LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Russian Civil War: Soviet Russia
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The Civil War, fought initially with small Russian forces of uncertain morale, grew in scope and bitterness. Villages and entire regions changed hands repeatedly in a fratricidal conflict in which both sides committed terrible atrocities. At first the main threat to the Soviet regime, came from the east. In August 1918, SR troops, encouraged by the Czechs' revolt, captured Kazan and the tsarist gold reserve, and formed SR regimes in Samara and in Omsk in western Siberia.
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War Communism saved the Soviet government during the Civil War, but much of the Russian economy ground to a standstill. Private industry and trade was proscribed, and the newly established (and barely stable) state was unable to run the economy on a sufficient scale. It is estimated that the total output of mines and factories in 1921 had fallen to 20 % of the pre-World War level, and many crucial items experienced an even more drastic decline. For example, cotton production fell to 5 %, and iron to 2 % of pre-war levels.
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War Communism saved the Soviet government during the Civil War, but much of the Russian economy had ground to a standstill. The peasants responded to requisitions by refusing to till the land. By 1921, cultivated land had shrunk to 62 percent of the pre-war area, and the harvest yield was only about 37 percent of normal. The number of horses declined from 35 million in 1916 to 24 million in 1920, and cattle from 58 to 37 million. The exchange rate with the U.S. dollar declined from two rubles in 1914 to 1,200 in 1920.
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By the end of the Civil War, Stalin was Commissar of Nationalities. In this post he dealt with the affairs of 65 million (out of 140) inhabitants of the new Russian Soviet Republic. In 1922, Stalin proposed the new Union of Socialist Soviet Republics as a substitute for the existing federation of republics. In the USSR, Moscow would control war, foreign policy and trade and would coordinate finance, the economy, food and labor.
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During and after the Russian Civil War, Soviet Russia suffered great damage. In 1920 and 1921, there was little rain, which caused serious famine in 1921. About one million Russians left Russia and went to other countries to live there on a permanent basis. Many of them were very educated and expert persons.
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The political system that emerged victorious from the civil war bore the name Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic. In fact the soviets were of small importance. All power belonged to the Communist Party, members of which occupied all the posts in the Soviet of People's Commissars and the key posts at all lower levels of the machinery of government. The party itself was governed by its Central Committee, which Lenin dominated.
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Soviet Russia