WAR COMMUNISM

5.1
 NATIONALISATION AND ‘STATE
CAPITALISM’, 1917–18
• When Lenin took power, his ultimate aim
was to create a ‘planned economy’ – in
which the government controlled, directed
and organised all the industries of Russia.
• To begin with, though, it was very hard for
such an inexperienced government – which,
at this stage, controlled only parts of the
country – to achieve this, and compromises
had to be made.
 NATIONALISATION
AND ‘STATE
CAPITALISM’, 1917–18
• One of the biggest compromises
involved workers’ taking control of
factories.
• Many factories had already been
taken over by workers: some were
Communist Party members, loyal to
Lenin – but others were not.
• There was little that the government
could do about this at first.
 NATIONALISATION
AND ‘STATE
CAPITALISM’, 1917–18
• The ‘Decree on Workers’ Control’, in
December 1917, had allowed the
takeovers, though Lenin tried to slow the
process down with further decrees, in
January and April 1918.
• However, many factory owners simply
shut their factories down – rather than let
them be taken over.
• By August 1918, about 30% of all
factories were shut, and the economy
was grinding to a halt.
NATIONALISATION AND ‘STATE
CAPITALISM’, 1917–18

• To try to keep the economy going, the communists

nationalised the biggest industries – along with banks and
railways – and gave them targets for what they should be
achieving.
• Middle-class managers and technicians were allowed to
stay on in their old jobs to make sure the newly
nationalised businesses were run efficiently. This approach
towards the economy was called ‘State Capitalism’.
• Despite this, the economy continued to fall apart, and so,
from the middle of 1918, a new and tougher approach was
adopted – which would later be described as ‘War
Communism’.
 WAR COMMUNISM

• It was the name given to the harsh economic measures the Bolsheviks adopted during the Civil War in order to survive. It
had two main aims.
• The first aim was to put communist theories into practice by redistributing (sharing out) wealth among the Russian
people.
• The second aim was to help with the Civil War by keeping the towns and the Red Army supplied with food and weapons.
• All large factories were taken over by the Government.
• Production was planned and organised by the Government.
• Discipline for workers was strict and strikers could be shot.
• Peasants had to hand over surplus food to the Government. If they didn’t, they could be shot.
• Food was rationed.
• Free enterprise became illegal – all production and trade was controlled by the state.
WAR COMMUNISM, 1918–21
There were many reasons for the government to introduce
War Communism:
• Russia was drifting into Civil War; and if the communists
did not get control of industry and the food supply, they
would lose. Workers had to carry on producing goods –
and the Red Army needed food.
• There was a strong desire in the new government to end
capitalism. This involved abolishing money, the free
market* and getting rid of social classes – though the
distinction between workers and peasants would remain.
 WAR COMMUNISM, 1918–21

• Russia lost important grain-producing areas

in Ukraine because of the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk. Other agricultural areas were
controlled by White armies. Less and less
food was reaching the cities.
• The population in the cities collapsed.
Thousands went to live with their relatives
in the countryside, where it was easier to get
hold of food.
 WAR COMMUNISM, 1918–21

• In many ways, War Communism was what the communists were all about. When it had failed
and was over, Lenin tried to suggest that it had been a temporary measure forced on the
communists ‘by war and ruin’.
• But there is plenty of evidence that it was more than this: in reality it had been an attempt to
impose communist ideas.
 REQUISITION OF
FLOUR FROM RICH
PEASANTS IN A
VILLAGE NEAR
PSKOV, PAINTED BY
IVAN VLADIMIROV A
SUPPORTER OF THE
GOVERNMENT, IN
1922.
REASONS FOR WAR COMMUNISM
State control of industry

• In 1917, the economy was in a very bad

condition. Industries were producing only 60
per cent of what they had produced in 1913.
• The transport network was disrupted and raw
materials were not getting to the factories.
Banks were not lending money to factories
after the Bolshevik revolution.
State control of industry

• The Bolsheviks had also lost 40 per cent of

the industrial areas of the old Russian
empire following the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk.
• Workforce numbers were also going down
as food shortages meant workers were
leaving the starving cities.
 State control of industry

• The Bolsheviks used central planning and strict controls on the factories and their workers to try
to deal with this problem.
• Central planning decided what each nationalised factory should produce and organised the
supply of raw materials.
 State control of industry

• Persuasion and propaganda was used to make the workers work harder, but when this failed they
brought in strict discipline.
• From 1919, workers could be moved from one sector of work to another, and were then
forbidden to leave that sector. From 1920, anyone of working age (between 16 and 50) could be
made to work for the state: on building sites, in farming, on the railways, clearing snow from the
roads.
 State control of
industry
• Ultimately, the Civil War proved to be a
very difficult time for workers. While
some of them were well fed, most were
not – and everyone worked under harsh
conditions in order to meet the state’s
targets.
 State control of food
supply

• Food shortages in the cities

increased after 1917. One reason was
the loss of so much farmland to
Germany from the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk.
 State control of food
supply
• Another reason was that the Whites were
controlling a number of important farming
areas.
• Generally, peasants in the countryside had
enough land to feed themselves, but they
were not growing enough food to supply
the cities and the Red Army – partly
because the cities were not making enough
products that peasants wanted to buy.
 State control of food supply

