Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lennon had been one of the country's most diligent revolutionaries and a natural leader.  When his Bolshevik party took control of Russia, he became the first leader of the Soviet Union.

War Communism

The Bolsheviks had a well organized plan for taking control of the country.  However, once in control, they did not know how to actually make, and run, a communist society.  Karl Marx's writings provided no clue how to do this.  

War with Germany had left the country in bad condition.  People were starving, factories were destroyed and skilled workers and managers were dead or had run away.  The Bolsheviks were also faced with an escalating civil war.  Drastic measures were needed.  Communist philosophy stated that the workers should own the means of production.  The Bolsheviks decided to interpret this as meaning the government should control the economy since, in theory, the government represented the workers.  They enacted the harsh policies of war communism to bring the country's economy under government control. War communism did the following:

The peasants resented war communism, often refusing to grow any food.  Starvation continued and so did peasant rebellions and support for the civil war.  Even some communists were demonstrating and rebelling against the ineffective Bolshevik policies. By 1921 the country was in worse shape than it had been before the October/November 1917 rebellion.  War communism had failed.

New Economic Policy

In March of 1921 Lenin announced his "New Economic Policy."  The basic element of the new policy was a relaxation of government control.  The Bolsheviks would allow some private industry to continue in the hopes of jump starting the economy.  In the future, once the famine and war had stopped, they could return to a policy more in keeping with their communist ideology.  The New Economic Policy did the following:

The New Economic Policy was a success.  It mixed some private industry with state ownership and control.  Peasants worked hard to grow more food because the more they made, the more they could profit.  Even so, the state profited from the high taxes which peasants paid.  The Famine ended.  Industrial production increased since the government was now able to feed its workers in the major industries.  The small industries prospered as well because their private owners strived to make profits.  The country recovered.  However, it lagged far behind the powerful industrial nations of the West.  More drastic measures would be needed if Russia was to catch up.

The Death of Lenin

Lenin died January 21, 1924.  He lived long enough to see his new policies bring peace to the nation.  He also witnessed the official formation of the USSR in 1922 (there were only four republics at that time).  He did not live to see the Soviet Union become a powerful industrialized nation.  He also missed the spread of communism to other countries in the world.  Still, until recently, he was called, "the Father of the Soviet Union."

Further Reading

1.  Click here to go to a  comprehensive site about Lenin.  There are biographies, pictures, Lenin's writings, Stalin's writings about Lenin, and even Russian versions of some of the pages.  The Russian versions may not download properly for you, but if they do, you can go there to listen to a real audio of Lenin speaking. 

2.  Click here to read a paper on War Communism.

3.  Click here to go to a paper by professor Gerhard Rempel and read about the New Economic Policy.  Try to ignore the red font...

4.  Click here to go to the Encyclopedia Britannica.  See what they say about the Russian Civil War, War Communism and the New Economic Policy.  You can also read about Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, perestroika, and just about everything else that you learned about Russia this year!