War communism or military communism (Russian: Военный коммунизм, Voyennyy kommunizm) was the economic and political system that existed in Soviet Russia during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921. According to Soviet historiography, the ruling Bolshevik administration adopted this policy with the goal of keeping towns (the proletarian power-base) and the Red Army stocked with food and weapons. Circumstances dictated extreme measures as the ongoing Civil War disrupted normal economic mechanisms and relations. War communism began in June 1918, enforced by the Supreme Economic Council (Russian: Высший Совет Народного Хозяйства), known as the Vesenkha. It ended on 21 March 1921 with the beginning of the New Economic Policy, which lasted until 1928.
War communism included the following policies:
- Nationalization of all industries and the introduction of strict centralized management
- State control of foreign trade
- Strict discipline for workers, with strikes forbidden
- Obligatory labor duty by non-working classes
- Prodrazvyorstka – requisition of agricultural surplus (in excess of an absolute minimum) from peasants for centralized distribution among the remaining population
- Rationing of food and most commodities, with centralized distribution in urban centers
- Private enterprise banned
- Military-style control of the railways
Because the Bolshevik government implemented all these measures in a time of civil war, they were far less coherent and coordinated in practice than they might appear on paper. Large areas of Russia remained outside Bolshevik control, and poor communications meant that even those regions loyal to the Bolshevik government often had to act on their own, lacking orders or coordination from Moscow. It has long been debated[by whom?] whether "war communism" represented an actual economic policy in the proper sense of the phrase, or merely a set of measures intended to win the civil war.
The goals of the Bolsheviks in implementing war communism are a matter of controversy. Some commentators, including a number of Bolsheviks, have argued that its sole purpose was to win the war. Vladimir Lenin, for instance, said that "the confiscation of surpluses from the peasants was a measure with which we were saddled by the imperative conditions of war-time."  Other Bolsheviks, such as Yurii Larin, Lev Kritzman, Leonid Krasin and Nikolai Bukharin argued that it was a transitional step towards socialism. Commentators, such as the historian Richard Pipes, the philosopher Michael Polanyi, and the economists such as Paul Craig Roberts  or Sheldon L. Richman, have argued that War communism was actually an attempt immediately to eliminate private property, commodity production and market exchange, and in that way to implement communist economics, and that the Bolshevik leaders expected an immediate and large-scale increase in economic output. This view was also held by Nikolai Bukharin, who said that "We conceived War Communism as the universal, so to say 'normal' form of the economic policy of the victorious proletariat and not as being related to the war, that is, conforming to a definite state of the civil war".
War communism was largely successful at its primary purpose of aiding the Red Army in halting the advance of the White Army and in reclaiming most of the territory of the former Russian Empire thereafter.
In the cities and surrounding countryside, the population experienced hardships as a result of the war. Peasants refused to co-operate in producing food. Workers began migrating from the cities to the countryside, where the chances to feed themselves were higher, thus further decreasing the possibility of barter of industrial goods for food and worsening the plight of the remaining urban population. Between 1918 and 1920, Petrograd lost 72% of its population, while Moscow lost 53%.
A series of workers' strikes and peasants' rebellions broke out all over the country, such as the Tambov rebellion (1920-1921). A turning point came with the Kronstadt rebellion at the Kronstadt naval base in early March 1921. The rebellion startled Lenin, because Bolsheviks considered Kronstadt sailors the "reddest of the reds". According to David Christian, the Cheka (the state Communist Party secret police) reported 118 peasant uprisings in February 1921.
Christian, in his book "Imperial and Soviet Russia", summarises the state of Russia in 1921 after years of War communism:
A government claiming to represent the people now found itself on the verge of being overthrown by that same working class. The crisis had undermined the loyalty of the villages, the towns and finally sections of the army. It was fully as serious as the crises faced by the tsarist government in 1905 and February 1917.
Russian famine of 1921–22 may have been exacerbated by War Communism policies, but it is debatable to which extent.
A black market emerged in Russia, despite the threat of martial law against profiteering. The rouble collapsed and barter increasingly replaced money as a medium of exchange and, by 1921, heavy industry output had fallen to 20% of 1913 levels. 90% of wages were paid with goods rather than money. 70% of locomotives were in need of repair, and food requisitioning, combined with the effects of seven years of war and a severe drought, contributed to a famine that caused between 3 and 10 million deaths. Coal production decreased from 27.5 million tons (1913) to 7 million tons (1920), while overall factory production also declined from 10,000 million roubles to 1,000 million roubles. According to the noted historian David Christian, the grain harvest was also slashed from 80.1 million tons (1913) to 46.5 million tons (1920).
- See Nicolas Werth, Histoire de l'Union Soviétique de Lénine à Staline, 1995 ‹See Tfd›(in French)
- Lenin, V.I., Collected Works, volume 32, 1965. Moscow: Progress Publishers. pp. 187
- Szamuely, Laszlo (1974), First models of the socialist economic system, Budapest, pp. 45–61
- Polanyi, Michael. 1960. "Towards a Theory of Conspicuous Production." Soviet Survey (34, October–December):90-99.
- Roberts, Paul Craig. 1990 (1971). Alienation and the Soviet Economy: The Collapse of the Socialist Era, Studies in Political Economy. Oakland, Ca.: The Institute.
- Sheldon L. Richman, "War Communism to NEP: The Road From Serfdom" Journal of Libertarian Studies, Winter 1981, 5(1), pp. 89-97.
- Nikolai Bukharin, The path to socialism in Russia, 1967. New York: Omicron Books, pp. 178
- Christian, David (1997). Imperial and Soviet Russia. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. p. 239. ISBN 0-333-66294-6.
- R. W. Davies; Mark Harrison; S. G. Wheatcroft (9 December 1993). The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-521-45770-5.
- "Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls". necrometrics.com. Retrieved 2017-12-12.
- Christian, David (1997). Imperial and Soviet Russia. London: Macmillan Press Ltd. p. 236. ISBN 0-333-66294-6.