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The Great Russian revolution and tax innovations in the epoch of “war communism”

Liberal Arts in Russia. 2017. Vol. 6. No. 6. Pp. 505-512.
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Khaziev R. A.
Bashkir State University
32 Zaki Validi Street, 450076 Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia
Email: khazievra@mail.ru

Abstract

The author of the article studies a number of issues giving the opportunity to reveal the contents and direction of certain manifestations of “war communism”, which was demanded by the Bolsheviks as a means that not only allowed them to save the conquered power but also as a means to rooting an authoritarian system of the Soviet type. The author focuses on the paradoxes of war communist era, when some Bolsheviks officials proclaimed the necessity of the cruel commodity taxation, but they did not believe really (in the absence of dialogue between the government and the society) that punitive taxes and other requisitions would help them to feed the workers of military factories and the soldiers of the Red Army thus ensuring the inviolability of socialism. The author gives answers to the question why the Bolsheviks using the war communism, which helped them to defeat their internal and external opponents, were not able to cope with the economic challenges and brought the national economy to utter ruin. Implementation of war-communist policy by the Bolsheviks immediately resulted in alternative reaction of people, who believed that it is unacceptable option to support the state gratuitously at the expense of a sharp deterioration of their own living standards. The peasants were also not interested in the results of their activities, as they also were compelled by force to give agricultural goods to the state “for nothing”.

Keywords

  • • Great Russian revolution
  • • Civil War
  • • war communism
  • • tax policy of the Soviet state

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