War Communism

Question 1

Causes: Industrial

Answer 1

Workers’ committees placed in charge of factories. Incapable of running them.
Gave themselves huge pay rises
War caused raw material shortages
Industrial output shrank.
Led to hyperinflation: value of rouble collapsed
Workers fleed cities due to lack of food, wrecking factories
1918-1921: Population of Petrograd and Moscow halved.
Needed workers making munitions for civil war.

Question 2

Causes: Agriculture

Answer 2

High inflation-peasants wouldn’t sell food, caused food shortages.
Lost important lands following WW, such as Ukraine, big wheat providers, caused food shortages.
1918: Bread rations dropped to 50 grams per person.
Food riots
Food shortages needed to be ended for workers

Question 3

War Communism Date and Factors

Answer 3

1918-1921: series of harsh and repressive economic measures.
1) Grain requisitioning
2) Private trade banned
3) State control of industry
4) Single manager to replace worker committees
5) Passports to prevent workers leaving towns
6)Rationing

Question 4

Agriculture

Answer 4

Blame Kulaks for hoarding grain to artificially increase prices, untrue, didn’t work.
Forcefully took grain using Cheka requisitioning units.
Took all grain including seeds needed for new crops.

Question 5

Industry

Answer 5

Jun 1918: Decree on Nationalisation, within two years nearly all major industry under control of government, administered by Vesenkha.
All private trade and manufacturing banned
Fines for lateness and absence
Internal passports to stop fleeing for countryside.

Question 6

Rationing

Answer 6

Class based rationing system.
Red Army and labour force given priority
Next: Civil servants and professionals
Next: Middle-class and burzhui, barely enough to live on.

Question 7

Effectiveness: Agriculture

Answer 7

Peasants resisted grain requisitioning only made enough food for them to survive off.
Famine in Russia: Harvests in Russia during 1920-1921 half of that in 1913.
Half (5 million) of the causalities in the civil war due to starvation.
USA provided 10 million Russians with food.

Question 8

Effectiveness: Bolsheviks

Answer 8

Popular amongst members of the Bolshevik party due to the centralisation of industry, end of private ownership and persecution of peasants.
Lenin kept it until the uprisings during 1620-1621.