The agrarian Marxist who theorized War Communism
In The Heroic Period he wrote: 'At bottom it was by no means the delusion of individuals or a class; it was — albeit not in pure form — an anticipation of the future, a breakthrough of that future into the present.'
A Soviet Marxist economist who analyzed War Communism as an anticipatory breakthrough toward socialism. A Gosplan presidium member, he critiqued Chayanov's family-labour school and championed a three-tier peasant class schema, providing theoretical foundations for collectivization.
Career Timeline
- 1905–1917Joined revolutionary movement as Menshevik youth; expelled from Odessa University, graduated Zurich
- 1918Returned to Russia, joined RKP(b), worked on economic policy at VSNKh
- 1920–1921Chairman of Utilization Commission at VSNKh, building centralized resource allocation
- 1921–1925Gosplan presidium member, Pravda editorial board, Communist Academy presidium
- 1925–1930Director of Agricultural Economics Institute & Agrarian Institute; editor of 'On the Agrarian Front'
- 1926–1936Economics section editor, Great Soviet Encyclopedia; editor of Economic Encyclopedia
- 1928–1933Deputy head of Central Statistical Directorate; Deputy Chairman of USSR Gosplan
- 1933–1938Resigned due to illness; died of kidney disease, buried at Novodevichy Cemetery
Related historical events
The Heroic Period and the Theory of War Communism
Kritsman's major work, The Heroic Period of the Great Russian Revolution (An Attempt at Analysis of So-Called 'War Communism') (1924, expanded 2nd ed. 1926), is an original reinterpretation of War Communism not as a set of emergency measures but as an anticipatory breakthrough toward socialism. In it he analyzed the Bolshevik economic policies of 1918–1921 (wholesale nationalization, the abolition of money, surplus grain requisitioning, and centralized resource allocation) directly challenging the conventional view that these were mere improvisations forced by external military pressure. Kritsman argued that under War Communism, capitalist market relations were consciously replaced by a proletarian planned economy, and he cast the period as a 'heroic' one in which the core features of a future communist society appeared prematurely.
Kritsman paid special attention to the Utilization Commission (Komissiya Ispolzovaniya) of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh), which he himself chaired. This body carried out nationwide resource inventories and centralized distribution, and for Kritsman it represented the prototype of a planned distributive apparatus that would replace the anarchy of the market. He contended that the Commission's experience demonstrated the viability of an allocation system based not on the profit motive of individual enterprises but on the material needs of the proletarian state as a whole.
The book's central thesis is distilled in its most famous passage: 'At bottom it was by no means the delusion of individuals or a class; it was, albeit not in pure form, an anticipation of the future, a breakthrough of that future into the present.' This formulation preemptively rejected later interpretations that blamed the failure of War Communism on individual leaders' errors of judgment, while elevating the experience to the status of a preparatory practice for socialist construction. The book sparked wide debate in 1920s Soviet economics and became the foundational framework for understanding War Communism in Soviet Marxist economic historiography. A 2024 English translation has prompted renewed reevaluation in Western left-academic circles.