War Communism

It is also known as “wartime communism”. A special economic policy implemented by Soviet Union during the civil war period of 1918-1920.

Shortly after the victory of the October Revolution, the economy of Soviet Russia was further damaged because of the large-scale civil war and foreign armed intervention. The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party and the Soviet government decided to carry out a special wartime policy in order to overcome difficulties and win victory. In June 1918, the people’s Committee passed the Decree on the Nationalization of All Large-scale Industries, and in September, while it began to nationalize all industries, highly centralized the management of the national economy, and implemented the physical supply system for industrial and mining enterprises, which was strictly supervised by the state, and reaffirmed the grain monopoly policy, established a collection system of surplus grain, prohibited private trade, and implemented the rationing system for daily consumer goods, it also implemented a monopoly system on trade, established direct product exchange between urban and rural areas without going through the market, and put into practice an obligatory labor system that was universal to all classes in accordance with the principle of “no labor, no food”.

The above policies were implemented to ensure the supply of daily necessities, cereals and food reserves for the soldiers in the front-line and the workers in rear areas, and the ability to transfer some workers to the front line or engage in other jobs were of great importance for the front line. Such a policy was the product of specific historical conditions, and it was also a special policy that the Soviet regime was forced to implement in the wartime conditions. It was of great historical significance for defeating the imperialist armed interventionists and domestic counter-revolutionaries and consolidating the newly established power of the proletariat.

After defeating foreign armed interference and ending the civil war, the Soviet regime immediately began to implement to the New Economic Policy. In summing up this history, Lenin pointed out that it was originally intended to directly use the decrees of the proletarian state to for adjusting production and product distribution in a small peasant country according to the Communist principle, which was proved wrong in real life. The transition to communism cannot only rely on people’s enthusiasm, but also on people’s concern for personal interests and economic accounting, and such transition must go through many intermediate links and a series of transition stages.