninist form of communism that became the Soviet Union's political ideology for the next several decades.

Brief History

Prior to 1917, the Russian empire was led by Czar Nicholas II. During the late stages of World War I, many Russians grew unhappy with his government's weak response to the growing economic crisis that developed in the wake of the war. There were massive food shortages and rapidly rising inflation throughout the country. When combined with the heavy personnel losses in the war, dissatisfaction with the monarchy began to swell. These issues were compounded when the emperor decided to personally head the Russian World War I military campaign. In his absence, he left his wife, the Empress Alexandra, in charge of the country's day-to-day matters. Even prior to this elevation, she was unpopular with the Russian people, in part due to her German heritage and heavy reliance upon the advice of Grigori Rasputin, a disreputable mystic.

Various forces on the political left began to agitate for removal of the monarchy. Among these, Lenin was the head of the Bolsheviks, an early predecessor to the Soviet Communist Party. In February of 1917, workers in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) began to protest their working conditions and lack of democratic rights. By March, Nicholas had abdicated the throne under intense pressure. The establishment of a new provisional Russian government did little to ease tensions between the various political factions.

In November of 1917, Lenin was able to seize power, although his leftist coalition soon splintered. During this period of Russian political instability, World War I had continued to rage on the country's western borders. Lenin sought to negotiate a peace treaty with Germany, but German land demands led to a renewed flare-up between the two states. German gains forced Lenin to concede vast amounts of Russian territory, further rupturing his coalition. By the summer of 1918, Russia was fully in the throes of civil war between two military forces: the Red Army under the Bolsheviks and the pro-monarchy White Army.

Both sides had a totalitarian mind-set. While the vast majority of the Russian population had little partisan support for either side, they were often forcibly conscripted into both armies. In addition, both sides regularly seized food from peasants to feed their respective forces. By November of 1920, the Bolsheviks were able to defeat the largest remaining contingent of White Army forces in Crimea.

Faced with back-to-back wars, the Russian economy had grown increasingly ruptured. There were already mass food shortages and crippling economic issues before the Russian Civil War even began. Despite this, the Bolsheviks began to forcibly establish their developing Communist ideology as national policy as early as 1918.

Policies

Under Lenin's version of Marxism, the government believed it would have to assume near totalitarian control of industry to instill collectivized socialist policies. However, the Bolsheviks inherited an economy in tatters, and they had little political experience themselves. As a result, some historians have suggested that war communism was likely cobbled together as an unplanned sequence of policy decisions rather than as a deliberately arranged economic plan. Each new decree was the result of the Bolsheviks trying to account for shifting economic conditions. First, they sought to use force to instill the basic tenets of communism by nationalizing all industry and seizing complete control over the labor and trade sectors. They also redistributed land from the upper classes to the peasants. The Russian tax system was in shambles, so the Bolsheviks also increased the amount of money being printed to fund their efforts. However, the country was soon awash in money, thereby reducing the actual value of each ruble. This lead to hyperinflation, in which goods rapidly cost more and more. The government responded by issuing rationing cards for most goods.

With currency no longer having much value, there was less incentive to work. The Bolsheviks then instituted policies of forced labor or military conscription to keep the factories running and to populate their armies fighting the White Army. A huge black market economy emerged as the economy began to crumble. To cut off the black marketeers, the Bolshevik government began to seize all foodstuffs beyond what the peasants needed to feed themselves. This resulted in many peasants refusing to grow grain, as they saw no profit from their efforts. With the war economy already suffering shortages of foodstuffs, Russia began to experience a severe famine whose origins were almost purely economic.

Impact

An assassination attempt on Lenin in 1918 led to severe political reprisals in which opponents were executed or placed into horrific work camps. As many as half a million people may have died during these purges, including Nicholas II and his family. Between three and five million Russians also perished during the resulting famine. As the famine affected urban dwellers worse, the cities became increasingly depopulated. In addition, industrial production fell to only one-fifth of its prewar totals.

In place of war communism, Lenin instituted the New Economic Plan (NEP) in 1921. This set of reforms was intended to be a synthesis of communism and more liberalized market policies. The goal was to stabilize the economy while instilling policies that would boost the dwindling popularity of the Bolsheviks. However, after Lenin's death in 1924, his successor, Joseph Stalin, saw these market reforms as a betrayal of Soviet ideologies, and he returned to many of the policies of war communism, albeit using different terminology.

Bibliography

Berkhin, I.B. "So Just What Is 'War Communism'?" Russian Studies in History, vol. 33, no. 1, 1994, pp. 8–26.

Caplan, Bryan. "'War Communism,' the Red Terror, and Lenin's Famine." George Mason University, econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/museum/his1g.htm. Accessed 11 Nov. 2016.

Corley, Felix. Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader. New York UP, 1996.

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. "War Communism." The Russian Revolution. 3rd ed. Oxford UP, 2008, pp. 78–84.

Glaza, Helene M. "Lenin's New Economic Policy: What It Was and How It Changed the Soviet Union." Inquiries Journal, vol. 1, no. 11, 2009, pp. 1–2.

Malle, Silvana. The Economic Organization of War Communism 1918–1921. Cambridge UP, 2002.

Resnick, Stephen A., and Richard D. Wolff. "A Class and Value Analysis of War Communism." Class Theory and History: Capitalism and Communism in the USSR. Routledge, 2002, pp. 169–74.

Storella, C.J., and A.K. Sokolov, editors. "Revolution and War Communism." The Voice of the People: Letters from the Soviet Village, 1918–1932. Yale UP, 2013, pp. 27–55.

Tonge, Stephen. "Russia 1917–1924." A Web of English History, 12 Jan. 2016, www.historyhome.co.uk/europe/russia.htm. Accessed 11 Nov. 2016.