Why did Lenin introduce the War Communism?
Russia was in such a poor state due to the First World War and the civil war that the country was falling apart. People’s lives were getting worse, not better under the Bolsheviks. According to writer Slavoj Zizek, the Blosheviks did not want to face the reality that things were not getting better, so they imagined a “short-cut” to communism. This fantasy persisted after the war in the belief that communism by bureaucratic decree (un-Marxist, might I add) was successful. Trotsky stated, in reguard to this matter, “the road to Socialism lies through a period of the highest possible intensification of the principle of the state.” Trotsky used the example of a candle before it burns out to describe this new state. The candle flares brightest before it burns out, just as the state will loom greatly before it “whithers away.” War communism was successful in pulling Russia back from the brink of disaster, but it was a very perverted form of communism. One has only to look at the Paris Commun
