Lenin first defined the economic organisation of 1918-20 as "war" communism. This was in his pamphlet "The Tax in Kind" (1921). In this pamphlet he described it as follows: " a peculiar war communism was forced on us by extreme want, ruin and war it was not, and could not be, a policy that corresponded to the economic tasks of the proletariat." (Malle 1985) In early 1918 Lenin was faced with two main problems. Firstly feeding the workers in the face of severe grain shortages and secondly keeping the workers in the cities to manufacture arms and essential supplies. There are two principal interpretations of war communism. One is that it was an attempt to put communist ideology into practice, a view that originated in the nineteen twenties. Another interpretation is that it was an emergency measure to deal with the economic crisis caused by war, revolution and civil war (Malle 1985). In this essay I will attempt to assess the reasons for the implementation of War Communism.
War communism was the policy pursued by The Bolshevik party during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1920, until Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy. During the civil war Lenin had geared the economy towards the war against the opposition forces, the various strands of the divided "Whites". One primary function of War Communism was the requisition of grain from the peasantry, in order to feed the starving urban population. The agricultural production in Russia declined since the outset of the First World War, and those who had food, hoarded it. Major agricultural regions were occupied by the white armies during the Civil War, intensifying the food problem further. Lenin and the Bolsheviks needed food such as grain from the peasants in order to supply the Red army. However, supplies were often taken by force and the war took place agaisnt a backdrop of famine. There has also been some debate over the justificaiton of this rather brutal policy.
