Historical Dictionary of the Russian Civil Wars, 1916-1926

The main planks of the system, which was overseen by VSNKh, were the nationalization of industry (beginning with large factories by a decree of 28 June 1918 and spreading to small enterprises by a decree of 20 November 1920); a high degree of central control over the production and distribution of goods; a state monopoly on foreign trade and a strict regulation of internal trade, to the extent that all private trade came to be regarded as illegal by 1920; the imposition of strict discipline in the factories; obligatory labor service for members of the bourgeoisie; the requisitioning of grain and other agricultural products from the peasantry (prodrazverstka) under a state “food dictatorship”; the rationing of food and other products; and a tendency for direct exchange of goods and services to obviate the need for currency. (It is of note, however, that fixed prices, rationing, and a state monopoly on grain purchases were not Bolshevik inventions; they had been introduced to Russia by the imperial government during the First World War and had been maintained by the Provisional Government in 1917.) However, the chaotic circumstances of the civil wars meant that the program could not be introduced fully or uniformly (if, indeed, it was a true program, rather than a series of ad hoc, desperate measures); for example, the black market (through bagmen) was responsible for the supply of most food consumed by urban dwellers throughout the period.

Although it is generally agreed that War Communism helped the Soviet government win the civil wars, it also aggravated many of the hardships suffered by the population. Peasants resented the requisitioning and turned against the Bolshevik regime from the spring of 1918 onward, and workers fled the cities to seek food, decreasing the production of manufactured goods that might have been bartered with the peasantry for food. Petrograd lost almost 75 percent of its population between 1918 and 1921, and Moscow lost at least 50 percent, while Soviet industrial production in 1921 reached just 21 percent of Russia’s prewar levels. The consequence were such episodes as the Belovodsk uprising, the Pitchfork Uprising, the Chapan War, the Tambov Rebellion, the Western Siberian Uprising, and the Kronshtadt Revolt (although, contrary to many accounts, the decision to abandon War Communism in favor of the New Economic Policy had been reached by Lenin and the Bolshevik Central Committee many weeks before the outbreak of the rebellion at Kronshtadt). Following resolutions made at the 10th Party Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in March 1921, a series of measures were introduced that replaced the system of War Communism with the mixed-economy NEP.

WARSAW, TREATY OF(21–24 April 1920). This secret agreement between the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) and the Second Polish Republic recognized Polish sovereignty over Western Volhynia and Eastern Galicia (Western Ukraine) and was fiercely opposed by the government-in-exile of the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, which also laid claim to those territories.

Under the terms of the treaty, the Ukrainian–Polish border was established as running along the Zbruch River, continuing northeastward to Vyshgorodok, then farther east from Zdolnuiv, along the eastern boundary of the Rivne (Rovno) district to the Pripiat River. In return, the UNR secured Polish recognition of its independent existence and (under an annex to the treaty) an agreement for joint Polish–Ukrainian military action to expel Bolshevik forces from Ukrainian soil. Both countries agreed to protect the national and cultural rights of their ethnic minorities and vowed not to make third-party agreements that ran contrary to the Treaty of Warsaw. Poland, however, breached the terms of the agreement in signing the Treaty of Riga (18 March 1921) with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (and in recognizing the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) at the end of the Soviet–Polish War, having launched the offensive against Kiev that reactivated that conflict on 25 April 1920, the day after securing the military alliance with UNR and its Ukrainian Army that the Treaty of Warsaw incorporated.