Preview

SEQ Lenin S Economic Policy

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
917 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
SEQ Lenin S Economic Policy
Explain the impact of Lenin’s economic policies (8m) Lenin’s economic policies included the War Communism, which was implemented during the civil war in 1918 as well as the New Economic Policy (NEP), which was implemented in 1921. War communism was the name given to the name of the harsh economic measure the Bolsheviks adopted during the civil war. The aims was to put Communism theories into practice by redistributing wealth among the Russian people as well as help with the Civil War by keeping the towns and the Red Army supplied with food and weapons. This policy had both negative and positive impacts.
Firstly, War Communism brought upon 7 million deaths to the Russian people due to grain requisition during the Civil War organized by the Bolsheviks for their army. This led to food shortages which, along with the bad weather in 1920 and 1921, caused a terrible famine. Peasants refused to co-operate in producing more food as the government simply took it away. This resulted in the suffering of the Russian people; the decrease in standard of living, and even caused cannibalism which is morally and ethically wrong. This caused an increase in the unhappiness in the Russian people who were in constant despair. Furthermore, War Communism used terror to control the Russian population, such as killing all strikers and peasants who did not hand over the surplus produce they had. Food was rationed and free enterprise was made illegal, and all production and trade were controlled by the state, which showed that the people did not have freedom. Some peasants even had to hide spare food to prevent it from being taken during grain requisitioning which the Bolsheviks implemented. There was unhappiness about the system as people felt that peace, bread and land had not been delivered. This collectively caused the people to lose their trust in the Bolsheviks and eventually cause a decrease in support for the Bolsheviks. In 1921, the sailors at the Kronstadt

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    (a) To what extent was the New Economic Policy (NEP) essential to the Bolshevik consolidation of power?…

    • 619 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The New Economic Policy, known as the NEP was an economic system used in the USSR 1921-1928. The NEP was introduced after war communism. This was because war communism involved kulaks and other peasants being forced to give up their crops in order to support the army, this in turn made them quite upset and angry which made them destroy crops. This meant that the growth of crops and food was falling back to 1913 standards and Lenin had to do something about it so he brought about the NEP. This was particularly good at the time as it allowed individuals the opportunity to make money and do well for themselves. But it was unpopular to many communists.…

    • 586 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    His way of thinking is known as "state capitalism". He wanted to continue the way ,Vyshnegradsky had gone.By heavy taxation and forcing exports to generate capital the government got more money for investing in e.g. railways.…

    • 629 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    By 1917, the Russian economy was in poor shape and near complete destruction because of the war effort. Food shortages were rampant which brought about civil unrest.…

    • 3026 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Russia’s industrialisation as a result of the reforms of 1891 proved crucial in the fall of the old order. After Witte’s reforms of the late 1890s the population of Petrograd doubled between 1890 and 1910. With the working population in the cities it gave revolutionary groups the advantage of having a large group of frustrated workers in a confined space. In relation to the events of 1917 February revolution the population density allowed the numbers participating in the violent revolts to reach colossal numbers. With the Tsar on the war front, the masses persuaded the soldiers to join the revolutionary forces and by the time he came back, it was too late. Cities such as Petrograd and Moscow weren’t designed for the population increase, and as such workers were living in crowded dirty, overcrowded apartments. These living conditions lead to the frustrations throughout the revolutionary groups. Witte’s reforms converted a large portion of peasants into proletariat. As the tension raised in 1917 that same industrial working class responded with strikes. The strikes started by the Pulitov Steal workers on the 18th of February 1917 started out with one company, but the frustration with the Tsar wasn’t just in one factory. In exactly 12 days one strike had turned into a revolution the reason was that the reforms of Witte and Stolypin .With the peasants now in factories it ment they lacked farmers and had nobody to farm the good harvests in the war years, in fact the harvests of 1915 and 1916 were the best of the century. Without the food to feed a starving nation, the Russian government was in trouble and with this Wittes reforms that were designed…

    • 944 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Between 1800 and 1939 Russia underwent through a severe regime change. The people of Russia were in a state of great economic disparity, and the lower class faced hunger, poverty, etc. The lower class had very little of the grain, land, and fiscal control that was available in Russia, such pretext of large income disparity gaps and unbalanced control of GDP were the pre-requisites se in place for the takeover of socialism. And such is what happened. Within this time period Russia went through a proletariat revolution of communism aiming have the workers of the world unite and free themselves from capitalist oppression to create a world run by and for the working class. However even though they underwent this major social-economic change, conditions in Russia stayed around the same. We still saw that Russia was under leadership of a Totalitarian authority. And maintained the same economic conditions where the consumer-based market never developed and the population was largely rural and the economy was agricultural based.…

    • 837 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Bolshevik Revolution Dbq

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages

    There were many consequences from the Bolshevik revolution. Farmland was distributed among farmers, and factories are given to workers. The banks were nationalized and a national council was assembled to run the economy. Russia pulled out of World War I, signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, conceding lots of land to Germany. Civil war, between Bolshevik (“red”) and anti-Bolshevik (“white”) forces, sweeps Russia from 1918 to 1920. Around 15 million die in conflict and the famine. The Russian economy is in shambles. Industrial production drops, trade all but ceases, and skilled workers flee the country. Despite the…

