
“Famine” by Ivan Vladimirov (1919)
After the start of one of the bloodiest civil wars ever in European history, The Russian Civil War (1917-1921), the Bolshevik led government of what would later be the Soviet Union was forced in a peculiar sport in order to feed its armies in a lone war. Lenin’s implementation of war communism had a staggering and brutal effect on human life and productivity. After being implemented in June of 1918, the goals that War Communism set to achieve were successful. However, in its implementation, it completely disregarded the lives of people and humanity in order to achieve a victory in the civil war. Once the civil war started in 1918 there was no support for the red army abroad, in fact they were at war with not only the white army, but even the major powers at the time. The United States, Britain, Japan, and France all were involved in the Russian civil war. Additionally, the agricultural giant of Ukraine was independent from the Bolsheviks for this short period of time. Although successful, the policy of war communism subsequently led to a betrayal of workers rights and caused the Povolzhye Famine (1921-1922) that killed an estimated 5 million people.
War communism was a policy program that was implemented by the Bolsheviks in 1918 and removed the currency system out of the economy; as well it brought industries under complete control of the state. The Vesenkha (The Supreme Council of the National Economy), established in the same year, was the main governing body over industry, and it fundamentally made the experience of the worker worse than under the tsar. Fines were given to late workers, imprisonments could happen if quotas weren't met, internal passports were mandatory, and workers only got paid in the form of ration tokens, and even skilled jobs like doctors were viewed as not as essential and given even less rations than factory workers.
What fueled these policies and made them even worse was the establishment of The Food Supplies Dictatorship and their policy of grain requisitioning; this entailed detachments of soldiers from the Red Guard to force peasants in the countryside to hand over their grain. More than just grain was taken from the peasants, from horses to firewood, anything useful to the front line or factory production was taken from the peasants.
War communist policies caused staggering effects on the economy that later rippled out to the peasants in a famine. Industrial output had fallen to 14% of pre-World War l levels and the harvest of 1921 yielded only 48% of a normal year. The poor harvest of that year was due to the discouragement of peasants to plant as they had no benefit of producing grain, and a drought hit the country at the same time. This triggered a famine that only the countryside felt, on top of 5 million people dying from hunger in the famine, another one million died from weakness to disease such as typhus and typhoid. People were left in truly desperate times as eating household pets were a given, and there were even cases of cannibalism throughout villages.
However, it's surprising to hear that the red army bolsheviks were much more successful in garnishing support for the war from peasants and local municipalities against the white army. The average person still felt like there was more to gain from the Bolsheviks than the whites, as they had: guaranteed land seizures for peasants from their landlord, effective use of propaganda, and were less violent if one was to cooperate. Stronger than the red terror was the white terror, as the white army went on large pogroms killing tens of thousands of jews during the civil war and forcibly gave back all peasant land seizures to the land owners.
Although key figures in the party like Leon Trotsky opposed these policies, Lenin didn't budge on changing the policy until after the war.
Lenin's New Economic Policy seemed confusing to a lot of party members, as this policy reintroduced fundamentally capitalistic systems back in place. Lenin established a money economy and ended rationing, he then took it one step further by allowing farmers to sell their surplus after paying taxes and by allowing the private sector to grow in non-industry heavy markets. Factory and grain production took a complete u-turn, with a 200% increase in factory production from 1920-1923. Farmers responded immediately and it resulted in mass agricultural surpluses.
War communism had a very ideological undertone in its pursuit to try to match with Marx's theory; however the circumstances of a revolution into a bloody civil war completely shut down any ideas for further implementation in the future. It was extremely unsustainable and unpopular for the constraints at the time. At the same time, one has to ask if it was really a necessary step in order to achieve victory.
Sources Used:
“The Library Modern Records Centre.” Famine in Russia, 1921-1922, Warwick University , warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/russia/famine/. Accessed 30 June 2024.
Rempel, Gerhard. “War Communism.” GCSE Modern World History, Western New England College, www.johndclare.net/Rempel_Stalin6.htm. Accessed 30 June 2024.
Waller, Sally. Imperial Russia, Revolution and the Establishment of the Soviet Union. 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2016.
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