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NEW ECONOMIC POLICY (NEP)- the policy of the Soviet government, under which all enterprises of one industry were subordinate to a single central management body - the main committee (head office). Changed the policy of “war communism”. The transition from “war communism” to the NEP was proclaimed by the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March 1921. The initial idea of the transition was formulated in the works of V.I. Lenin 1921–1923: the ultimate goal remains the same - socialism, but the situation in Russia after the civil war dictates the need resort to a “reformist” method of action in fundamental issues of economic construction. Instead of directly and completely breaking the old system to replace it with a new socio-economic structure, carried out during the years of “war communism”, the Bolsheviks took a “reformist” approach: not to break the old socio-economic structure, trade, small farming, small business, capitalism, but carefully and gradually master them and gain the opportunity to subject them to government regulation. In Lenin's last works, the concept of NEP included ideas about the use of commodity-money relations, all forms of ownership - state, cooperative, private, mixed, self-financing. It was proposed to temporarily retreat from the achieved “military-communist” gains, to take a step back in order to gain strength for the leap to socialism.

Initially, the framework of the NEP reforms was determined by the party leadership by the extent to which the reforms strengthened its monopoly on power. The main measures taken within the framework of the NEP: surplus appropriation was replaced by a food tax, followed by new measures designed to interest broad social strata in the results of their economic activities. Free trade was legalized, private individuals received the right to engage in handicrafts and open industrial enterprises with up to a hundred workers. Small nationalized enterprises were returned to their former owners. In 1922 the right to lease land and use hired labor was recognized; The system of labor duties and labor mobilizations was abolished. Payment in kind was replaced by cash, a new state bank was established and the banking system was restored.

The ruling party carried out all these changes without abandoning its ideological views and command methods of managing socio-political and economic processes. “War communism” gradually lost ground.

For its development, the NEP needed the decentralization of economic management, and in August 1921 the Council of Labor and Defense (SLO) adopted a resolution to reorganize the central administration system, in which all enterprises of the same industry were subordinate to a single central management body - the main committee (main committee). The number of branch headquarters was reduced, and only large industry and basic sectors of the economy remained in the hands of the state.

Partial denationalization of property, privatization of many previously nationalized enterprises, a system of running the economy based on cost accounting, competition, and the introduction of leasing of joint ventures are all characteristic features of the NEP. At the same time, these “capitalist” economic elements were combined with coercive measures adopted during the years of “war communism.”

The NEP led to a rapid economic recovery. The economic interest that appeared among peasants in the production of agricultural products made it possible to quickly saturate the market with food and overcome the consequences of the hungry years of “war communism.”

However, already at the early stage of the NEP (1921–1923), recognition of the role of the market was combined with measures to abolish it. Most Communist Party leaders viewed the NEP as a “necessary evil,” fearing that it would lead to the restoration of capitalism. Many Bolsheviks retained “military-communist” illusions that the destruction of private property, trade, money, equality in the distribution of material goods lead to communism, and the NEP is a betrayal of communism. In essence, the NEP was designed to continue the course towards socialism, through maneuvering, social compromise with the majority of the population, to move the country towards the party’s goal - socialism, although more slowly and with less risk. It was believed that in market relations the role of the state was the same as under “war communism,” and that it should carry out economic reform within the framework of “socialism.” All this was taken into account in the laws adopted in 1922 and in subsequent legislative acts.

The admission of market mechanisms, which led to economic recovery, allowed the political regime to strengthen. However, its fundamental incompatibility with the essence of the NEP as a temporary economic compromise with the peasantry and bourgeois elements of the city inevitably led to the rejection of the idea of the NEP. Even in the most favorable years for its development (until the mid-20s), progressive steps in pursuing this policy were made uncertainly, contradictorily, with an eye to the past stage of “war communism.”

Soviet and, for the most part, post-Soviet historiography, reducing the reasons for the collapse of the NEP to purely economic factors, deprived itself of the opportunity to fully reveal its contradictions - between the requirements for the normal functioning of the economy and the political priorities of the party leadership, aimed first at limiting and then completely crowding out private manufacturer.

The country’s leadership’s interpretation of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the suppression of all those who disagree with it, as well as the continued adherence of the majority of the party’s cadres to the “military-communist” views adopted during the civil war, reflected the communists’ inherent desire to achieve their ideological principles. At the same time, the strategic goal of the party (socialism) remained the same, and the NEP was seen as a temporary retreat from the “war communism” achieved over the years. Therefore, everything was done to prevent the NEP from going beyond limits dangerous for this purpose.

Market methods of regulating the economy in NEP Russia were combined with non-economic methods, with administrative intervention. The predominance of state ownership of the means of production and large-scale industry was the objective basis for such intervention.

During the NEP years, the party and state leaders did not want reforms, but were concerned that the private sector would gain an advantage over the public sector. Fearful of the NEP, they took measures to discredit it. Official propaganda treated the private trader in every possible way, and the image of the “NEPman” as an exploiter, a class enemy, was formed in the public consciousness. Since the mid-1920s, measures to curb the development of the NEP were replaced by a course towards its curtailment. The dismantling of NEPA began behind the scenes, first with measures to tax the private sector, then depriving it of legal guarantees. At the same time, loyalty to the new economic policy was proclaimed at all party forums. At the end of the 1920s, considering that the new economic policy no longer served socialism, the country's leadership canceled it. The methods by which it curtailed the NEP were revolutionary. During its implementation, the rural “bourgeoisie” (kulaks) were “dekulakized”, all their property was confiscated, exiled to Siberia, and the “remnants of the urban bourgeoisie” - entrepreneurs (“NEPmen”), as well as members of their families were deprived of political rights (“disenfranchised” ); many were prosecuted.

Efim Gimpelson

APPLICATION. DECREE OF THE ALL-Russian Central Executive Committee ON REPLACEMENT OF DISTRIBUTION BY NATURAL TAX.

1. To ensure correct and calm management of the economy on the basis of more free disposal of the farmer with the products of his labor and his own economic means, to strengthen the peasant economy and raise its productivity, as well as for the purpose of accurately establishing state obligations falling on farmers, appropriation as a method of state procurement food, raw materials and fodder, is replaced by a tax in kind.

2. This tax should be less than that imposed hitherto through appropriation. The amount of the tax should be calculated so as to cover the most necessary needs of the army, urban workers and the non-agricultural population. The total amount of the tax should be constantly reduced as the restoration of transport and industry allows the Soviet government to receive agricultural products in exchange for factory and handicraft products.

3. The tax is levied in the form of a percentage or share of the products produced on the farm, based on the harvest, the number of eaters on the farm and the presence of livestock on it.

4. The tax must be progressive; the percentage of deductions for farms of middle peasants, low-income owners and for farms of urban workers should be reduced. The farms of the poorest peasants may be exempt from some, and in exceptional cases from all types of taxes in kind.

Diligent peasant owners who increase the sowing area on their farms, as well as increase the productivity of farms as a whole, receive benefits for the implementation of the tax in kind.

7. Responsibility for fulfilling the tax is assigned to each individual owner, and the bodies of Soviet power are instructed to impose penalties on everyone who has not complied with the tax. Peer liability is abolished.

To control the application and implementation of the tax, organizations of local peasants are formed according to groups of payers of different tax amounts.

8. All supplies of food, raw materials and fodder remaining with farmers after they have fulfilled the tax are at their full disposal and can be used by them to improve and strengthen their economy, to increase personal consumption and for exchange for products of factory and handicraft industries and agricultural production. Exchange is allowed within the limits of local economic turnover, both through cooperative organizations and in markets and bazaars.

9. Those farmers who wish to hand over the surplus remaining to them after completing the tax to the state, in exchange for these voluntarily surrendered surpluses, should be provided with consumer goods and agricultural implements. For this purpose, a state permanent stock of agricultural implements and consumer goods is created, both from domestically produced products and from products purchased abroad. For the latter purpose, part of the state gold fund and part of the harvested raw materials are allocated.

10. Supply of the poorest rural population is carried out in the state order according to special rules.

11. In furtherance of this Law, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee proposes to the Council of People's Commissars to issue corresponding detailed regulations no later than one month.

Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee

M. Kalinin

Secretary of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee

The first attempts to curtail the NEP began. Syndicates in industry were liquidated, from which private capital was administratively squeezed out, and a rigid centralized system of economic management was created (economic people's commissariats). Stalin and his entourage headed for the forced confiscation of grain and the forced collectivization of the countryside. Repressions were carried out against management personnel (the Shakhty case, the Industrial Party trial, etc.). By the beginning of the 1930s, the NEP was actually curtailed.

Prerequisites for the NEP

Agricultural production fell by 40% due to the depreciation of money and a shortage of industrial goods.

Society has degraded, its intellectual potential has weakened significantly. Most of the Russian intelligentsia were destroyed or left the country.

Thus, the main task domestic policy The RCP(b) and the Soviet state consisted of restoring the destroyed economy, creating the material, technical and socio-cultural basis for building the socialism promised by the Bolsheviks to the people.

The peasants, outraged by the actions of the food detachments, not only refused to hand over grain, but also rose up in armed struggle. Uprisings spread across the Tambov region, Ukraine, Don, Kuban, Volga region and Siberia. The peasants demanded a change in agrarian policy, the elimination of the dictates of the RCP (b), and the convening of a Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal equal suffrage. Units of the Red Army were sent to suppress these protests.

Discontent spread to the army. On March 1 of the year, sailors and Red Army soldiers of the Kronstadt garrison under the slogan “For Soviets without Communists!” demanded the release from prison of all representatives of socialist parties, re-election of the Soviets and, as follows from the slogan, the expulsion of all communists from them, granting freedom of speech, meetings and unions to all parties, ensuring freedom of trade, allowing peasants to freely use their land and dispose of the products of their farms , that is, the elimination of surplus appropriation. Convinced of the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the rebels, the authorities launched an assault on Kronstadt. By alternating artillery shelling and infantry actions, Kronstadt was captured by March 18; Some of the rebels died, the rest went to Finland or surrendered.

From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt:

Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic devastation have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has become disconnected from the masses and has been unable to bring it out of the state of general devastation. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow and which quite clearly indicated that the party had lost the trust of the working masses. It also did not take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the machinations of counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of all the people, all the working people. All workers, sailors and Red Army soldiers clearly see at the moment that only through common efforts, the common will of the working people, can we give the country bread, firewood, coal, clothe the shoeless and undressed, and lead the republic out of the dead end...

The uprisings that swept across the country convincingly showed that the Bolsheviks were losing support in society. Already in the year there were calls to abandon the food appropriation system: for example, in February 1920, Trotsky submitted a corresponding proposal to the Central Committee, but received only 4 votes out of 15; At about the same time, independently of Trotsky, the same question was raised by Rykov at the Supreme Economic Council.

The policy of war communism had exhausted itself, but Lenin, despite everything, persisted. Moreover, at the turn of 1920 and 1921, he strongly insisted on strengthening this policy - in particular, plans were made for the complete abolition of the monetary system.

V. I. Lenin

Only by the spring of 1921 did it become obvious that the general discontent of the lower classes and their armed pressure could lead to the overthrow of the power of the Soviets led by the Communists. Therefore, Lenin decided to make a concession in order to maintain power.

Progress of development of NEP

Proclamation of the NEP

Cooperation of all forms and types developed rapidly. The role of production cooperatives in agriculture was insignificant (in 1927 they provided only 2% of all agricultural products and 7% of marketable products), but the simplest primary forms - marketing, supply and credit cooperation - covered by the end of the 1920s more than half of all peasant farms. By the end of the year, non-production cooperation various types, primarily peasant, covered 28 million people (13 times more than in the city). In socialized retail trade, 60-80% was accounted for by cooperatives and only 20-40% by the state itself; in industry in 1928, 13% of all production was provided by cooperatives. There was cooperative legislation, lending, and insurance.

To replace the depreciated and in fact already rejected by the turnover of Sovznaki, the city began issuing a new monetary unit - chervonets, which had a gold content and exchange rate in gold (1 chervonets = 10 pre-revolutionary gold rubles = 7.74 g of pure gold). In the city, the sovznaki, which were quickly being replaced by chervonets, stopped printing altogether and were withdrawn from circulation; in the same year the budget was balanced and the use of money emissions to cover government expenses was prohibited; new treasury notes were issued - rubles (10 rubles = 1 chervonets). On the foreign exchange market, both domestically and abroad, chervonets were freely exchanged for gold and major foreign currencies at the pre-war exchange rate of the Tsar's ruble (1 US dollar = 1.94 rubles).

The credit system has been revived. In the city, the State Bank of the USSR was recreated, which began lending to industry and trade on a commercial basis. In 1922-1925. was created whole line specialized banks: joint-stock banks, in which the shareholders were the State Bank, syndicates, cooperatives, private and even at one time foreign, for lending to certain sectors of the economy and regions of the country; cooperative - for lending to consumer cooperation; agricultural credit societies organized on shares, linked to the republican and central agricultural banks; mutual credit societies - for lending to private industry and trade; savings banks - to mobilize the population's savings. As of October 1, 1923, there were 17 independent banks operating in the country, and the State Bank’s share in the total credit investments of the entire banking system was 2/3. By October 1, 1926, the number of banks increased to 61, and the State Bank's share in lending to the national economy decreased to 48%.

The economic mechanism during the NEP period was based on market principles. Commodity-money relations, which they had previously tried to banish from production and exchange, in the 1920s penetrated into all pores of the economic organism and became the main link between its individual parts.

Discipline within the Communist Party itself was also tightened. At the end of 1920, an opposition group appeared in the party - the “workers' opposition”, which demanded the transfer of all power in production to trade unions. In order to stop such attempts, the X Congress of the RCP (b) in 1921 adopted a resolution on party unity. According to this resolution, decisions made by the majority must be implemented by all party members, including those who disagree with them.

The consequence of one-party rule was the merging of the party and the government. The same people occupied the main positions in both party (Politburo) and government bodies (SNK, All-Russian Central Executive Committee, etc.). At the same time, the personal authority of the people's commissars and the need in the conditions of the Civil War to make urgent, urgent decisions led to the fact that the center of power was concentrated not in the legislative body (the All-Russian Central Executive Committee), but in the government - the Council of People's Commissars.

All these processes led to the fact that the actual position of a person, his authority played a greater role in the 1920s than his place in the formal structure state power. That is why, when speaking about figures of the 1920s, we first of all name not positions, but surnames.

In parallel with the change in the position of the party in the country, the degeneration of the party itself took place. It is obvious that there will always be much more people willing to join the ruling party than to join the underground party, membership in which cannot provide any other privileges than iron bunks or a noose around the neck. At the same time, the party, having become the ruling party, began to need to increase its numbers in order to fill government posts at all levels. This led to the rapid growth of the Communist Party after the revolution. From time to time it was spurred on by mass recruitments, such as the "Lenin recruitment" after Lenin's death. The inevitable consequence of this process was the dissolution of the old, ideological Bolsheviks among the young party members. In 1927, out of 1,300 thousand people who were members of the party, only 8 thousand had pre-revolutionary experience; Most of the rest did not know communist theory at all.

Not only the intellectual and educational level, but also the moral level of the party decreased. In this regard, the results of the party purge carried out in the second half of 1921 with the aim of removing “kulak-proprietary and petty-bourgeois elements” from the party are indicative. Out of 732 thousand, only 410 thousand members were retained in the party (slightly more than half!). At the same time, a third of those expelled were expelled for passivity, another quarter for “discrediting the Soviet regime,” “selfishness,” “careerism,” “bourgeois lifestyle,” and “decay in everyday life.”

In connection with the growth of the party, the initially inconspicuous position of secretary began to acquire increasing importance. Any secretary is a secondary position by definition. This is a person who ensures that the necessary formalities are observed during official events. Since April of the year, the Bolshevik Party has had the position of General Secretary. He connected the leadership of the secretariat of the Central Committee and the accounting and distribution department, which distributed lower-level party members to various positions. Stalin received this position.

Soon the privileges of the upper layer of party members began to expand. Since 1926, this layer has received a special name - “nomenclature”. This is how they began to call party-state positions included in the list of positions, the appointment to which was subject to approval in the Accounting and Distribution Department of the Central Committee.

