War communism and NEP

As soon as the Bolsheviks seized power they introduced now economic measures that gave substantial power to the proletariat and peasants in the form of their own affairs. This in a slight manner portrayed their commitment to the Marx theory of communism and an equal ideology. Even though, they wrote of the evils of capitalism, there own ideas once they came to power was rather vague. To Lenin, the party must govern the state for ‘the people’ and control all businesses and industry by the state for ‘the people’; so that wealth could be distributed evenly to all the people. Eventually classes would disappear and a new equality class would be formed for all. To allow a degree of flexibility for the Bolsheviks, they never confirmed how long this would take so they could justify their policies and adapt to any crisis.

Economic policy 1917

Initially there were some radical new policies brought in to suit the radical politics of a far left wing party. The land degree abolished all private ownership of lands without compensation. New formed land committees would distribute land to the peasants, this in effect just legalised what had already happened. In other areas such as workers in industry were giving more rights; they had the right to elect a committee that would control industrial enterprises. In the armed forces, all ranks were abolished and replaced with committees and in the legal system; the workers elected ‘people courts’. On the surface it seemed the workers were giving more rights yet in the background this merely gave the government more power as the Supreme council of the national economy controlled the committees. The role of the greater power to the government was incase the elected workers were not efficient during a civil war.

War Communism

All measures that were collected to help towards the war were known as War communism. All industries were nationalised and controlled by the government. Private trade was band and food was requisitioned from the peasants to feed the Red army and ensured the cities were the workers were located were properly replenished. However this created an aggressive peasant resentment as they denied some red soldiers food so many physical interactions between the people occurred causing the Bolsheviks to lose support. All these measures also went along with the future policies of Bolshevism and so War Communism is argued that it brought Russia to the closest ever to true Communism. The Bolsheviks believed the First World War destroyed the old world and now they could make anew with the theory of Karl Marx. The Bolsheviks saw the abolishment of the currency, which would be replaced by bartering, as a sign of liberation from capitalism, which in fact was a result of huge increase of inflation. The result of this radicalisation of War Communism pushed the Bolshevik leadership towards implementing large-scale nationalisation before they originally intended. As the state of the economy was in a drastic decline as a result of the First World War, they inherited a struggling situation so War Communism was a good way to reform this ideal for a new war, however some policies were not successful resulting from a civil war such as the abolishment of Rank was retracted temporally and the Store manager was reintroduced to help efficiency.

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The difference between the ideological and practical policies of the Bolsheviks had many issues that needed resolving. War communism shows the Bolsheviks responding to both practical difficulties and ideological considerations.

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The reintroduction of Piecework was met with fierce opposition from the workers who saw it as unfair yet this would increase production in times of need. The reintroduction of Managers caused great fear of return to the old manner of the Tsarist regime. The most unpopular aspects of War communism were affecting the peasants. They had little choice over the requisitioning of grain and the plans to rid the Mir, a village commune. When the civil war was over, all these problems threatened stability within the Bolshevik regime and caused huge problems for the Bolsheviks in consolidating their rule.

Why did the Bolsheviks change their economic policies after 1921?

The year 1921 saw a huge change in social and economic policies, which showed a failing ideological communism theory as they found it difficult to maintain the economy within the War communism role at the end of the war. Industry and production ground to a hault. Production in Heavy industry had fallen to nearly 20% of its 1913 levels. Food production had also fallen to nearly a third of its 1913 levels and a breakdown in transportation lead to the 1921 famine. Over 20 million Russians would die to the result of famine that brought diseases such as typhus and smallpox. It was clear that War communism would not survive post war Russia and a clear indication was that communism would eventually fail. The unpopularity of War communism among the peasants leads to a drastic change in policy to try and restore order from the resentment of the peasants. This caused the Tambov Rising that saw a huge number of peasants to riot of requisitioning of grain and was only put down when 50,000 red troops were ordered into the area.

