L3: Russia in the Interwar Period. Flashcards
New Economic Policy (NEP)
Grain requisitioning was abolished.
Instead, a tax in kind was set at a much lower level than previous mandatory quota deliveries.
As a result, peasants felt an incentive to produce more to keep for themselves and sell.
The restoration of private trade.
The abandonment of state monopoly on small- and medium-size manufacture, retail and services. This was essentially partial denationalization.
Foreign capital was allowed into the country.
New monetary policy.
The state still controlled heavy industry, banking and foreign trade.
Effects of NEP
Trade recovered
Economy still in crisis.
Agriculture recovered before industry.
Created the scissor crisis where there was an imbalance between agricultural and industrial products. Therefore, industrial products were more expensive than agricultural ones, and peasants had a hard time raising enough revenue from their sales to buy necessary equipment for their farms and consumer goods.
Eventually led to peasants stopping production of much grain and other products.
Workers Conditions in the early 1920s.
Their payments remained low.
As a result, their diets were poor, and their housing conditions were dismal.
Workers were inadequately supplied by the consumer cooperatives (things there were cheaper than in the market), and consequently, had to pay high prices at the market.
Not surprisingly, workers felt resentment towards peasants who charged them higher prices.
Workers also felt resentment towards specialists, administration and party officials who were paid better.
It was once again factory administration rather than workers who had real control.
It was even worse than some of the managerial and specialist staff were brought back from the pre-revolutionary times.
At the request of those old-day managers, most workers were paid on a piece-rate system, which tied their income directly to productivity.
Occasional strikes broke down, but trade unions never supported workers in their demands.
Organization of Agriculture early 1920s.
Growth lower than state desires.
Landholdings became smaller.
Better-off peasants were taxed more so they stopped producing as much.
Types of collective farms.
Kommuna (commune): all property was held in common, sometimes with communal living quarters and childrearing;
The artel: each household owned its own dwelling and a small plot of land and tools, but all other land and resources were shared;
TOZ (the association for common cultivation of the land): some or all the fields were cultivated collectively;
Sovkhozy: where agricultural workers were paid fixed wages as industrial workers.
Collectivization of Agriculture
December 1927: the party defined the goal of uniting and transforming the small individual peasant households into large collectives in the villages as its primary goal.
Peasants resisted collectivization and over 5 million died/ were executed/sent to remote places/sent to labor camps
Categories of classes
Kulaks (‘fists’): better-off peasants (in reality their incomes were only marginally higher than those of the middle peasants);
Middle peasants;
Poor peasants;
Landless laborers.
Life of Peasants under Collectivization
Countryside once again hit by famine.
Peasants unable to move freely because mandatory internal passports in 1932.
Road blocks established to prevent peasants from begging in villages.
Payment was only made when the kolkhoz made the mandatory delivery to the state and paid for all their expenses. In 1939 over 240,000 peasants received no pay.
Kolkhozy
A collective farm.