The processes of bureaucratization of the party and centralization of power took place against the backdrop of a sharp deterioration in Lenin's health. Actually, the year of the introduction of the NEP became for him the last year of a full life. In May of this year, he was struck by the first blow - his brain was damaged, so the almost helpless Lenin was given a very gentle work schedule. In March of the year, a second attack occurred, after which Lenin dropped out of life altogether for six months, almost learning to pronounce words all over again. He had barely begun to recover from the second attack when the third and last one occurred in January. As an autopsy showed, for the last almost two years of Lenin’s life, only one hemisphere of his brain was active.

But between the first and second attacks, he still tried to participate in political life. Realizing that his days were numbered, he tried to draw the attention of the congress delegates to the most dangerous trend - the degeneration of the party. In letters to the congress, known as his “political testament” (December 1922 - January 1923), Lenin proposed expanding the Central Committee at the expense of the workers, choosing a new Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) - from the proletarians, cutting back the enormously swollen and therefore ineffective RKI (Workers' -peasant inspection).

There was one more component in “Lenin’s Testament” - the personal characteristics of the largest party leaders (Trotsky, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Pyatakov). This part of the Letter is often interpreted as a search for a successor (heir), but Lenin, unlike Stalin, was never a sole dictator, he could not make a single fundamental decision without the Central Committee, and not so fundamental - without the Politburo, despite the fact that in The Central Committee, and even more so the Politburo at that time, contained independent people who often disagreed with Lenin in their views. Therefore, there could be no question about any “heir” (and it was not Lenin who called the Letter to the Congress a “testament”). Assuming that the party would retain its collective leadership after him, Lenin gave mostly ambivalent characteristics to the prospective members of this leadership. There was only one definite indication in his Letter: the post of General Secretary gives Stalin too much power, which is dangerous given his rudeness (this was dangerous, according to Lenin, only in the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky, and not in general). Some modern researchers believe, however, that Lenin's Testament was based more on the psychological state of the patient than on political motives.

But the letters to the congress reached the rank-and-file participants only in fragments, and the letter in which personal characteristics were given to the comrades-in-arms was not shown to the party by those closest to them at all. We agreed among ourselves that Stalin would promise to improve, and that was the end of the matter.

Before physical death Lenin, at the end of the year, a struggle began between his “heirs”, or rather, Trotsky was pushed out of the helm. In the autumn of the year the struggle became open. In October, Trotsky addressed the Central Committee with a letter in which he pointed out the formation of a bureaucratic intra-party regime. A week later, a group of 46 old Bolsheviks (“Statement 46”) wrote an open letter in support of Trotsky. The Central Committee, of course, responded with a decisive denial. The leading role in this was played by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. This was not the first time that heated disputes arose within the Bolshevik Party. But unlike previous discussions, this time the ruling faction actively used labeling. Trotsky was not refuted with reasonable arguments - he was simply accused of Menshevism, deviationism and other mortal sins. The substitution of labels for actual dispute is a new phenomenon: it has not happened before, but it will become increasingly common as the political process develops in the 1920s.

Trotsky was defeated quite easily. The next party conference, held in January of the year, published a resolution on party unity (previously kept secret), and Trotsky was forced to remain silent. Until autumn. In the fall of 1924, however, he published the book “Lessons of October,” in which he unequivocally stated that he and Lenin made the revolution. Then Zinoviev and Kamenev “suddenly” remembered that before the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b) in July 1917, Trotsky was a Menshevik. The party was shocked. In December 1924, Trotsky was removed from the post of People's Commissar of Military Affairs, but remained in the Politburo.

Curtailment of the NEP

In October 1928, the implementation of the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy began. At the same time, it was not the project developed by the USSR State Planning Committee that was adopted as a plan for the first five-year plan, but an inflated version drawn up by the Supreme Economic Council, not so much taking into account objective possibilities, but under the pressure of party slogans. In June 1929, mass collectivization began (which contradicted even the plan of the Supreme Economic Council) - it was carried out with the widespread use of coercive measures. In the autumn it was supplemented by forced grain procurements.

As a result of these measures, unification into collective farms really became widespread, which gave Stalin reason in November of the same 1929 to make a statement that the middle peasants joined collective farms. Stalin’s article was called “The Great Turning Point”. Immediately after this article, the next plenum of the Central Committee approved new, increased and accelerated plans for collectivization and industrialization.

Conclusions and Conclusions

The undoubted success of the NEP was the restoration of the destroyed economy, and if we take into account that after the revolution Russia lost highly qualified personnel (economists, managers, production workers), then the success of the new government becomes a “victory over devastation.” At the same time, the lack of those highly qualified personnel became the cause of miscalculations and mistakes.

From the October Revolution until the end of the 1920s, two models of economic development were tested in Soviet Russia. The first was called War Communism, the second - NEP (New Economic Policy). In the first years of the development of the socialist state, two directly opposite phenomena collided. How is this possible, and what was the NEP during the USSR? Let's try to understand this issue.

From War Communism to New Economic Policy

November 1920 marked the end of the Russian Civil War. The transition to the peaceful construction of statehood began. This was not easy to implement: during the years of turmoil, the country's population decreased by 20 million people, and the total damage amounted to about 39 billion gold rubles. Productive forces were undermined. Industry in 1920 was only 14% of the pre-war level. Agricultural production decreased by a third, and most transport routes were destroyed. Peasant uprisings raged everywhere, and in some places the white interventionists did not calm down.

The cause of discontent was the system of war communism introduced by the Soviet government in 1918. This policy was to prepare the country for a new, communist society. Industry and agriculture were nationalized. Labor acquired a militarized character: the focus was mainly on military products. The people were dissatisfied with the total equalization manifested in the introduction of food allocation. Bread was simply confiscated from the starving population.

The Soviet government was tired of fighting the growing number of riots. The last straw was the Kronstadt rebellion. Its members had previously helped the Bolsheviks seize power. Lenin was one of the first to realize that fighting one’s own people is not good. In 1920, he spoke at the X Party Congress and proposed new economic principles.

The country was completely transformed during the NEP years. Extremely liberal principles and norms were introduced, which caused concern among seasoned revolutionaries and educated Marxists. A Bolshevik opposition emerged, dissatisfied with the bourgeois bias of the leadership. What were the Marxists afraid of? We need to figure it out.

The essence of the NEP

The main goal of the NEP policy during the years of the USSR was the revival of the country's economic sector. A system of measures aimed at eliminating the food crisis was developed. The goals could be achieved by boosting agriculture. It was necessary to liberate the manufacturer and provide him with incentives to develop production.

The years of the NEP were marked, in fact, by the strongest liberalization of the economic sphere. Of course, there was no question of a market, but in comparison with war communism, the new system was a significant step forward.

So, the reasons for the transition to the NEP policy in the years after the revolution were the following phenomena:

the decline of the revolutionary wave in the West (in Mexico, Germany and a number of other countries);
the desire to retain power at any cost;
the deepest political and socio-economic crisis of power, caused, among other things, by the policy of war communism;
mass uprisings in villages, as well as protests in the army and navy;
the collapse of the idea of forming socialism and communism by bypassing market relations.

The years of the NEP were marked by the gradual elimination of the military-mobilization economic model and the restoration of the national economy destroyed during the war.

The main political goal during the NEP years was to relieve social tension. It was necessary to strengthen the social base in the form of an alliance of workers and peasants. The economic goal was to prevent further deterioration, overcome the crisis and restore the economy. The social task was to provide favorable conditions for the formation of a socialist society without a world revolution.

There were also foreign policy goals during the NEP years. The relatively liberal elite of the Soviet government insisted on overcoming international isolation. One of the reasons for this decision lay in economic changes. For example, concessions, a procedure used during the NEP, became widespread. The commissioning of various enterprises or land to foreign entrepreneurs has gained remarkable popularity. This procedure helped to quickly “pull out” many enterprises and lands, although the conservative part of the Bolsheviks was still suspicious of the concession.

Were the goals achieved? There are certain indicators, for example, growth of national income, improvement financial situation workers, etc. The years of NEP really led to the optimization of the state situation. But was the new policy a real economic revolution, or did the Soviet government overestimate its own plans? To answer this question, you need to turn to the basic techniques and mechanisms used during the NEP.

