In my paper I mostly focused on Lenin and the major economic policies he brought into being during his time as head of the Soviet government. Lenin instituted what was known as War Communism from 1918-1921. Essentially, War Communism replaced the market economy of the tsar with socialist allocations of goods and services. The Bolshevik government wanted to “…provide basis for radically different relationships between men out of which a higher form of existence will arise.” And in the Marxist context this meant self-realization, an end to man’s alienated existence. Lenin’s economic plan was to implement socially organized production for use, directly, by the community. This generally meant forced labor and famine and the collapse of Russia’s exports.

In 1921, Lenin established the New Economic Policy (NEP )to combat the failings of War Communism and turn the socialist republic more capitalist in order to grow its industry and production. Under NEP, the state wanted to limit the import of consumer goods. Grain and livestock became the most important export—thus tying the foreign trade sector with government policy towards peasants and agriculture. While Soviets cautiously opening up their borders to foreign trade was good in a free market/capitalist sense, by the end of the NEP, exports were only at about 40 percent of the 1913 level.

Despite the failures of Marxist socialist economic policies at home, there was still significant economic interaction between the Soviet Union and foreign governments. The Leninists and Bolsheviks saw themselves as being a part of a global world order—a global proletariat. While actual economic policy was highly regulated by the state, theoretically, their union was part of a much greater scheme of revolutionary movement. All of their economic policy was aimed at mobilizing a global proletariat. This position in the world economic order will certainly shape the Soviet Union’s relations with other European powers later in the century.