War communism

War communism is the name for the economic policies that introduced to Russia in 1918 by Vladimir Lenin, leader of Russia from 1917-24. The policy was ended in 1921 because it was not successful. Instead, he introduced the New Economic Policy in 1921.

War Communism was introduced for many reasons. However, the most important ones were that:

• It severely hurt the Bolsheviks during the Civil War
• It was a big attempt towards complete communism.

It was bad for the Russian economy because the government took away extra grain produced by the peasants. This was known as grain requisitioning. Peasants were not allowed to sell their extra food, so they stopped producing more than they needed to eat. Because of this, Russia ended up with millions of people who did not have any food, and starved.