A Utopian or Dystopian Collective? Theory in Practice

Abstract

After taking power, the Bolshevik leaders immediately began implementing policies intended to fulfill their vision of a dictatorship of the proletariat, the first steps on the road to building the Utopian collective. The economic policies of the “war communism” period were not necessitated by the civil war; rather, they were the policies the Bolshevik leaders enacted in an attempt to realize their Utopian collectivist vision. Many were put into place before the war and surely drove some to fight against the new government (Nove, 1966; Cohen, 1980).¹