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

War Communism, in the history of the Soviet Union, economic policy applied by the Bolsheviks during the period of the Russian Civil War (1918–20). More exactly, the policy of War Communism lasted from June 1918 to March 1921. The policy’s chief features were the expropriation of private business and the nationalization of industry throughout Soviet Russia and the forced requisition of surplus grain and other food products from the peasantry by the state.

\

Soviet Union: War Communism

A few months after coming to power the new Russian regime initiated a series of unprecedented measures intended to destroy all vestiges...

These measures negatively affected both agricultural and industrial production. With no incentives to grow surplus grain (since it would just be confiscated), the peasants’ production of it and other crops plummeted, with the result that starvation came to threaten many city dwellers. In the cities, a large and untrained bureaucracy was hastily created to supervise the newly centralized, state-owned economy, with the result that labour productivity and industrial output plummeted. By 1921 industrial production had dropped to one-fifth of its prewar levels (i.e., in 1913), and the real wages of urban workers had declined by an estimated two-thirds in just three years. Uncontrolled inflation rendered paper currency worthless, and so the government had to resort to the exchange and distribution of goods and services without the use of money.

By early 1921 public discontent with the state of the economy had spread from the countryside to the cities, resulting in numerous strikes and protests that culminated in March of that year in the Kronshtadt Rebellion. In response, the Bolsheviks had to adopt the New Economic Policy and thus temporarily abandon their attempts to achieve a socialist economic system by government decree.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

This article was most recently revised and updated by Michael Ray, Editor.

LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles:

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 1922–91

Soviet Union: War Communism

A few months after coming to power the new Russian regime initiated a series of unprecedented measures intended to destroy all vestiges of private property and inaugurate a centralized communist economy. These measures, which in 1921 received the name “War Communism,” had two…

Russia

Russia: War Communism

Lenin did not favour moving toward a socialist economy after October, because the Bolsheviks lacked the necessary economic skills. He preferred state capitalism, with capitalist managers staying in place but supervised by the workforce. Others, like Bukharin, wanted a rapid transition to a…

Alfred Thayer Mahan

20th-century international relations: Consolidation of the Revolution

…ruthless requisitioning (known as “War Communism”) procured enough food and supplies for them to outlast their enemies. The outcome was not inevitable, but the inability of the far-flung White forces to coordinate their actions exposed them to defeat in detail. Denikin took Kiev in September 1919, but a Soviet…

\

Explanation:

war never

a.) a poor farmer, due to the fact that they would want to be freed from british rule.