Zusammenfassung der Ressource
War Communism aka War Cannibalism
- June 1918
- Decree on Nationalisation is where it all started
- Some capitalism remains, mainly heavy industry nationalised for war effort
- 1: Aims
- OF "A pragmatic response to civil war exigencies"
- Whites- authority=defeat
- Promote atheism
- 2: Impact on Industry
- Industrialisation=no production increase
- Military need priority
- Industries starved
- Factory deprived of workers
- Conscription
- Food
- Total industrial output dropped by 20% pre-war
- 1913 1520m roubles of exports
- 1921 20m
- 1913 coal 29m tonnes produced
- 1921 8.9m produced
- Hyperinflation
- Due to scarcity of goods
- Gov keeps printing notes
- Money becomes worthless and is abolished
- Alec Nove "siege economy with a communist ideology. A partly organised chaos"
- 3: Impact on agriculture
- 1918-21, grain requisitioning by Cheka
- Even seed grain taken, so not enough crop was planted
- Even less food available
- Peasants produce minimum to feed selves
- Kulaks blamed, 100 hanged in public by Lenin' instruction
- American relief Association, food to 10m people. Oxley
says 14m were kept alive
- Pravda, 1 in 5 starving
- 5m died of starvation
- Grain harvests of 1920/21 produced
less than 50% gathered in 1913
- Tambov Revolt
- 70,000 peasant army
- Red Army sent in 50,000
- Casualties, 240,000 according to Corin
- Involving maj of population
- 4: Marxist features
- Bukharin: War communism should be kept as permanent economic policy: "socialism in action"
- Due to centralisation of industry
- Due to ending of private ownership
- Due to persecution, or squeezing of the peasants
- "The more socialism, the less market"