War Communism

It is also called “military communism”. After the October Revolution, the Soviet government carried out a wartime economic policy during the period of foreign armed intervention and civil war from 1918 to 1920.

In the summer of 1918, the international imperialism colluded with the domestic counter revolutionary forces of the Soviet Union and launched armed intervention of 14 countries against the Soviet regime in an attempt to strangle the young Soviet Republic in its cradle. Armed interventionists cut off the most important sources of food, raw materials and fuel for the Soviet government, resulting in serious famine, industrial and mining enterprises stopped production, and urban and rural restoration forces were rampant. At the critical juncture, the Communist Party and the Soviet government put forward the slogan of “everything for the front line, everything for victory”, and organized workers and peasants to rise up against foreign interference and suppress domestic rebellion. In September 1918, the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) declared the Soviet Republic a military camp, demanding that the entire economic life be subject to the requirements of armed struggle. In November of the same year, the National Defense Commission for workers, peasants, headed by Lenin, was established to mobilize industry and all resources of the country to serve the war front line, and the entire social, economic, cultural and political life was arranged according to the requirements wartime communism.

The main measures of communism in wartime include: (1) The system of collecting surplus grain is carried out. The surplus grain of farmers is collected by the state. The government monopolizes the grain trade and forbids private grain trade. When collecting grain and other agricultural products, the government also pays farmers a small amount of money and industrial goods. However, due to inflation, the products handed over by farmers are almost free of charge; (2) Not only large industrial enterprises, but also small and medium-sized enterprises were nationalized and strictly supervised by the Soviet state. However, by the end of the civil war, a considerable number of SMEs were still in private hands; (3) In the field of circulation, the government implemented the policy of minimum amount of commodity trading and the maximum amount of national distribution. In November 1918, private commerce was abolished and supplied by state-owned commercial and cooperative organizations. Money still exists, but its role has been severely limited. (4) We should implement the system of labor obligations, which is universal to all classes, and implement the principle of “no laborers, no food.”

These measures played an important role in mobilizing social resources, winning the war and defending the Soviet regime. In the process of implementing these measures, the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) once considered adjusting the state’s production and distribution according to the communist principles on this basis. The cancellation of commodity production and circulation, but soon found that it exceeded the level of Russian economic development and the level of people’s understanding at that time, and ignored the role of commodity production and the law of value. In 1921, the Soviet government decided to put an end to the economic policy of War Communism and make an immediate transition to the New Economic Policy (NEP).