These unprecedented measures, pursued not because of but despite the Civil War, were designed to provide Soviet Russia with a coherent and rational economic system conducive to most efficient productivity as well as fairness in distribution.
War Communism had several sources of inspiration. State control (though not ownership) of production and distribution of commodities and labor had been introduced by Imperial Germany during World War I. These emergency policies, known as “War Socialism” (
If one were to take at face value the flood of Soviet economic decrees issued between 1918 and 1921, one would likely conclude that by the end of this period the country’s economy was completely state-managed. In fact, Soviet decrees of that time often reflected only intentions: the discrepancy between law and life was never greater. There is ample evidence that alongside the ever-expanding state sector there flourished a private sector which withstood all attempts at its elimination. Money continued to circulate even in an allegedly “moneyless” economy, and bread was sold on the open market despite the regime’s claim to a grain monopoly. The central economic plan was never put into practice. In other words, in 1921, when it had to be given up, War Communism was only very incompletely realized. Its failure was only in part due to the government’s inability to enforce its laws. No lesser a role was played by the realization that strict enforcement, even if it were possible, would bring about economic catastrophe: Communist sources conceded that without the illicit trade in food, which supplied the urban population with two-thirds of its bread, the cities would have starved. War Communism, under a new name and with fresh slogans, became a reality only ten years later, when Stalin resumed economic regimentation at the point where Lenin had left off.
The goal of War Communism was socialism or even communism. Its proponents had always believed that the socialist state would abolish private property and the free market, replacing them with a centralized, state-run and planned economic system. The main difficulty which the Bolsheviks faced in implementing this program derived from the fact that Marxism envisioned the abolition of private property and the market as the end result of a lengthy process of capitalist development which would concentrate production and distribution to such an extent that they could be nationalized by legislative fiat. But in Russia, at the time of the Revolution, capitalism was still in its infancy. Her overwhelmingly “petty bourgeois” economy, dominated by tens of millions of self-employed communal peasants and artisans, was further exacerbated by the Bolshevik policy of breaking up large estates for distribution to peasants and giving workers control of industrial enterprises.
Lenin gave ample proof of being an extraordinarily astute politician, but when it came to economic matters he revealed himself to be remarkably naïve. His knowledge of economics derived entirely from literary sources, such as the writings of the German socialist Rudolf Hilferding. In his influential
