Bolshevik consolidation

• Period

  1918 - 1921
• State capitalism

  Mixed economy; socialist and capitalist elements; imposing state control but retaining private ownership
• State control examples

  • GOELRO 1920
  • 1917 nationalisation of banks, 1918 railways
  • Veshenka 1917
  • 1918 decree on land
• GOELRO

  organised and distributed electricity
• Veshenka 1917


  managed state control over Russia's economy
• 3 main issues with state capitalism

  • Bolsheviks and Bukharin demanded radical measures - state control over everything
  • factories taken over by workers meant decline in production - workers lacked management skills
  • peasants control sale of grains meant higher prices - state-controlled needed cheap grain so workers didn't need a higher wage
• war communism

  June 1918; system to ensure Red Army were provided with food and weapons to win the war
• war communism measures

  nationalization, grain requisitioning, labour discipline and rationing - government decided what would be produced and Lenin saw these as necessary to defeat the Whites
• grain requisitioning

  peasants' grain distributed to feed Red Army and workers; farmers were supervised by the State; kulaks had stocks seized; opposition was repressed by Cheka
• nationalization

  November 1920 all factories and businesses

  May 1918 sugar; June 1918 oil

  banned private ownership

  military-style control of railways
• labour discipline

  workers lost rights from "Decree on Workers' Control of Factories"; abolished workers' soviets

  • fined for lateness and absence
  • internal passports - stop migration to countryside
  • extended hours
• rationing

  • based on class - upper got the least and factory workers/Red Army got the most
  • ration-card workbooks instead of wages
• effects of war communism

  • food shortages by 1920 - cannibalism, reduction of grain supplies
  • production decline
  • reduction in population by 44.5% in Moscow and 57.5% in Petrograd
• population decrease from 170.9 million to 130.9 million
• NEP

  February 1921 by Gosplan and introduced March 1921 to fix problems from war communism; Lenin knew it was an ideological retreat therefore did not allow a vote
• Scissors-Crisis

  Agricultural prices were low whilst industrial prices were high
• Scissor-Crisis impact


  Farmers couldn't used new methods nor increase productivity because there wasn't enough surplus cash to buy equipment or machinery
• Nepmen were


  Hated for being representatives of capitalism
• Political impact of NEP

  1921 ban on factions and SRs & Mensheviks were banned; Cheka given power to suppress Nepmen moving NEP towards capitalism; 1923 nomenklatura system to promote Party members who showed complete loyalty to Party