This pressure on the government increased as the Krontsdat revolt of March 1921 occurred. This revolt outside of Petrograd by a group of sailors was highly alarming as these men were the symbol of the October revolution as they played a huge part for the Bolsheviks in gaining control. However, the Bolsheviks propaganda machine labelled these men as White revolutionaries to try and stop lowering further of morale. The revolt was over the growing power of the government and how they treated the workers and not been static with their policies. The slogan been ‘Soviets without Bolsheviks’, meaning the country can survive as a equal state of communism however do not need the help of the Bolshevik party. The revolt was put down and secured by the leadership of Leon Trotsky however this caused Lenin to finally decide he needed to change his policies concerning the economy. This pragmatic approach caused Lenin, to again, show he was willing to be realistic rather than ideological to help survive the revolution. As the political issues grew narrower for Lenin, this caused him to create the new economic policy or NEP.

NEP

NEP was an economy measure that moved away from the tight control of the state by the government during War Communism. In agriculture, there would be an end to requisitioning, to be replaced by a system of taxation that meant they could sell any spare food on the market for a profit. An advantage of this tax was that it was a ‘tax in kind’ so that the people may give a proportion of whatever they had made instead of needing to earn money to pay tax, giving the peasants some incentive to produce more. The Bolsheviks also introduced a policy were there would no longer be a forced collectivisation. This was a compromise from there socialist methods yet they needed to increase the levels of production in order to survive.

Under NEP, small-scale industry became a lot more privatised even though the state continued to control the heavy industry, transport and the banks. This allowed Lenin to claim that the party still held ‘the commanding heights of the economy’. In the state owned factories piecework and bonuses were used to raise production. However, these techniques were virtually a capitalist idea so were highly unpopular within the party. This emergence of capitalism was clearly confirmed when the reintroduction of money was created. Yet the legalisation of private trade did however end the expanding power of the black market, which was one factor that leads to privatisation.

Results

From the communist perspective, the NEP, with the integration of Private trade and taxation represented a retreat to the old Tsar regime and a capitalist state. The left wing of the party was partially hostile towards this policy as it was a total betrayal towards the communist idea. However, Lenin, realised the situation of desperate economical situation meant they needed to compromise if they wanted to survive in power and so the policy was seen as temporary and the excuse was this policy is needed to gain strength to proceed to stage 5 in the Marx theory. So Lenin stated, ‘One step backwards, two steps forwards’.

The fears of the left were soon realised as the private trade and industry soon lead to the creation of private traders, whom gained power through money, also known as ‘NEPMEN’, these men used the concessions of NEP to profit from trade. The problem with the peasants were that the selling of the surplus goods created large profits so were known as higher class peasants or ‘Kulaks’. These groups were totally hated within the far left government as they represented the decline of the socialist state.

Following NEP, showed the arrests of other rival parties such as the Mensheviks, whom contested to the Bolshevik power so was needed to be removed in order to gain more control in power, incase that the Mensheviks may start a new revolution to end the devastation of the Bolshevik regime so far. After the New policy of NEP and a relaxed form of politics, many left wing Bolsheviks began to see NEP as a temporary short-term successful measure. Bukharin (A favourable Party member), a left wing Bolshevik, became very supportive of NEP.

Even though NEP was considered as a capitalist policy and had many critics; it still however had some support as it started Russia, to begin to recover in economic strength. In 1921 at the end of the Civil war, grain production was at only 37.6 million tons, however within just 3 years it rose to 51.4 million tons yet it still was not the original levels of 1913 or pre-war years. However this increase was an incredible boast to the Bolshevik moral as it showed this government can recover a nation state. As NEP started to cause growth within Russia, it answered many critics of Lenin so his power started to be less questioned. Nonetheless, Lenin had shown his skills as a pragmatist, willing to compromise ideology in the short term to ensure long term gain.

The retreat to capitalism under NEP can also be a reflection of validity of Bolshevik ideology. Had Lenin been wrong to assume that socialism could be achieved without going through a stage of capitalist development first? The NEP can be seen as an acknowledgement that the Russian economy was not ready for socialism.

Reasons for NEP

To increase food production by giving the peasant an incentive to grow more and increase moral.
To get the economy going again after the chaos of the civil war. An element of private trade would give the workers and small businesses an incentive to increase production and restart industry.
To quell any threat or opposition towards the Bolsheviks, such as during the Kronstadt mutiny or Tambov rising.