ABSTRACT
It has become a copybook maxim to assert that the policy of “War Communism” was imposed on the Bolsheviks by the Civil War and the foreign intervention. This is completely untrue, if only for the reason that the first decrees on introducing the “socialist ideal” exactly “according to Marx” in Soviet Russia were issued long before the beginning of the Civil War (the decrees of 26 January and 14 February 1918, on the nationalization of the merchant fleet and of all banks), while the last decree on the socialization of all small handicraftsman and artisans was issued on 29 November 1920, i.e. after the end of the Civil War in European Russia. Of course, the conditions of the Civil War and the intervention left an imprint. But the main thing was something else-the immediate implementation of theory in strict accordance with Marx (from “Critique of the Gotha Program”) and Engels (from “Anti-During”).
