War Communism - Historiography

Source 1

The Bolsheviks took over a war economy in a state of near collapse, and their first and
overwhelming problem was to keep it running. This was the pragmatic context of the
economic policies of the Civil War that were later labelled ‘War Communism’. But there
was also an ideological context. In the long term, the Bolsheviks aimed to abolish private
property and the free market and distribute products according to need, and in the short
term, they might be expected to choose policies that would bring these ideals closer to
fulfilment. The balance between pragmatism and ideology in War Communism has long
been a subject of debate, the problem being that policies like nationalization and state
distribution can plausibly be explained either as a pragmatic response to the exigencies of
war or as an ideological imperative of communism. It is a debate in which scholars on both
sides can quote the pronouncements of Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks, since the
Bolsheviks themselves were not sure of the answer. From a Bolshevik perspective of 1921,
when War Communism was jettisoned in favour of the New Economic Policy, the
pragmatic interpretation was clearly preferable: once War Communism had failed, the less
said about its ideological underpinnings the better. But from an earlier Bolshevik
perspective –for example, that of Bukharin and Preobrazhensky in their classic ABC of
Communism (1919) –the opposite was true. While War Communism policies were in force,
it was natural for Bolsheviks to give them an ideological justification –to assert that the
party, armed with the scientific ideology of Marxism, was in full control of events rather
than simply struggling to keep up.
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution 1917-1932 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1984), 70-1.
Source 2

For six months the régime lived from hand to mouth. Then the gathering storms of the civil
war and the economic collapse drove the government in the summer of 1918 to the more
drastic policies later known by the ambiguous name of “war communism”.

E. H. Carr, The Russian Revolution: From Lenin to Stalin (1917-1929)(London:

Macmillan, 1979), 21.
Source 3

The first three years after the revolution were a period of overt and cruel civil war.
Economic life was wholly subjected to the needs of the front. Cultural life lurked in the
corners and was characterized by a bold range of creative thought, above all the personal
thought of Lenin, with an extraordinary scarcity of material means. That was the period of
so-called “military communism” (1918 – 1921) which forms a heroic parallel to the
“military socialism” of capitalist countries. The economic problems of the Soviet
government in those years came down chiefly to supporting the war industries, and using
the scanty resources left from the past for military purposes and to keep the city populations
alive. Military communism was, in essence, the systematic regimentation of consumption
in a besieged fortress.

It is necessary to acknowledge, however, that in its original conception it pursued broader

aims. The Soviet government hoped and strove to develop these methods of regimentation
directly into a system of planned economy in distribution as well as production. In other
words, from “military communism” it hoped gradually, but without destroying the system,
to arrive at genuine communism. The program of the Bolshevik party adopted in March
1919 said: “In the sphere of distribution the present task of the Soviet Government is
unwaveringly to continue on a planned, organized and state-wide scale to replace trade by
the distribution of products.”

Leon Trotsky, The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?
(New York: Doubleday, 1937).
Source 4

The term “War Communism” has acquired-Communist over t literature a precise

meaning. In the words of the Soviet Historical Encyclopedia:

War Communism: The name given to the economic policy of the Soviet
Government during the years of the civil war and foreign intervention in the
U.S.S.R., 1918-20. The policy of War Communism was dictated by the exceptional
difficulties caused by the civil war [and] economic devastation.
The notion that War Communism was dictated by circumstances however, doe
violence to the historical record, as shown by the etymology of the term. The earliest
official use of “War Communism” dates to the spring of 1921 – that is, to the time when
the policies so labeled were being abandoned in favor of the more liberal New Economic
Policy. It was then that the Communist authorities, in order to justify their sudden
turnabout, sought to blame the disasters of the immediate past on circumstances beyond
their control. Thus, Lenin in April 1921 wrote “’War Communism’ was imposed by war
and ruin. It was not and could not be a policy that corresponded to the economic tasks of
the proletariat. It was a temporary measure.” But this was hindsight. While some of its
measures were indeed taken to meet emergencies, War Communism as a whole was not a
“temporary measure” but an ambitions and, as it turned out, premature attempt to
introduce full-blown communism.
That Bolshevik economic policies in the first years of the regime were neither
improvisations nor reactions is confirmed by no less an authority than Trotsky. Allowing
that War Communism entailed “systematic regimentation of consumption in a besieged
fortress” he then goes on to say that

in its original conception it pursued broader aims. The Soviet Government hoped
and strove to develop these methods of regimentation directly into a system of
planned economy in distribution as well as production. In other words, from [War
Communism] it hoped gradually, but without destroying the system, to arrive at
genuine communism.
Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 671-2.