Lenin and the

Economy

Did life change under the

Communists?

Did Russia get any closer to

industrialisation? What October Revolution gave to the Worker and Peasant

Learning objective

•To be able to explain why the NEP and War Communism were necessary.

Success criteria

1. To explain the reasons for the introduction of War Communism and the NEP (Ao1a, knowledge and recall).

2. To have made synoptic links between a) Tsarist industrial policies and b) opposition to regimes (Ao1b, synoptic judgement and synthesis across the period).

3. To have drawn conclusions regarding the success of War Communism and the NEP, and to explain the effect that they had on the lives of the Russian people (Ao1b, assessment of consequence and significance within an historical context).

Witte and the End of the Tsarist autocracy• Production levels in 1913 still lagged behind that of

the West.

• Most industry was small scale, handicraft based and any gains were masked by a substantial increase in the size of the population.

• Little attention paid to agriculture.

• Railway system inefficient.

• Money borrowed from abroad, high taxes, abandoned gold standard. Rampant inflation.

Was the new Bolshevik revolution a turning point in the management of the economy?

State Capitalism:state taking

complete control of the economy until it could be ‘safely’ handed

over to the proletariat.

The SEC couldn’t cope and

was subservient

to the powerful Council of

Labour and Defence.

What was War Communism?• War Communism

• This was the name of the harsh economic measures that the Bolsheviks adopted during the Civil War.

• It’s aims were (1) to put communist theories into practice by sharing out the wealth of the country among the people and (2) to help with the Civil War by keeping towns and the Red Army supplied with food and weapons.

In Practice

In the countryside In the towns

Peasants forced to grow more food. Lenin sent in his own managers to operate factories.

Refused to work harder as they were not paid a fair price. Reduced incentives- lazy peasants got the same as hardworking peasants.

Strict discipline imposed on workers.

Lenin ordered requisition squads to seize food.

Death penalty introduced for strikers.

Those found hoarding food were punished. RED TERROR.

People were prevented from leaving the cities.

Peasants did not want to hand over surplus food so grew less.

Prices rose and this inflation made the rouble lose its value.

Led to famine. Black market grew. Bartering replaced cash trade.

Uprisings caused by War Communism and leading to the NEP• Large-scale discontent among the Russian populace,

particularly amongst the peasantry who often refused to till their land.

• In February 1921 alone, there were over one hundred peasant uprisings.

• The workers in Petrograd were also involved in a series of strikes sparked by the reduction of bread rations by one third over a 10 day period.

• Kronstadt Rising. An investigation into Bolshevik’s handling of rebellions leading to a rebellion by soldiers and sailors. Dealt with after a series of skirmishes by Bolshevik troops.

• Discontent also dealt with by Lenin’s ban on factions as well as the NEP.

An historian’s view (Sally J. Taylor)• War Communism, as it was called, came to rely more

and more upon repression and outright violence as the main methods of securing meat and grain from the peasants. Essentials like salt, kerosene, and matches were in short supply; important manufactured goods, such as boots and farming implements, were not forthcoming. With few rewards for their labor, the peasants showed little interest in growing more than what their immediate needs required. Now a ruinous drought in the grain-growing districts added to the misfortunes of the already depleted countryside, and the entire nation lay exhausted, in a state of virtual collapse.

So Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy• Peasants would pay a small fixed amount of grain in

tax each year.

• Any surplus grain could be sold- leading to some peasants becoming quite wealthy (kulaks) and returning the incentive to produce.

• Small factories were allowed to make a profit.

• Traders could make and sell goods at a profit. These were called ‘Nepmen’.

Explanation in Peasant Terms

The NEP

• Promoted by the Politburo as ‘a temporary deviation, a tactical retreat’.

• Many thought it was a betrayal of the October Revolution.

• Partially resolved a demand for political unity after the 1921 Kronstadt rising.

• With the death of Lenin, though in 1924, and the ensuing power struggle was based around the NEP.

State Capitalism

+Grain

Requisitioning=

War Communism

The people were

rebelling and

unhappy.Lenin

needed to change it. Introduced the NEP.

An American Journalist in Russia• Everyone is so infinitely better off that present

conditions see paradise by comparison... 250,000 private traders have migrated to Moscow since the NEP began. They crowd the restaurants where it costs $25 a head for dinner with French wine ... and lose a thousand or so an evening at cards without turning a hair.

• Walter Duranty, I Write AS I Please (1935)

A young angry Bolshevik

• The NEP restored some prosperity to Russia . But to many of us this prosperity was distasteful... We felt ourselves sinking into the bog, paralysed, corrupted... There was gambling, drunkenness, and all the filth of former times.

Classes were reborn in front of our very eyes.

• Victor Serge, From Lenin to Stalin (1937)

Another Bolshevik

• There wasn’t any food in the country. We were down to a little bread each. Then suddenly they started the NEP. Cafes opened. Factories went back into private hands. It was Capitalism. In my eyes it was the very thing I had been fighting against...

• Most people supported Lenin, other said he was wrong, and many tore up their party membership cards.

• Nikolai Izatchik

The ScissorsCrisis

Supply of food increased at a rate exceeding domestic demand (swift fall in

prices), supply of manufactured goods increased more slowly, leaving prices high.

Peasants were reluctant to sell, industrialists needed them to do so, so they could afford to buy their goods. This was less serious than it seemed at the time.

Situation was resolved.

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