Changes in the economy

The first and main measure of the new economic policy was the elimination of food appropriation. From now on, bread was not confiscated in unlimited quantities. A clear limit for the food tax was established - 20% of the net peasant product. The surplus appropriation system demanded almost twice as much. The peasants could use the remaining products after paying the tax for their own needs. You could use it yourself, transfer it to the state, or even sell it on the free market.

Radical changes also affected the industrial sector. The main committees - the so-called central boards - were abolished. Instead, trusts appear - associations of interconnected or homogeneous enterprises. They receive complete financial and economic independence, including the right to produce long-term bonds.

By the end of 1922, about 90% of enterprises were united into 421 trusts. 60% of them were local and only 40% were centralized. The trusts resolved issues of production and state sales of products. The enterprises themselves did not receive government support and were guided only by the purchase of resources on the market.

Syndicates - voluntary associations of several trusts - have become equally popular. They were engaged in supply, sales, lending and various foreign trade functions. A wide network of fairs, trading enterprises and exchanges emerged.

The aggressive policy of war communism implied the complete abolition of finance and payment. But the years of NEP in Russia revived commodity-money relations. Wage tariffs were introduced, restrictions on increasing earnings and changing jobs were lifted, and universal labor conscription was abolished. The principle of material incentives was taken as the basis. It replaced the non-economic coercion of war communism.

In-kind tax and trade

We should talk in a little more detail about each economic sector that underwent changes during the NEP years. The state and its entire population breathed a sigh of relief when it became known that the food allocation had been cancelled. At the X Congress of the RSDLP, held from March 8 to 16, 1921, it was decided to introduce a special tax that would replace the forcible seizure of property. By the way, the question of in what year the transition to the NEP was officially confirmed by the authorities should be considered within the framework of the Tenth Congress. At it, Lenin proposed a program of new socio-economic principles, which was supported by 732 thousand party members.

The essence of the tax in kind is simple: from now on, peasants annually hand over to the state a firmly established norm of grain. The forced seizure of almost half of total production is a thing of the past. The tax was halved. The authorities believed that such a step would create an incentive to increase grain production. By 1922, measures to help peasants were completely strengthened: the tax in kind was reduced by 10%. Farmers were freed from choosing forms of agricultural use. Even hiring labor and renting land were allowed.

All measures taken were the most liberal. The commercial and financial side of the NEP concerned the free sale of rural products. At the X Congress, the beginning of the exchange of products between the village and the city was announced. The advantage was given not to the market, but to cooperatives. Initially, the Bolsheviks planned to be based on barter - free exchange without money. For example, 1 pood of rye could be exchanged for 1 box of nails. Naturally, nothing came of this venture. The pseudo-socialist exchange of products was quickly replaced by the usual purchase and sale with money.

Industry during the NEP years

The transition to the use of market mechanisms was completed in the fall of 1921. This prompted the leadership of the RCP(b) to urgently implement reforms in the industrial field. Most state enterprises had to switch to the principles of economic accounting. State finances equally needed to be reformed - by replacing natural taxes with cash taxes, forming a new budget, establishing control over money emissions, etc.

The question of creating state capitalism in the form of concessions and rental relations was raised. The power-capitalist form of economic management included industrial, rural and consumer cooperation.

The main task of the Bolshevik leadership was to strengthen the socialist sector through the creation of large state industry. It was necessary to ensure its interaction with other structures. Did such a step contradict the basic principles of the NEP? It is necessary to understand the issue.

The public sector included the largest and most efficient enterprises, which were provided with fuel, raw materials and other products. All large enterprises were subordinate to the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh). The rest of the enterprises were immediately rented out. The industrial management system was reformed. Of the fifty former branch centers and central administrations of the Supreme Economic Council, only 16 remained. Accordingly, the number of employees was reduced from 300 thousand to 91 thousand people.

The surrender of domestic industry to foreign entrepreneurs, which was used during the NEP years, was called a concession. In essence, production attracted foreign capital. This saved many unprofitable enterprises during the NEP years.

Despite the development of market mechanisms, the Soviet authorities still despised the bourgeois development of society. “Capitalism must be well-trained in our country,” Lenin once said. What could he mean? Most likely, Vladimir Ilyich was going to improve the country in a matter of months with the help of the market and liberal reforms, and then return to the path of socialist development. Capitalism in Russia will not develop fully, but only at the “school” level. After that, he will be liquidated and “schooled out.”

Trade and private capital

A significant step forward was the revival of private capital in the trade sector. Merchants, like small producers, were forced to buy up patents and pay a progressive tax. Merchants were divided into five categories depending on the nature of the trade relations being carried out. These are sellers from hand, in stores, in kiosks and stalls, retail and wholesale, as well as hired workers.

Closer to 1925, the state implemented a shift towards stationary trade. Used by the authorities and widely used during the NEP years, private traders were placed in shops that formed a wide retail network. At the same time, the wholesale market still remained in the hands of the authorities. Cooperative and large state-owned enterprises predominated here.

Since 1921, exchanges began to revive - points of circulation of mass products. Such authorities were abolished during the years of war communism, but the new economic policy changed everything.

During the NEP years, the number of different exchanges reached the pre-war number. By the end of 1925, about 90 joint-stock companies were registered. All of them were a collection of predominantly cooperative, state or mixed capital. The turnover of trading companies exceeded 1.5 billion rubles. Various forms of cooperation have developed rapidly. This especially affected consumer cooperative institutions, which were closely connected with rural areas.

As already mentioned, a foreign element appeared in trade - concessions. This is the rental of various firms and organizations to foreign tenants and small entrepreneurs, which was used during the NEP years. Already in 1926, there were 117 existing concession agreements. They covered enterprises that employed about 20 thousand people. This is 1% of the total number of products produced in Russia.

Concessions were not the only form of interaction with foreign enterprises. A stream of emigrant workers from all over the world headed to the Soviet Union. The newly formed country with an unusual way of life, a utopian ideology and a complex form of governance attracted foreigners. Thus, in 1922, the Russian-American Industrial Corporation (RAIK) was created, which included six garment factories in Petrograd and four in Moscow. The credit system has been revived. Before 1925, a number of specialized banks, joint-stock companies, syndicates, cooperatives, etc. appeared.

The situation, I must say, was amazing. The socialists who came to power were simply carried away by bourgeois governance, which is why they were criticized by the conservative part of the revolutionaries. However, the policy being pursued was simply necessary. The devastation in the country required rapid changes, and they could only be achieved through proven, capitalist methods. But can we say that a real market has been formed in the country? Let's try to figure it out further.

Market mechanisms

There was no pure market economy in the form in which we know it in the USSR during the NEP years. This is an obvious fact, despite all the mechanisms and tricks that the Bolshevik government so often resorted to. A market cannot be built in a matter of days from scratch. And the country's economy was truly “empty”. The authorities achieved this phenomenon by aggressively imposing war communism. No matter how actively and effectively all the methods that marked the new years of the NEP were applied, a normal market was still not possible in the country.

At the end of the 1910s, monetary relations were abolished in the USSR. Most goods and services began to be provided free of charge. The Soviet government considered this decision painful, but correct. Radical measures will supposedly bring a quicker happy future closer, and the flourishing of socialism will come. However, there was still no happiness. Confusion with accumulated money and unsecured exchange only caused a wave of discontent. The state made concessions, and to improve the economy, a monetary reform was carried out - the first market mechanism.

In the early 1920s, the country introduced the golden chervonets. It was equal to 5 US dollars and was backed by Russia's gold reserves. A little later, the State Bank appeared, created on the principles of economic accounting and interested in receiving income from lending to industry, trade and agriculture.

The transition to the NEP meant the abandonment of revolutionary, radical methods of economic management. The Soviet authorities realized the ineffectiveness of reactionary policies and did not torture their fellow citizens. However, there is no need to talk about the market. The surrender of revolutionary powers, which was used during the NEP years, does not mean an active and desired transition to capitalism. On the contrary, the authorities were reluctant to introduce new liberal elements. The same concession could not do without strict supervision by the Soviet authorities.

