Historical Materialism Book Series391- “War Communism as Revolution

In “War Communism” as Revolution: Lev Kritsman's The Heroic Period of the Great Russian Revolution (an attempt at an analysis of so-called “War Communism”), Frederick C. Corney examines this seminal economic analysis of the first years of the revolutionary Soviet system by the economist Lev Kritsman in 1924. His explicitly Marxist analysis of the years of 'War Communism' has been the basis of many later economic analyses of this period. Corney has translated into English the complete text, annotated it, and written an extensive introduction, contextualizing Kritsman's work within the broader economic discussions of the period. He also contextualizes it within the radically changing political climate that proved so fateful to many economists of this era, Kritsman included.