LENIN ECONOMY Flashcards
15
THE ECONOMY UNDER LENIN
what is a socialist economy?
one in which there is no private ownership and in which all members of society have a share in the State’s resources
STATE CAPITALISM
what did lenin’s decrees in october and novemner 1917 do?
Lenin’s decree on land in October 1917 abolished private ownership of land, legitimising peasant seizures and declared that all land belonged to the people.
Decrees in November recognised workers control over their own factories, so giving them the right to supervise management through the establishment of factory committees and similar committees were established for rural areas.
These early decrees only legitimised the changes that were already well underway.
STATE CAPITALISM
Lenin spoke out against the danger of moving towards socialism too quickly. He seemed to envisage a long transition during which the first stage would be a degree of state control, but private markets would remain as an important feature of economic life.
so in December 1917,
Veshenka (this was the council responsible for state industry 1917-32) established to supervise and control economic development.
STATE CAPITALISM
Lenin remained cautious in the face of the demands of some in his Party that he should set about the nationalisation of the industry which means
taking businesses out of private hands and placing them under state control
STATE CAPITALISM
Lenin’s fears concerning peasants’ and workers’ control proved well founded.
give 2 reasons for this
- Workers failed to organise their factories efficiently and output shrank at the rime when it was most needed.
- Some workers awarded themselves unsustainable pay rises and others helped themselves to stocks and equipment, but mostly they simply lacked the skills needed for successful management.
STATE CAPITALISM
With more money than goods available, there was high inflation - made peasants hoard produce rather than sell for worthless money, so the food shortages in towns grew worse.
The citizens of Petrograd were living on rations of just
50 gram of bread a day by February 1918 and elsewhere food riots threatened to undermine Bolshevik control.
WAR COMMUNISM
In the spring of 1918, when faced with another grain crisis, Lenin took the further step of expanding the states right to grain by beginning a programme of food requisitioning, which is
a policy and campaign of confiscation of grain and other agricultural products from peasants at nominal fixed prices according to specified quotas
WAR COMMUNISM
A food-supplies policy was set up in May 1918 which organised detachments of
soldiers and workers from the large towns into the countryside to ensure that grain was delivered to the State.
WAR COMMUNISM
Officially, the peasants were paid a fixed price, but
grain, livestock carts and firewood were often brutally confiscated, leaving the peasants with scarcely enough to live on, while the requisitioning detachments kept a share of what they collected as a reward.
WAR COMMUNISM
The peasants were divided into three categories.
what was the impact of this?
The poor and moderately poor were regarded as allies of the urban proletariat but the ‘grasping fists’ - the kulaks, who had made personal wealth from their farming - were labelled ‘enemies of the people’ and had their entire stocks seized.
Such measures brought misery to rural areas and peasants resisted where they could. They hid their crops, grew less, and murdered members of the requisition squads.
WAR COMMUNISM
what was nationalised?
the railways, banks, merchant fleet, power companies and the Putilov Iron works were all nationalised.
WAR COMMUNISM
Nationalisation increased following demands posed by the civil war:
what happened in november 1920?
November 1920 – nationalisation was extended to nearly all factories and businesses
the workers lost the freedom they had formerly enjoyed, and professional managers were employed by the state to reimpose discipline and increase output.
WAR COMMUNISM
what was meant by war communism?
3
- All private trade and manufacture were forbidden
- Working hours were extended and ration card workbooks were issued, replacing wages.
- Internal passports were also introduced to stop employees drifting back to the countryside
WAR COMMUNISM
why can war communism be as a transition to a socialist economy?
Some saw this as a transition to socialist economy since money was no longer the main agency of exchange and lost its value in favour of a system of barter (goods were exchanged without using money).
war communism was, in some ways an extension of the class warfare to destroy bourgeois attitudes already seen in the early months of the Bolshevik rule
WAR COMMUNISM
In practice, war communism created more problems than it solved:
4 points
- Transport systems were disrupted by the fighting and management struggled to get factories working efficiently, production declined.
- 1921 – total industrial input had fallen to around 20% of its pre-war levels and rations had to be cut.
- Diseases such as cholera and dysentery were rife, and a typhus epidemic swept through the cities and caused the death of more than 3 million in 1920.
- Some workers went on strike, which only made matters worse – others ignored the passport system and braved the armed guards stationed on the city boundaries to flee to the country in the hope of finding food. (By the end of 1920 the population of Petrograd was 57.5 per cent lower than the level of 1917. In Moscow it was 44.5 per cent lower.)