Social contradictions of politics

Most historians argue that the introduction of new economic principles significantly changed the social structure and lifestyle of Soviet citizens. Colorful figures of the Soviet bourgeoisie appeared - the so-called Sovburs, Nepmen. These are individuals who define the specifics of that era. They were, as it were, outside society. Deprived of voting rights and membership in trade unions, while far from being poor, the Nepmen became a real reflection of the times of the 1920s.

Entrepreneurs felt the fragility and temporary nature of their position. It was difficult and pointless to leave the country. Managing the enterprise from a distance simply wouldn’t work. The Soviet Union itself was a state with an unusual ideology: every person here should be equal, all rich people are despised. Just recently, landowners and merchants were killed or expelled from the country. The Nepmen knew this, and therefore feared for their lives.

Fashion during the NEP years differed little from American fashion during Prohibition. The photo below clearly demonstrates this.

How long can you still hit the jackpot and make money on adventures? Where to put the spent savings and is it worth doing it at all? These questions were asked by every Soviet entrepreneur who made at least small forecasts in his head.

However, the emergence of entrepreneurs in a country most unadapted to this was not the only contradiction during the NEP years. The support used for small lands, as well as the reduction of wealthy farms and the “middle-classization” of the countryside, presented another interesting problem.

It all started with the tax policy - a kind of deterrent. Prosperous industries stopped growing. Support for small farms has received particular development. The so-called averaging has begun - when each owner gets not a little and not a lot, but an average. It was the middle peasants who became staunch adherents of power and traditional culture.

Lenin carried out the policy. He hoped for universal peasant cooperation, and was not too lazy to once again mention the voluntary nature of land divisions. What is the contradiction here? On the one hand, the state had a socialist orientation. It was supposed to forcefully equalize everyone. But the NEP policy, marked by bourgeois principles, did not allow this to be done. The result was a very strange picture: a supposedly voluntary “averageization” with unclear goals, which did not lead to anything at all. A little later, the Soviet authorities will abandon private property and announce the creation of collective farms.

The last contradiction of the NEP is the creation of an exorbitant bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has grown to incredible proportions due to the active interference of the authorities in the industrial and production spheres. Already in 1921, about 2.5 million officials worked in government agencies. For comparison: in tsarist Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, the number of civil servants barely reached 180 thousand people. There is only one question: why does a state whose ideology is aimed at the absence of any power need such an extensive and cumbersome state apparatus? It is difficult to answer this question.

Policy results

The question of in what year the NEP was officially abolished remains relevant to this day. Some talk about 1927, when there was a disruption in state grain procurement. Then a huge amount of food supplies were confiscated from the kulaks. Other historians put forward a point of view about 1928, when the policy of five-year development of the national economy was launched. The country's leadership then set a course for collectivization and accelerated industrialization.

The NEP was not officially cancelled. It should be remembered that the principles of the New Economic Policy were formed by Vladimir Lenin, who died in 1924. His rules worked even after death. Only on October 11, 1931, an official decree was adopted on a complete ban on private trade on the territory of the USSR.

What was the main success of the policy? Firstly, this is a partial restoration of the economy, destroyed during two revolutions and a civil war. War communism failed to “cure” the country, but it did so in part through the application of capitalist methods. Economic indicators doubled from 1913 to 1926. The country received capital-intensive, long-term investments. The situation remained contradictory only in the countryside, where pressure was exerted on the kulaks - wealthy peasants.

Finding new ways

The undoubted successes of the new economic policy did not, however, solve all state problems. The sales crisis remained in force, price scissors increased (inconsistency in the cost of goods), and finally, the shortage of goods did not go away.

The authorities had different views on solving the problem. The left, led by Trotsky, insisted on the dictatorship of industry. Problems can be solved only through the efforts of the proletariat with minimal government intervention. There were also rightists, led by Bukharin. They advocated the creation of cooperatives, support for the peasantry and development market economy. Bukharin's famous quote:

Get rich, accumulate, develop your farm! Poor people's socialism is lousy socialism.

Trotsky was defeated quite easily - at the January 1924 party conference, his project was removed from discussion. Bukharin, in turn, became friends with Stalin. At the end of the 20s, he found himself in disgrace due to contradictions with the current government - his arguments against collectivization and industrialization were simply not accepted.

New Economic Policy(abbr. NEP or NEP) - economic policy pursued in the 1920s in Soviet Russia.

It was adopted on March 14, 1921 by the X Congress of the RCP(b), replacing the policy of “military communism” carried out during the Civil War, which led Russia to economic decline. The New Economic Policy aimed to introduce private entrepreneurship and revive market relations, with the restoration of the national economy. The NEP was a forced measure and largely improvised. However, during the seven years of its existence, it became one of the most successful economic projects of the Soviet period. The main content of the NEP is the replacement of surplus appropriation with a tax in kind in the countryside (up to 70% of grain was confiscated during the surplus appropriation system, about 30% with the tax in kind), the use of the market and various forms of ownership, attracting foreign capital in the form of concessions, carrying out a monetary reform (1922-1924), in as a result of which the ruble became a convertible currency.

The Soviet state faced the problem of financial stabilization, and, therefore, suppressing inflation and achieving a balanced state budget. The state's strategy, aimed at survival under the credit blockade, determined the USSR's primacy in compiling production balances and distributing products. The New Economic Policy assumed state regulation of a mixed economy using planned and market mechanisms. The NEP was based on the ideas of the works of V. I. Lenin, discussions about the theory of reproduction and money, the principles of pricing, finance and credit.

The NEP made it possible to quickly restore the national economy destroyed by the First World War and the Civil War.

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✪ 053. History of Russia. XX century. NEP

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Prerequisites

By 1921, the RSFSR was literally in ruins. The territories of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, and Bessarabia emerged from the former Russian Empire. According to experts, the population in the remaining territories barely reached 135 million. During the hostilities, the Donbass, the Baku oil region, the Urals and Siberia were especially affected, and many mines and mines were destroyed. Factories shut down due to a lack of fuel and raw materials. Workers were forced to leave the cities and go to the countryside. The volume of industrial production decreased significantly, and as a result, agricultural production.

Society has degraded, its intellectual potential has weakened significantly. Most of the Russian intelligentsia were destroyed or left the country.

Thus, the main task of the internal policy of the RCP (b) and the Soviet state was to restore the destroyed economy, create a material, technical and socio-cultural basis for building socialism, promised by the Bolsheviks to the people.

Discontent also spread to the army. On March 1, 1921, sailors and Red Army soldiers of the Kronstadt garrison under the slogan “ For Soviets without communists!“demanded the release from imprisonment of all representatives of socialist parties, holding re-elections of the Soviets and, as follows from the slogan, the expulsion of all communists from them, granting freedom of speech, meetings and unions to all parties, ensuring freedom of trade, allowing peasants to freely use their land and dispose of the products of their economy, that is, the elimination of surplus appropriation.

From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt:

Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic devastation have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has become disconnected from the masses and has been unable to bring it out of the state of general devastation. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow and which quite clearly indicated that the party had lost the trust of the working masses. It also did not take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the machinations of counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of all the people, all the working people. All workers, sailors and Red Army soldiers clearly see at the moment that only through common efforts, the common will of the working people, can we give the country bread, firewood, coal, clothe the shoeless and undressed, and lead the republic out of the dead end...

Convinced of the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the rebels, the authorities launched an assault on Kronstadt. By alternating artillery shelling and infantry actions, Kronstadt was captured by March 18; Some of the rebels died, the rest went to Finland or surrendered.

Progress of development of NEP

Proclamation of NEP

In connection with the introduction of the NEP, certain legal guarantees were introduced for private property. Thus, on May 22, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree “On basic private property rights recognized by the RSFSR, protected by its laws and protected by the courts of the RSFSR.” Then, by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of November 11, 1922, the Civil Code of the RSFSR was put into effect on January 1, 1923, which, in particular, provided that every citizen has the right to organize industrial and commercial enterprises.

