Question

Initially, the communist forces looked to be the weaker of the two and the ‘Whites’ made good progress, pushing inwards from the north, south and east. In fact, the western powers actually created a new opposition government in the north at a place called Archangel. Of course, the Russian economy had to provide the army with the supplies it needed and to achieve this, the communists introduced ‘War Communism’.

4. What exactly did ‘War Communism’ involve? Which two procedures did the government undertake to assist the take over the Russian economy?

Answer 1

War communism is the name of the economic policy of the Bolsheviks in the years between 1918 and 1921. It was a period in which the utopian aspects of Marxist ideology were fully revealed - especially the assumption that the nationalization of factories, banks and workshops would automatically bring prosperity. Despite strict state regulation, the market and trade did not disappear, they only moved underground - into the hands of so-called "speculators". In the countryside, the Bolshevik policy of requisitioning grain completely failed because the peasants hid their surpluses and rebelled against the party's arbitrariness.