War Communism and Its Relationship to Bolshevik Ideology

The term war communism encompasses several different policies enacted by different commissaurs as the soviet government improvised responses to simultaneous crises on multiple fronts. Food detachments, armed companies would travel out to the rural areas and simply take surplus grain and bring it back to the cities. There are tons of stories about food detachments trashing houses, burning buildings, assaulting people, raping women and murdering people who stood in their way. Most of the time, they were taking the food the peasants needed to feed themselves.