War Communism and the Red Terror, 1918–1921

During the Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik government imposed a system later known as War Communism. Major industries were nationalised, private trade was restricted, grain was requisitioned from the countryside and food and fuel were distributed through increasingly militarised institutions.

The period also saw the Red Terror, carried out through the Cheka and other state bodies against suspected counter-revolutionaries, alongside severe violence committed by White forces, nationalist armies and local armed groups. Economic collapse, epidemic disease, famine and mass displacement intensified the suffering of civilians.

Doctor Zhivago depicts this breakdown through forced requisitions, partisan warfare, hunger, arbitrary authority and Yuri Zhivago’s involuntary service with a Red partisan unit. The novel presents ideological certainty as increasingly detached from the lives of individuals subjected to war and coercion.