![]() ![]() On February 26, delegates from the Kronstadt sailors visited Petrograd to investigate the situation. After the end of the civil war the policy of War Communism was replaced with the New Economic Policy. The rebellion had a startling effect on Lenin, because the Kronstadt sailors had been among the strongest supporters of the Bolsheviks. The turning point was the Kronstadt rebellion at the naval base in early March, 1921. Īs a result, a series of workers' strikes and peasants' rebellions, such as the Tambov rebellion rolled over the country. ![]() Seventy percent of locomotives were in need of repair and the 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. Ninety percent of all wages were "paid with goods" (payment in form of goods, rather than money). The ruble collapsed and was replaced by a system of bartering and, by 1921, heavy industry had fallen to output levels of 20 percent of those in 1913. dollar, which had been two rubles in 1914, rose to 1,200 in 1920.Ī black market emerged in Russia, despite the threat of the martial law against profiteering. ![]() The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920, and cattle fell from 58 to 37 million during the same span. By 1921 cultivated land had shrunk to some 62 percent of the prewar area, and the harvest yield was only 37 percent of normal. The peasants responded to requisitioning by refusing to till their land. Production of cotton, for example, fell to 5 percent, and iron to 2 percent, of the prewar level. It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories fell in 1921 to 20 percent of the pre-World War I level, with many crucial items experiencing an even more drastic decline. With private industry and trade proscribed and the newly-constructed state unable to adequately perform these functions, much of the Russian economy ground to a standstill. Between 19, Petrograd lost 75 percent of its population Moscow lost 50 percent. Workers began migrating from the cities to the countryside, where the chances to feed oneself were higher, thus further decreasing the possibility of the fair trade of industrial goods for food and worsening the plight of the remaining urban population. Peasants refused to co-operate in producing food, as the government took away far too much of it. War communism aggravated many hardships experienced by the population as a result of the war. Other commentators, such as the historian Richard Pipes, have argued that War communism was actually an attempt to immediately implement communist economics and that the Bolshevik leaders expected an immediate and large scale increase in economic output. Some commentators, including a number of Bolsheviks, have argued that its sole purpose was to win the war. The goals of the Bolsheviks in implementing war communism are a matter of dispute. A large proportion of the émigrés were educated and skilled.ĭuring the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik government instituted a policy of War Communism. Some left with General Wrangel through the Far East others left to escape the ravages of the war, or because they had supported one of the defeated sides. In the years following the October Revolution, epidemics, starvation, fighting, executions, and the general economic and social breakdown, worsened by the Allied military intervention and the Civil war had taken many lives. The droughts of 19 and the frightful famine during the latter year added the final chapter to the disaster. At the end of the Civil War, Bolshevik Russia was exhausted and ruined. ![]()
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