ABSTRACT
The Bolsheviks took power with a strong commitment to political, social and economic transformation. Whereas many decision makers in Western Europe hoped to restore pre-war economic arrangements and structures, the Bolsheviks deliberately sought to rupture them or to appropriate and bend them to their wishes. Prime Minister Boris Sturmer pre-empted further discussion by creating a 'Financial-Economic Commission' under the State Auditor, N. N. Pokrovskii, in March 1916, ostensibly to prepare for the Paris economic conference scheduled for May. Social and economic reconstruction hinged on available resources of capital, labour and professional expertise. The Bolshevik Party's programme remained a set of proposals without clear details concerning the future of the economic or political system. Revolutionary diplomacy inevitably imposed costs in terms of securing the necessary resources for economic reconstruction. Population displacement meant the exchange of prisoners, as well as the return migration of hundreds of thousands of those who had been displaced in 1915-1917.
