War communism

War communism (Russian: Военный коммунизм, romanized: Vojenný kommunizm), also called military communism, was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. War communism began in June 1918, enforced by the Supreme Economic Council. It ended on 21 March 1921, with the beginning of the New Economic Policy, which lasted until 1928. The system has often been described as simple authoritarian control by the ruling and military castes to maintain power and control in the Soviet regions, rather than any coherent political ideology. The Soviet propaganda justified it by claiming that the Bolsheviks adopted this policy with the goal of keeping towns (the proletarian power-base) and the Red Army stocked with food and weapons since circumstances dictated new economic measures.

The deadly Russian famine of 1921–22 was in part triggered by Vladimir Lenin's war communism policies, especially food requisitioning. However, the famine was preceded by bad harvests, harsh winter, drought especially in the Volga Valley which was exacerbated by a range of factors including the war, the presence of the White Army and the methods of war communism. The outbreaks of diseases such as cholera and typhus were also contributing factors to the famine casualties.

War communism included the following policies:

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.

Historians have noted that both Tsarist Russia government councils and other opposition parties had advocated for food requisitioning prior to the ascent of the Bolsheviks. However, 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, 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, and Nikolai Bukharin, argued that it was a transitional step towards socialism. Commentators, such as the historian Richard Pipes, 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".

War communism was largely successful at its primary purpose of aiding the Red Army in halting the advance of the White Army, and in helping the Bolsheviks to re-conquer most of the territory of the former Russian Empire.

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 and further weakening the economy and industrial production. Between 1918 and 1920, Petrograd lost 70% of its population, while Moscow lost over 50%. Barrier troops were also used to enforce Bolshevik control over food supplies in areas controlled by the Red Army to protect against raids from anti-communist forces.

A series of workers' strikes and peasants' rebellions against war communism policies broke out all over the country, such as the Tambov Rebellion (1920–1921), which was neutralized by the Red Army. A turning point came with the Kronstadt rebellion at the Kronstadt naval base in early March 1921, which also ended with a Bolshevik victory. 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 opposition 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.