However, these policies were not able to be sustained. After the treaty of Breast-Litovsk and the spread of the civil war, the Bolsheviks had a shortage of industrial plant, arable land and raw materials. In the Bolshevik held territory, there was a slump in economic output and there were shortages of food and fuel in the cities, along with the prices of good soaring. During this time there was extreme inflation and the value of the rouble more or less complete collapsed and the peasants were unwilling to sell their produce for paper money increasing the food shortages.
In this time, it was decided by the Bolsheviks to revert back to a set of controls and rules known as War Communism, which was introduced in October 1918. This is the second economic policy that Lenin introduced. Basically this policy saw the Bolsheviks attempt to bring everything under the control of the government, which the people did not want, they still wanted to have a certain amount of freedom.
Under War Communism, industry was brought under state control once again. The control of the nationalised industries fell to the Supreme Council of National Economy or the Vesenkha. Each individual industry was brought under the control of different departments within the Vesenkha. These individual departments were called glavki. The Vesenkha was attached to Sovnarkom. Discipline was reasserted into the factories and the nationalisation of the industries meant that the one man management replaced the workers councils. In addition the Bolsheviks introduced internal passports in an attempt to halt the flood of industrial workers to the countryside. Trotsky wanted to tighten control over industrial workers even more by creating a labour army which was to work under the control of military discipline, however, Lenin overruled him.
From 1918 onwards, the policy of grain requisitioning was introduced, which meant that ‘Food Brigades’ were sent out from the towns to extract peasantry to feed the people of the towns and cities. On occasions and when necessary, the Red Army and the Cheka were used to extract this grain. In practice the grain requisitioning was basically the theft of the grain. This annoyed the peasants because it often meant that they had barely enough grain for themselves and their families. Rationing was introduced and it really brought to light the Bolsheviks priorities and values. The biggest rations went to the Red Army soldiers and the workers in the heavy industry, and then came the civil servants and the workers in the light industry. However, even these people only received enough food on which to live. At the bottom of the scale were the people who received barely any food, and these people included the capitalists, landlords and bourgeois. It was said by Zinoviev that “they were given just enough bread so as not to forget the smell of it.”
The third economic policy which Lenin introduced was the New Economic Policy or NEP which was introduced in March 1921. This was again an economic policy which was introduced so as to try and keep the Bolshevik government safe and keep it in power by giving the people what they wanted. Because of the factors of 1921, such as the Kronstadt mutiny, the Bolsheviks had become disillusioned and had realised that they were not as safe from attack as they thought that they were. This led to the introduction of the NEP. The basic idea was to create an economy with a public, or state controlled, and a private section, which operated on the basis of supply and demand.
The NEP saw the end to grain requisitioning. It was replaced by a tax in kind system. This meant that the peasants had to hand over a fixed proportion of their grain to the government and anything that was left over was allowed to be sold, for profit, on the open market. The amount of grain demanded by the state in 1921 had totalled to about half of what was requisitioned in 1920. The tax in kind system was eventually replaced by payments in the form of money. In addition to grain requisitioning being cancelled, private ownership and trading of small scale businesses was legalised. This led to many privately owned businesses emerging but there was also a huge amount of private manufacturing, usually producing consumer goods.
However, there was still some of the economy left under the control of the government. These were what Lenin called the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy and they included the banks and heavy industries, such as coal and steel, and the railway network. This meant that foreign trade continued to be the exclusive right of the state.
However, the industries that remained under the control of the state after 1921-22 were not complete owned by the government. They were expected to trade at a profit, and if they got into difficulties then they would not have been bailed out by the government. Industries and factories were consequently forced to increase efficiency and this meant a rise in unemployment as they tried to get rid of extra workers that were not really needed.
However, the Bolsheviks were once again not happy with this because it was more like capitalism than it was like communism. The fact that small business ownership had been legalised meant that there was an uptake in get-rich-quick traders, or ‘nepmen’, which opened casinos, bars and nightclubs in the major cities. This policy was once again a chance at survival that seemed to not to be very successful and ended up being dubbed with such names as the ‘Peasant Brest-Litovsk.’
All of Lenin’s economic policies were aimed at the survival of the Bolshevik party. The state capitalism and the New Economic policy was used to give the people what they wanted so as to keep them happy and the War Communism took what was needed to keep the people of the cities and towns happy. Therefore they had consistency in that way. However, because each one was different, they were not very consistent and this led to the people being annoyed that everything was being constantly changed.