NEP in the financial sector

The task of the first stage of the monetary reform, implemented within the framework of one of the directions of the state’s economic policy, was to stabilize the monetary and credit relations of the USSR with other countries. After two denominations, as a result of which 1 million rubles in the old banknotes were equated to 1 ruble in the new sovznak, parallel circulation of depreciating sovznak was introduced to service small trade turnover and hard chervonets, backed by precious metals, stable foreign currency and easily marketable goods. Chervonets was equal to the old 10-ruble gold coin, which contained 7.74 grams of pure gold.

It is necessary, however, to note the fact that wealthy peasants were taxed at higher rates. Thus, on the one hand, the opportunity was provided to improve well-being, but on the other, there was no point in expanding the economy too much. All this taken together led to the “middleization” of the village. The well-being of peasants as a whole has increased compared to the pre-war level, the number of poor and rich has decreased, and the share of middle peasants has increased.

However, even such a half-hearted reform yielded certain results, and by 1926 the food supply had improved significantly.

The holding of the largest Nizhny Novgorod fair in Russia (1921-1929) was resumed.

In general, the NEP had a beneficial effect on the condition of the village. Firstly, the peasants had an incentive to work. Secondly (compared to pre-revolutionary times), many people have increased their land allotment - the main means of production.

The country needed money - to maintain the army, to restore industry, to support the world revolutionary movement. In a country where 80% of the population was peasantry, the main burden of the tax burden fell on them. But the peasantry was not rich enough to provide all the needs of the state and the necessary tax revenues. Increased taxation on especially wealthy peasants also did not help, therefore, from the mid-1920s, other, non-tax methods of replenishing the treasury, such as forced loans and reduced prices for grain and inflated prices for industrial goods, began to be actively used. As a result, industrial goods, if we calculate their cost in pounds of wheat, turned out to be several times more expensive than before the war, despite their lower quality. A phenomenon emerged that, thanks to Trotsky’s light hand, began to be called “price scissors.” The peasants reacted simply - they stopped selling grain beyond what they needed to pay taxes. The first crisis in the sales of industrial goods arose in the fall of 1923. The peasants needed plows and other industrial products, but refused to buy them at inflated prices. The next crisis arose in the 1924-1925 business year (that is, in the fall of 1924 - spring of 1925). The crisis was called the “procurement” crisis, since procurement amounted to only two-thirds of the expected level. Finally, in the 1927-1928 business year there was a new crisis: it was not possible to collect even the most necessary things.

So, by 1925, it became clear that the national economy had come to a contradiction: further progress towards the market was hampered by political and ideological factors, the fear of the “degeneration” of power; a return to the military-communist type of economy was hampered by memories of the peasant war of 1920 and mass famine, and fear of anti-Soviet protests.

Cooperation of all forms and types developed rapidly. The role of production cooperatives in agriculture was insignificant (in 1927 they provided only 2% of all agricultural products and 7% of marketable products), but the simplest primary forms - marketing, supply and credit cooperation - covered more than half of all by the end of the 1920s. peasant farms. By the end of 1928. Non-production cooperation of various types, primarily peasant cooperation, covered 28 million people (13 times more than in 1913). In socialized retail trade, 60-80% was accounted for by cooperatives and only 20-40% by the state itself; in industry in 1928, 13% of all production was provided by cooperatives. There was cooperative legislation, lending, and insurance.

To replace the depreciated and in fact already rejected by the turnover of Sovznak, in 1922, the release of a new monetary unit was started - chervonets, which had a gold content and exchange rate in gold (1 chervonets = 10 pre-revolutionary gold rubles = 7.74 grams of pure gold). In 1924, the sovznaki, which were quickly being replaced by chervonets, stopped printing altogether and were withdrawn from circulation; in the same year the budget was balanced and the use of money emissions to cover government expenses was prohibited; new treasury notes were issued - rubles (10 rubles = 1 chervonets). On the foreign exchange market both domestically and abroad, chervonets were freely exchanged for gold and major foreign currencies at the pre-war exchange rate of the Tsar's ruble (1 US dollar = 1.94 rubles).

The credit system has been revived. In 1921, the State Bank of the RSFSR was created (transformed in 1923 into the State Bank of the USSR), which began lending to industry and trade on a commercial basis. In 1922-1925, a number of specialized banks were created: joint-stock banks, in which the shareholders were the State Bank, syndicates, cooperatives, private and even at one time foreign, for lending to certain sectors of the economy and regions of the country; cooperative - for lending to consumer cooperation; agricultural credit societies organized on shares, linked to the republican and central agricultural banks; mutual credit societies - for lending to private industry and trade; savings banks - to mobilize the population's savings. As of October 1, 1923, there were 17 independent banks operating in the country, and the State Bank’s share in the total credit investments of the entire banking system was 2/3. By October 1, 1926, the number of banks increased to 61, and the State Bank’s share in lending to the national economy decreased to 48%.

Commodity-money relations, which they had previously tried to banish from production and exchange, in the 1920s penetrated into all pores of the economic organism and became the main link between its individual parts.

In just 5 years, from 1921 to 1926, the index of industrial production increased more than 3 times; agricultural production doubled and exceeded the 1913 level by 18%. But even after the end of the recovery period, economic growth continued at a rapid pace: in 1927 and 1928, the increase in industrial production was 13 and 19%, respectively. In general, for the period 1921-1928, the average annual growth rate of national income was 18%.

The most important result of the NEP was that impressive economic successes were achieved on the basis of fundamentally new, hitherto unknown history of social relations. In industry, key positions were occupied by state trusts, in the credit and financial sphere - by state and cooperative banks, in agriculture - by small peasant farms covered by the simplest types of cooperation. Under the NEP conditions, the economic functions of the state also turned out to be completely new; The goals, principles and methods of government economic policy have radically changed. If previously the center directly established natural, technological proportions of reproduction by order, now it has moved on to regulating prices, trying to ensure balanced growth through indirect, economic methods.

The state put pressure on producers, forced them to find internal reserves for increasing profits, to mobilize efforts to increase production efficiency, which alone could now ensure profit growth.

A broad campaign to reduce prices was launched by the government at the end of 1923, but truly comprehensive regulation of price proportions began in 1924, when circulation completely switched to a stable red currency, and the functions of the Internal Trade Commission were transferred to the People's Commissariat of Internal Trade with broad rights in the field of rationing prices The measures taken then turned out to be successful: wholesale prices for industrial goods decreased from October 1923 to May 1, 1924 by 26% and continued to decline further.

Throughout the subsequent period until the end of the NEP, the question of prices continued to remain the core of state economic policy: raising them by trusts and syndicates threatened to repeat the sales crisis, while their excessive reduction, given the existence of a private sector along with the state sector, inevitably led to the enrichment of the private owner at the expense of state industry, to transfer of resources from state-owned enterprises to private industry and trade. The private market, where prices were not standardized, but were set as a result of the free play of supply and demand, served as a sensitive “barometer”, the “arrow” of which, as soon as the state made miscalculations in pricing policy, immediately “pointed to bad weather.”

But price regulation was carried out by a bureaucratic apparatus that was not sufficiently controlled by direct producers. The lack of democracy in the decision-making process regarding pricing became the “Achilles heel” of a market socialist economy and played a fatal role in the fate of the NEP.

No matter how brilliant the successes in the economy were, its rise was limited by strict limits. Reaching the pre-war level was not easy, but this also meant a new clash with the backwardness of yesterday's Russia, now isolated and surrounded by a world hostile to it. At the end of 1917, the US government stopped trade relations with Soviet Russia, and in 1918, the governments of England and France did so. In October 1919, the Supreme Council of the Entente announced a complete ban on all forms of economic ties with Soviet Russia. As a result of the failure of the intervention against the Soviet Republic and the growing contradictions in the economies of the imperialist countries themselves, the Entente states were forced to lift the blockade (January 1920). Foreign states tried to organize the so-called. the gold blockade, refusing to accept Soviet gold as a means of payment, and a little later - the credit blockade, refusing to provide loans to the USSR.

Political struggle during the NEP

Economic processes during the NEP period overlapped with political development and were largely determined by the latter. These processes throughout the entire period of Soviet power were characterized by a tendency toward dictatorship and authoritarianism. While Lenin was at the helm, one could speak of a “collective dictatorship”; he was a leader solely due to his authority, but since 1917 he had to share this role with L. Trotsky: the supreme ruler at that time was called “Lenin and Trotsky”, both portraits adorned not only state institutions, but sometimes also peasant huts. However, with the beginning of the internal party struggle at the end of 1922, Trotsky’s rivals - Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin - not possessing his authority, contrasted him with the authority of Lenin and in a short time inflated him into a real cult - in order to gain the opportunity to proudly call themselves “faithful Leninists” and “ defenders of Leninism."

