NEP

Question 1

NEP - reasons for introduction

Answer 1

• appease peasants - green armies “far more dangerous than all the Denikins, Kolchaks and Yudeniches put together”
• • The New Economic Policy was originally conceived as a temporary retreat. ‘We are making economic concessions in order to avoid political ones,’ Bukharin told the Comintern in July. ‘The NEP is only a temporary deviation, a tactical retreat
• Lenin: ‘Let us retreat and construct everything in a new and solid manner; otherwise we shall be beaten.’
  Lenin: ‘What is needed now is an economic breathing spell.’
  Lenin: ‘The national economy must be put back on its feet at all costs. The first thing to do is restore, consolidate and improve peasant farming.’
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Question 2

NEP - introduction

Answer 2

Fearful that the delegates would denounce the tax as a restoration of capitalism, Lenin attempted to limit its discussion by delaying the introduction of the resolution until 15 March, the penultimate day of the Congress, by which time many of the delegates had already left for the Kronstadt Front
- Whereas on other issues there were up to 250 different speakers, there were only four, other than Lenin himself, on the tax in kind. All of them were chosen by the presidium, were strictly limited to ten minutes each, and none had any serious criticisms to make

Question 3

NEP - elements

Answer 3

• elimination of grain requisitioning
• substitution of a proportional tax in currency, so that peasants would sell surplus grain
• private landholding was allowed
• leasing of land and hiring of labour permitted by end of 1922
• compulsory labour abolished
• money acccounts were restored
• government subsidies were stopped
• money, banking and capitalist accounting principles restored
• introduced a gold rouble
• collectivaziation of agriculture stopped
  Bukharin: ‘We must say to the whole peasantry, to all its strata: enrich yourselves, accumulate, develop your economy.
• Large businesses would still be nationalized, in order to ensure that the “petty bourgeoisie,” or the capitalist Imperialists, would not gain too much power over or get in the way of the growing Socialist society

Question 4

NEP - opposition

Answer 4

• Zinoviev – The NEP was ‘a clearing of the land for a new and decisive attack of labour against the front of international capitalism.’
  Resons for dissatisfaction
  1) introduction of market practices sacrificed central planning to the well-being of the peasants, who were never sympathetic to socialism

a prosperous peasantry and small-entrepreneur class would ultimately change the political “superstructure” by reviving the spirit of capitalism

• “The slogan ‘get rich’ is not our slogan” Stalin
• In 1921—2 literally tens of thousands of Bolshevik workers tore up their party cards in disgust with the NEP: they dubbed it the New Exploitation of the Proletariat.

Question 5

NEP - result - more inequality

Answer 5

• ‘Nepmen’, the new and vulgar get-rich-quickly class of private traders who thrived in Russia’s Roaring Twenties- The ostentatious spending of this new and vulgar rich,

Question 6

NEP - economic results

Answer 6

• agricultural production returned to the pre-war level by 1925
• 1922-23 private trade accounted for 90% of distribution
• 1924, industrial production returned to almost half the 1913 level
• Peasants began withholding their surpluses to wait for higher prices or sold them to “NEPmen” (traders and middle-men) who then sold them on at high prices, which was opposed by many members of the Communist Party who considered it an exploitation of urban consumers.
• production jumped by 40% after the drought and famine of 1921–22

Question 7

NEP - historiography

Answer 7

striking instance of the wisdom and farsightedness of Lenin’s policy. CPSU