With the expulsion of the Japanese occupation forces from eastern Siberia late in 1922, the period of civil war and foreign intervention came to an end, and the Soviet regime was no longer in immediate danger.

The Bolsheviks triumphed in the civil war and against foreign intervention because of their determination, organization, and good leadership, especially that of Lenin and Leon Trotsky, because of disunity among their opponents, and because the peoples of the intervening countries refused to support further fighting.
Bolshevik economic policy during the civil war period entailed the rapid nationalization of industry and transport, and the ruthless confiscation of all supplies and equipment needed for military purposes left the national economy completely exhausted. With hostilities ended and Soviet rule consolidated, the government faced the necessity of restoring the economy. Trotsky and certain other leaders favoured extending the rigid wartime policies and continuing forced progress towards communism. Lenin chose a different course: reduction of the heavy wartime requisitions of produce from the peasants, in order to stimulate food production, and temporary relaxation of controls over industry and trade, permitting growth of small capitalist enterprises, in order to increase production. Lenin's so-called New Economic Policy was adopted in March 1921 by the Russian Communist party, as the Bolsheviks called themselves after 1918.