• Why would peasants work harder to grow more food to sell, if there
was nothing to buy with the money they would earn? War
Communism used requisitioning to try and deal with this problem.
The state decided how much of their crops peasants should be
allowed to keep to live on, and took the rest.
• The Bolsheviks promised compensation to the peasants in the future.
 State control of
food supply
• The state then redistributed the crops to
the Red Army and the city workers. This
was successful in increasing food supply.
• In 1918, the state was collecting less than
1 million tonnes of grain from the
peasants in a year; by 1920 this had risen
to 6 million tonnes. This was still not
enough to feed the Russian population.
Ideological reasons

• The system was seen as close to

how the Bolshevik leaders
believed a communist country
should be run: with the state in
control of all production and
without individuals making any
profit from buying and selling.
 Ideological reasons

• Central planning of the economy and state control of industry and agriculture were all elements
of a communist system.
• War Communism also saw the Bolsheviks replacing money with tokens, which workers
exchanged for food and clothing. Socialist thinkers had predicted that communist societies would
have no need for money.
EFFECTS OF WAR COMMUNISM
 EFFECTS ON
PEASANTS

• Requisitioning turned the peasants

against the Bolsheviks.
• The requisitioning brigades had taken
so much from the peasants that they
were left with very little to eat –
sometimes not even the seeds to plant
the next year’s harvest.
 EFFECTS ON
PEASANTS
• The amount of crops grown in the
country declined as a result: by 1920,
farm production had fallen to 37 per
cent of what it had been in 1913,
before the war and revolutions.
• Food shortages increased in the
countryside; in some areas these
shortages became famines.
EFFECTS ON PEASANTS

• The requisitioning brigades began

using increasing levels of violence to
meet their requisitioning targets.
• Thousands of people were killed,
which grew into whole-region revolts
in some cases.
EFFECTS ON PEASANTS

• To avoid having their farm animals

requisitioned, many peasants decided
to kill them – even though this meant
the peasants would no longer have
animals with which to pull their
ploughs and carts.
 KULAKS AND
BOLSHEVIK IDEOLOGY

• To justify the conflicts happening in

the countryside, the Bolsheviks
blamed the unrest on the rich
peasants who were resisting the
requisitioning brigades;
• They used the term kulak for these
rich peasants, meaning ‘closed fist’ –
a tightly closed hand that refuses to
release what it is grasping.
 KULAKS AND
BOLSHEVIK IDEOLOGY

• The kulaks were seen as counter-

revolutionary capitalists, whereas
the rest of the peasants, especially
the poorest ones, were seen as
supporters of the revolution.
• This theory had a significant effect
on how the Bolsheviks dealt with
the peasants. From a secret order
sent by Lenin to the commissars in
Penza, a region of Russia that was
 EFFECTS ON THE
WORKERS
• Although War Communism did help to make
sure the Red Army had the supplies it
needed, the same could not be said for most
workers in the cities.
• Food became so hard to find that huge
numbers of workers left the cities to return
to their family villages.
 EFFECTS ON THE
WORKERS
• Between 1918 and 1920, half of Moscow’s
population went back to the countryside.
• In Petrograd, almost three quarters of the
city’s population disappeared in the same
way.
EFFECT ON WORKERS

• Across the country, the number of

people working in factories fell by
one half, and production halved as
well.
• Industries that were still working were
now almost all producing supplies for
the Red Army, making virtually no
products for ordinary people in the
cities or in the countryside.
EFFECT ON WORKERS

• Everyone used the illegal black

market to get what they needed to
survive.
• It is estimated that the black market
supplied 70 per cent of the food that
people ate under War Communism.
• Black market prices were very high,
however, which made life harder
for the workers.
 EFFECT ON
WORKERS
• While the Civil War was still being
fought, the Bolsheviks were generally
successful in convincing workers that the
Whites and foreign invaders were to
blame for the desperately hard living and
working conditions.
• But once the Reds had won the war,
protests against the harsh conditions
increased rapidly.
 WALTER DURANTY, NEW YORK TIMES
(13TH AUGUST, 1921)

Lenin has thrown communism overboard. His signature appears in the

official press of Moscow in August 9, abandoning State ownership,
with the exception of a definite number of great industries of national
importance - such as were controlled by the State in France, England
and Germany during the war - and re-establishing payment by
individuals for railroads, postal and other public services.
 War Communism, as it was called, came to rely more and more
upon repression and outright violence as the main methods of
securing meat and grain from the peasants. Essentials like salt,
kerosene, and matches were in short supply; important
manufactured goods, such as boots and farming implements, were
SALLY J.
not forthcoming. With few rewards for their labor, the peasants
TAYLOR,
showed little interest in growing more than what their immediate
STALIN'S
APOLOGIST: needs required. Now a ruinous drought in the grain-growing
WALTER districts added to the misfortunes of the already depleted
DURANTY (1990) countryside, and the entire nation lay exhausted, in a state of
virtual collapse.
The Soviets had little recourse other than to appeal for help from
abroad, and Herbert Hoover's American Relief Association at once
agreed to meet them in Riga to discuss the terms under which they
would undertake to meet the disaster.