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Russia was torn between the world war and the population was threatened as levels of starvation rose whilst industry fell. The provisional government could not do much to stop Russia plummeting as they did not have much power and the people of Russia failed to support them (1). The citizens of Russia were desperately looking for help and the Bolshevik party, created with the help of Lenin and Trotsky in the year 1917, had the answer. Slowly, they had managed to become one of the most powerful parties ever created, but many factors were to cause the consolidation of power. In this essay I will be comparing the significance of Vladimir Lenin in the Bolshevik consolidation of power with another important factor; Leon Trotsky.…

    • 1843 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Bolsheviks consolidated their power after October 1917 however they faced many severe problems which made keeping their power complex. For Lenin and the Bolsheviks winning political power was relatively easy compared with retaining it. The Bolsheviks may have had a temporary majority in the All-Russia soviet in October 1917, but they did not have a majority following in the country as a whole . Russia was in chaos, politically and economically, and normal government had broken down in large areas. . yet lenin was able to overcome these problems and hold ontopower to create the world first communist state. The Bolsheviks overcame these problems by use of violence in the form of repression, and violence in war communism and the red army during the civil war however violence against their opponents was not their only strategy, Lenin also put forward policies of reform which showed that they were willing to compromise their principles to keep hold of power when faced with early problems and after the outbreak of the civil war the disunity of the opposition and the geographical and organisational factors were key factors which helped the Bolsheviks consolidate their grip on power.…

    • 1978 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Russia’s economy suffered worse during the war than most of the other participants due to its underdeveloped Industrial sector. Eventually, the toll on the Russian economy and quality of life caused the Russian people to rebel against Czar Nicholas II and a revolution took place in 1917. When Vladimir Lenin of the Bolsheviks came to power, he withdrew Russia from the war in order to begin ameliorating working conditions and quality of life, but before he could begin stabilizing the economic and political climate in Russia, a Civil War broke out. Ultimately, the Bolshevik regime won the war and Russia emerged as the Soviet Union: the first communist country in…

    • 1001 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Communism was the end result of Marx's beliefs. That you were a Marxist if you agreed with what he said and communism was what you all worked to achieve. He believed in the uniting of the working class or proletariat as a whole and that their immediate goals were "formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat." (Marx 66) to achieve these…

    • 1280 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Lenin's Brutality

    • 1671 Words
    • 7 Pages

    While Lenin rose to power on the ideals of fighting for the people, he committed heinous crimes against anyone who he considered was a threat to his new government. In doing so, Lenin started the Red Terror, a period of time where the new government attempted to find anti- communist or pro- monarchy citizens, often killing or enslaving those that they found. A task force that was known as the Cheka was put in place for that goal. The Cheka, a task force whose name has no formal translation, hunted down citizens who Lenin considered a threat to his regime. As the government had many that opposed the communist government, the police force created terror throughout much of the Russian population. Although the exact numbers of executions and deaths from the Red Terror is not known, some historians think that as many as half a million were killed by the Cheka. Yet, executions were not the only horrors that the Red Terror spread throughout Russia. Many members of opposition parties were sent to labor camps, which would become known in the Western world as concentration camps. The civilians unfortunate enough to be sent there were forced to work in horrendous conditions. Because of the poor working environment, many died in the labor camps. Lenin also essentially abolished Russia’s religious freedom, often persecuting minority groups such as the Orthodox Church, Catholics,…

    • 1671 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Russia had lost a lot of territory to Germany and Austria. Generals and the higher class were not reliable in the military and were completely incompetent. There were food riots all over Russia and the troops refused to listen to their superiors. The March Revolution was one of the three revolutions that Russia had during this time period. The Tsar Nicholas the second removed himself from the throne. The Duma, or Parliament of Russia were ignored and held no power up until this point. They took over the government and called themselves the Provisional Government. The Provisional government was set up to make a Democratic constitution and have free elections. Alexander Kerensky was elected president. He believe that the only way to end the war was to have a victorious peaceful ending. The peasants which make up more then half of the population wanted the war to end whether it was victorious or not. They were sick of loosing their sons and stated that they refused to grow crops and make goods as long as the war was still going on. Lenin was the leader of the Bolsheviks, which had about 100,000 members out of the 160 million people in Russia. He went head to head against Kerensky over power and leadership of Russia. In October Lenin got his group together and convinced them to take control of the government. He eventually took over and created the Bolshevik Dictatorship, using military force. The differences of…

    • 1421 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Marx in Soho

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Communism is a system of political and economic organization in which property is owned by the members of the community and all share in the common resources and wealth acquired (Ebrey et. al., 2005). It is a socioeconomic structure that promotes a society that has no class and state. Communism was also said to be the bloodiest form of regime since the people are ruled by fear. If they try to oppose the communist government, death awaits them. The government keeps the people in line by murdering those who dare question its leaders. The people were forced to work hard and they were intimidated to do so.…

    • 916 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The largest factor in this public unrest was the Provisional Government’s insistence that Russia should continue fighting in the First World War. Millions of Russians had been killed, a large percentage of them ‘peasants in uniform’ – farmers who were untrained and unprepared for what awaited them. With so many farmers fighting or already dead, coupled with severe inflation due to lack of government control of the economy, huge food shortages swept across Russia.…

    • 1594 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays