War communism
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War communism or military communism (
Policies
War communism included the following policies:
- centralized management[citation needed]
- State control of foreign trade
- Strict discipline for workers, with strikes forbidden
- Obligatory labor dutyby non-working classes
- Prodrazvyorstka– requisition of agricultural surplus (in excess of an absolute minimum) from peasants for centralized distribution among the remaining population
- Rationing of food and most commodities, with centralized distribution in urban centers
- Private enterprisebanned
- Military-style control of the railways
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.[4]
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, 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."
Results
Military
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.
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
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.[13]
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.[14]
The deadly
Economic
A
See also
- Barracks communism
- Council of Labor and Defense
- Family in the Soviet Union
- Left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks
Footnotes
- JSTOR 130963– via JSTOR.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- ISBN 978-1-933648-15-6.
- ^ Werth 2013, p. [page needed].
- ^ Lenin, V. I. (1965). Collected Works. Vol. 32. Moscow: Progress Publishers. p. 187.
- ^ Szamuely, Laszlo (1974), First Models of the Socialist Economic Systems, Budapest, pp. 45–61
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Polanyi, Michael (1960). "Towards a Theory of Conspicuous Production". Soviet Survey (34): 90–99.
- ^ Roberts, Paul Craig (1990) [first edition 1971]. Alienation and the Soviet Economy: The Collapse of the Socialist Era. Independent Studies in Political Economy (2nd revised ed.). Oakland, California: Independent Institute.
- ^ Richman, Sheldon L. (Winter 1981). "War Communism to NEP: The Road From Serfdom" (PDF). Journal of Libertarian Studies. 5 (1): 89–97.
- ^ Bukharin, Nikolai (1967). The path to socialism in Russia. New York: Omicron Books. p. 178.
- ISBN 9780307788610.
- ^ Lih, Lars T., Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914–1921, University of California Press (1990), p. 131
- ^ Pipes, p. 373.
- ISBN 0-333-66294-6.
- Encyclopaedia Britannica.
- ISBN 978-1-933648-15-6.
- ISBN 978-0-521-45770-5.
- ^ "Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921". publishing.cdlib.org. Retrieved 2021-10-27.
- ^ "Twentieth Century Atlas – Death Tolls". necrometrics.com. Retrieved 2017-12-12.
- ISBN 0-333-66294-6.
Further reading
- Ball, Alan M. Russia's Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921-1929 (U of California Press, 1990) online free pp 10–38.
- Boettke, Peter J (1988). "The Soviet experiment with pure communism". Critical Review. 2 (4): 149–182. S2CID 145695319.
- 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. ISBN 0521527031.
- Roberts, Paul C. "'War Communism': A Re-examination," Slavic Review 29 (June 1970): 238–261
- OCLC 1022270516.