This was especially dangerous in combination with the dictatorship of the Communist Party. As Mikhail Tomsky, a senior Soviet leader, said in April 1922, “We have several parties. But, unlike abroad, we have one party in power, and the rest are in prison.” As if to confirm his words, in the summer of the same year an open trial of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries took place. All more or less major representatives of this party who remained in the country were tried - and more than a dozen sentences were handed down to capital punishment (the convicts were later pardoned). In the same year, 1922, more than two hundred of the largest representatives of the Russian philosophical thought only because they did not hide their disagreement with the Soviet system - this measure went down in history under the name “Philosophical Steamship”.

Discipline within the Communist Party itself was also tightened. At the end of 1920, an opposition group appeared in the party - the “workers’ opposition”, which demanded the transfer of all power in production to trade unions. In order to stop such attempts, the X Congress of the RCP (b) in 1921 adopted a resolution on party unity. According to this resolution, decisions made by the majority must be implemented by all party members, including those who disagree with them.

All these processes led to the fact that the actual position of a person, his authority, played a greater role in the 1920s than his place in the formal structure of state power. That is why, when speaking about figures of the 1920s, we first of all name not positions, but surnames.

In parallel with the change in the position of the party in the country, the degeneration of the party itself took place. It is obvious that there will always be much more people willing to join the ruling party than to join the underground party, membership in which cannot provide any other privileges than iron bunks or a noose around the neck. At the same time, the party, having become the ruling party, began to need to increase its numbers in order to fill government posts at all levels. This led to the rapid growth of the Communist Party after the revolution. On the one hand, periodic “purges” were carried out, designed to free the party from a huge number of “co-opted” pseudo-communists, on the other, the growth of the party was spurred from time to time by mass recruitment, the most significant of which was the “Lenin Call” in 1924, after the death of Lenin. The inevitable consequence of this process was the dissolution of old, ideological Bolsheviks among young party members and not at all young neophytes. In 1927, out of 1 million 300 thousand people who were members of the party, only 8 thousand had pre-revolutionary experience.

Not only the intellectual and educational level, but also the moral level of the party decreased. In this regard, the results of the party purge carried out in the second half of 1921 with the aim of removing “kulak-proprietary and petty-bourgeois elements” from the party are indicative. Of the 732 thousand members, only 410 thousand members were retained in the party (slightly more than half!). At the same time, a third of those expelled were expelled for passivity, another quarter for “discrediting the Soviet regime,” “selfishness,” “careerism,” “bourgeois lifestyle,” and “decay in everyday life.”

In connection with the growth of the party, the initially inconspicuous position of secretary began to acquire increasing importance. Any secretary is a secondary position by definition. This is a person who ensures that the necessary formalities are observed during official events. Since April 1922, the Bolshevik Party had the position of General Secretary. He connected the leadership of the secretariat of the Central Committee and the accounting and distribution department, which distributed lower-level party members to various positions. Stalin received this position.

The processes of bureaucratization of the party and centralization of power took place against the backdrop of a sharp deterioration in Lenin’s health. Actually, the year of the introduction of NEP became for him the last year of a full life. In May 1922, he was struck by the first blow - his brain was damaged, so the almost helpless Lenin was given a very gentle work schedule. In March 1923, a second attack occurred, after which Lenin dropped out of life altogether for six months, almost learning to pronounce words all over again. He had barely begun to recover from the second attack when the third and final one occurred in January 1924. As an autopsy showed, for the last almost two years of Lenin’s life, only one hemisphere of his brain was active.

But between the first and second attacks, he still tried to participate in political life. Realizing that his days were numbered, he tried to draw the attention of the congress delegates to the most dangerous trend - the degeneration of the party. In letters to the congress, known as his “political testament” (December 1922 - January 1923), Lenin proposed expanding the Central Committee at the expense of the workers, choosing a new Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) - from the proletarians, cutting back the disproportionately swollen and therefore ineffective RKI ( Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate).

The note “Letter to the Congress” (known as “Lenin’s Testament”) had one more component - personal characteristics of the largest party leaders (Trotsky, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Pyatakov). This part of the Letter is often interpreted as a search for a successor (heir), but Lenin, unlike Stalin, was never a sole dictator, he could not make a single fundamental decision without the Central Committee, and not so fundamental - without the Politburo, despite the fact that in The Central Committee, and even more so the Politburo at that time, contained independent people who often disagreed with Lenin in their views. Therefore, there could be no question about any “heir” (and it was not Lenin who called the Letter to the Congress a “testament”). Assuming that the party would retain its collective leadership after him, Lenin gave mostly ambivalent characteristics to the prospective members of this leadership. There was only one definite indication in his Letter: the post of General Secretary gives Stalin too much power, which is dangerous given his rudeness (this was dangerous, according to Lenin, only in the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky, and not in general). Some modern researchers believe, however, that Lenin's Testament was based more on the psychological state of the patient than on political motives.

Even before Lenin’s death, at the end of 1922, a struggle began between his “heirs,” or rather, pushing Trotsky away from the helm. In the fall of 1923, the struggle took on an open character. In October, Trotsky addressed the Central Committee with a letter in which he pointed out the formation of a bureaucratic intra-party regime. A week later, a group of 46 old Bolsheviks (“Statement 46”) wrote an open letter in support of Trotsky. The Central Committee, of course, responded with a decisive denial. The leading role in this was played by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. This was not the first time that heated disputes had arisen within the Bolshevik Party, but, unlike previous discussions, this time the ruling faction actively used labeling. Trotsky was not refuted with reasonable arguments - he was simply accused of Menshevism, deviationism and other mortal sins. The substitution of labels for actual dispute is a new phenomenon: it has not happened before, but it will become increasingly common as the political process develops in the 1920s.

New Economic Policy (abbr. NEP or NEP) is an economic policy pursued in the 1920s in Soviet Russia and the USSR.

It was adopted on March 14, 1921 by the X Congress of the RCP (b), replacing the policy of “war communism” carried out during the Civil War, which led Russia to economic decline. The New Economic Policy aimed to introduce private entrepreneurship and revive market relations, with the restoration of the national economy. The NEP was a forced measure and largely improvised. However, over the seven years of its existence, it became one of the most successful economic projects of the Soviet period.

Auction house "Apollo" on Nevsky Prospekt, 1920.

By 1920, the RSFSR was literally in ruins. The territories of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, and Bessarabia emerged from the former Russian Empire. According to experts, the population in the remaining territories barely reached 135 million. During the hostilities, the Donbass, the Baku oil region, the Urals and Siberia were especially damaged, many mines and mines were destroyed. Factories shut down due to a lack of fuel and raw materials. Workers were forced to leave the cities and go to the countryside. The volume of industrial production decreased significantly, and as a result, agricultural production.

Society has degraded, its intellectual potential has weakened significantly. Most of the Russian intelligentsia were destroyed or left the country.

Line at a grocery store, 1920.

By the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of March 21, 1921, adopted on the basis of the decisions of the X Congress of the RCP (b), the surplus appropriation system was abolished and replaced by an in-kind tax in kind, which was approximately half as low. Such a significant relaxation gave a certain incentive to the war-weary peasantry to develop production. The introduction of a tax in kind was not an isolated measure. The 10th Congress proclaimed the New Economic Policy. Its essence is the assumption of market relations. The NEP was seen as a temporary policy aimed at creating the conditions for socialism.

The main political goal of NEP is to relieve social tensions, strengthen the social base of Soviet power in the form of an alliance of workers and peasants - “a bond between city and countryside.” The economic goal is to prevent further deterioration, get out of the crisis and restore the economy. The social goal is to provide favorable conditions for building a socialist society, without waiting for the world revolution. In addition, the NEP was aimed at restoring normal foreign policy relations and overcoming international isolation.

NEPman Nikolai Vlasov with his wife in a car near his store on Sadovaya 28.

