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By late 1920 and early 1921, the Bolsheviks realized that their working-class support was faltering and that peasant acquiescence was turning into active opposition. Following strikes in Petrograd, the Kronstadt naval garrison rose in revolt, accusing the Bolsheviks of betraying the promises of the November Revolution. The rebels called for soviet rule.

The Red Army was dispatched to crush the rebellion by the sailors at Kronstadt. There was a bloodbath. The crisis was over, but the days of Bolshevik rule were numbered unless concessions were made. The New Economic Policy, or NEP, replaced War Communism in 1921 and involved a partial return to market principles. Peasants were allowed to sell some of their produce on the open market after they were forced to turn over their crops. Although the state retained the "commanding heights" of the economy, small-scale urban businessmen were allowed to sell for profit.

War Communism and the hopes for revolution in the west were abandoned in early 1921. The Bolsheviks did not have reliable information about the conditions in Europe. The situation in Germany by the late summer of 1918 seemed to be the most promising to the Bolsheviks and, from a Marxist perspective, it was the most important because of Germany's high level of industrialization. The German Council of People's Commissars resembled the Bolsheviks only in name. It had not taken power from Prince Max but rather accepted it from him, which is a crucial point in terms of claims to legitimacy. Until regular elections could be held, it had been formed as a temporary government. The leader of the German Council, Friedrich Ebert, was a member of the antirevolutionary branch of the SPD. He was not a fan of the Russian model and the only way to get long-term legitimacy was to have westernstyle elections.

Ebert was determined to prevent a repetition in Germany of the events in Russia, and instead of backing away from a military alliance, Ebert accepted offers of support from the German military to help crush the German revolutionary left. The left did not have a unified leadership or an agreed-upon revolutionary doctrine. Many people talked vaguely of doing as they had done in Russia.

The path of the German revolution was different from that of the Bolsheviks. The German path reflected not only decisions by leaders but also deeper realities, as the German military was less weakened and discredited than its Russian counterpart. The German general staff would remain an independent power well into the Nazi period. The German state bureaucracy did not fall as the tsarist bureaucracy did, nor did Germany's major political parties suffer the same fate. The Germans understood that the Americans would be hostile to a Communist Germany because of their abundant food supplies. The idea of copying or even allying with Soviet Russia at this point seemed suicidal to many Germans.

The collapse of Austria-Hungary opened the way for a Bolshevik-style revolution, but most of the new regimes, or successor states, set up at the end of the war were anti-Communist. As the Red Army entered Polish territory in 1920, the Polish people failed to rise up to welcome it. The Red Army was driven back beyond prewar borders by a Polish counteroffensive. The soviet regime that came to power in Hungary in 1919 was similar to the Russian model in that the Hungarian Communists came to power because their opponents were weak. Anti-Communist forces destroyed the Soviet Republic of Hungary. There was a brief Communist takeover in the former kingdom of Bavaria, but it was easily defeated. It was noted that most of the Communist leaders in Hungary and Bavaria were Jews.

At this time, Hitler began his political career.

With victory in World War I, British and French leaders faced their own left wing parties from a position of relative strength. The left in western Europe was larger and more angry than before 1914, but the proponents of violent revolution remained disorganized. Most of the general population in Britain and France opposed a proletarian dictatorship. Many voted for candidates from anti-Communist and ultra-nationalistic parties. The people in France were very angry. Posters depicting a hairy, Jewish-looking revolutionary with a bloody knife between his teeth appeared throughout France, warning of the horrors that were to come. The Socialist Party was defeated in the elections.

The results of the efforts to establish Communist parties in western Europe based on Bolshevik principles were not very good. The Comintern was founded by the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1920 and held a congress of aspiring revolutionaries in Moscow. The Red Army appeared to be marching into Poland.