Contrary to popular belief, the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) did not decide to introduce free trade and legalize private entrepreneurship. Moreover, at this congress, Lenin unequivocally declared that free trade was for the Bolsheviks “no less a danger than Kolchak and Denikin combined.” The congress decided to replace the surplus appropriation system, which extremely irritated the peasants, with a lighter tax in kind, giving the villages the freedom to dispose of the surplus remaining after the payment of the tax in kind and personal consumption. It was assumed that the state would centrally exchange these surpluses for industrial goods in demand in the countryside - chintz, kerosene, nails, etc.

However, life soon overturned these calculations, divorced from reality. In the conditions of post-war devastation, the state simply did not have a sufficient amount of industrial goods for exchange. The very logic of events forced the Bolsheviks, having abandoned the surplus appropriation system, to gradually legalize free trade.

Selling fruits and vegetables in the Apraksin yard, 1924.

In July 1921, a permitting procedure for opening retail establishments was established. State monopolies on various types of products and goods were gradually abolished. A simplified registration procedure was established for small industrial enterprises, and the permissible amounts of hired labor were revised (from ten workers in 1920 to twenty workers per enterprise according to the July decree of 1921). Denationalization of small and handicraft enterprises was carried out.

Members of the Consumer Cooperative at Cooperative Day, 1924.

The line for vodka before the Glavspirt store, 1925.

A skillful combination of planned and market instruments for regulating the economy, which ensured the growth of the national economy, a sharp reduction in the budget deficit, an increase in gold and foreign currency reserves, as well as an active foreign trade balance, made it possible during 1924 to carry out the second stage of the monetary reform of the transition to one stable currency. Canceled Sovznak were subject to redemption with treasury notes at a fixed ratio within one and a half months. A fixed ratio was established between the treasury ruble and the bank chervonets, equating 1 chervonets to 10 rubles. Bank and treasury notes were in circulation, and gold chervonets were used, as a rule, in international payments. Their rate in 1924 became higher than the official gold parity against the pound sterling and the dollar.

In the 1920s, commercial credit was widely used, servicing approximately 85% of the volume of transactions in the sale of goods. Banks controlled mutual lending to business organizations and, with the help of accounting and collateral operations, regulated the size of a commercial loan, its direction, terms and interest rate. However, its use created the opportunity for unplanned redistribution of funds in the national economy and complicated banking control.

Financing of capital investments and long-term lending developed. After the Civil War, capital investments were financed irrevocably or in the form of long-term loans. For industrial investment in 1922, the Joint-Stock Company"Electrocredit" and the Industrial Bank, later transformed into the Electric Bank and the Commercial and Industrial Bank of the USSR. Long-term lending to the local economy was carried out by local communal banks, transformed in 1926 into the Central Communal Bank (Tsekombank). Agriculture was provided with long-term loans by state credit institutions, credit cooperation, the Central Agricultural Bank formed in 1924, and cooperative banks - Vsekobank and Ukrainbank. At the same time, Vneshtorgbank was created, which provided credit and settlement services for foreign trade and the purchase and sale of foreign currency.

Goznak store 1925.

The country needed money - to maintain the army, to restore industry. In addition, the Bolsheviks spent significant government funds to support the world revolutionary movement. In a country where 80% of the population was the peasantry, the main burden of the tax burden fell on them. But the peasantry was not rich enough to provide all the needs of the state and the necessary tax revenues. Increased taxation on especially wealthy peasants also did not help, so from the mid-1920s, other, non-tax methods of replenishing the treasury, such as forced loans and reduced prices for grain and inflated prices for industrial goods, began to be actively used. As a result, industrial goods, if we calculate their cost in pounds of wheat, turned out to be several times more expensive than before the war, despite their lower quality.

A phenomenon emerged that, thanks to Trotsky’s light hand, began to be called “price scissors.” The peasants reacted simply - they stopped selling grain beyond what they needed to pay taxes. The first crisis in the sales of industrial goods arose in the fall of 1923. The peasants needed plows and other industrial products, but refused to buy them at inflated prices. The next crisis arose in the 1924-1925 business year (that is, in the fall of 1924 - spring of 1925). The crisis was called the “procurement” crisis, since procurement amounted to only two-thirds of the expected level. Finally, in the 1927-1928 business year there was a new crisis: it was not possible to collect even the most necessary things.

Pavilion of the Rabocheye Delo cooperative on Lassalya (Mikhailovskaya) street, 1925.

A private sector emerged in industry and trade: some state-owned enterprises were denationalized, others were leased out; private individuals with no more than 20 employees were allowed to create their own industrial enterprises (later this “ceiling” was raised). Among the factories rented by “private owners” there were those that employed 200-300 people, and in general the private sector during the NEP period accounted for about a fifth of industrial production, 40-80% of retail trade and a small part of wholesale trade.

The organizing committee of the Alexander Market in the red corner, 1926.

Cooperation of all forms and types developed rapidly. The role of production cooperatives in agriculture was insignificant (in 1927 they provided only 2% of all agricultural products and 7% of marketable products), but the simplest primary forms - marketing, supply and credit cooperation - covered more than half of all by the end of the 1920s. peasant farms. By the end of 1928. Non-production cooperation of various types, primarily peasant cooperation, covered 28 million people (13 times more than in 1913). In socialized retail trade, 60-80% was accounted for by cooperatives and only 20-40% by the state itself; in industry in 1928, 13% of all production was provided by cooperatives. There was cooperative legislation, lending, and insurance.

Predtechensky market, 1929.

Napman from the tax inspector. 1930

The state put pressure on producers, forced them to find internal reserves for increasing profits, to mobilize efforts to increase production efficiency, which alone could now ensure profit growth.

Market day at the Predtechensky market. 1932

In the second half of the 1920s, the first attempts to curtail the NEP began. Syndicates in industry were liquidated, from which private capital was administratively squeezed out, and a rigid centralized system of economic management was created (economic people's commissariats).

The immediate reason for the complete curtailment of NEP was the disruption of state grain procurements at the end of 1927. At the end of December, measures of forced confiscation of grain reserves were applied to the kulaks for the first time since the end of “war communism”. In the summer of 1928 they were temporarily suspended, but then resumed in the autumn of the same year.

In October 1928, the implementation of the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy began, the country's leadership set a course for accelerated industrialization and collectivization. Although no one officially canceled the NEP, by that time it had already been effectively curtailed.

Legally, the NEP was stopped only on October 11, 1931, when a resolution was adopted on a complete ban on private trade in the USSR.

Collective farm market, 1932.

The undoubted success of the NEP was the restoration of the destroyed economy, and if we take into account that after the revolution the USSR lost many highly qualified personnel (economists, managers, production workers), then the success of the new government becomes a “victory over devastation.” At the same time, the lack of those highly qualified personnel became the cause of miscalculations and mistakes.

Significant rates of economic growth, however, were achieved only due to the return to operation of pre-war capacities; by 1926, the Soviet Union exceeded the economic indicators of 1913 by approximately two times. The potential for further economic growth turned out to be extremely low. The private sector was not allowed to the “commanding heights of the economy,” foreign investment was not welcomed, and investors themselves were in no particular hurry to come to the Soviet Union due to ongoing instability and the threat of nationalization of capital. The state was unable to make long-term capital-intensive investments using its own funds alone.

Entrance to the Predtechensky market, 1932.

Sale of milk at the Kuznetsk market. 1934

At the Kuznetsk market, 1934.

Entrance to the Klinsky market, October 1936.

Makeup. Skin and hair care. Manicure

APPLICATION. DECREE OF THE ALL-Russian Central Executive Committee ON REPLACEMENT OF DISTRIBUTION BY NATURAL TAX.

Prerequisites for the NEP

Progress of development of NEP

Proclamation of the NEP

Curtailment of the NEP

Conclusions and Conclusions

From War Communism to New Economic Policy

The essence of the NEP

Changes in the economy

In-kind tax and trade

Industry during the NEP years

Trade and private capital

Market mechanisms

Social contradictions of politics

Policy results

Finding new ways

Encyclopedic YouTube

Subtitles

Prerequisites

Progress of development of NEP

Proclamation of NEP

NEP in the financial sector

Political struggle during the NEP

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