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When did the NEP end? New Economic Policy (NEP) briefly. NEP in the financial sector

After the Civil War and the policy of “war communism”, the economy of Soviet Russia fell into decline: the gold reserves of the state disappeared in an unknown direction, the volume of the harvest decreased sharply, some enterprises were destroyed, others closed due to lack of fuel, and others served only military needs. The industrial crisis led to the fact that about 1 million workers rushed to the villages.

By 1921, a famine arose in the country, which claimed the lives of about 5 million people. Dissatisfied with the current situation, the proletarians and the military took to anti-Bolshevik demonstrations. It was obvious that the young state was in dire need of economic reforms.

As a result, on March 8, 1921, at the X Congress of the Russian communist party(RKP) it was decided to retreat from communist principles for a while. The country introduced the New Economic Policy (NEP), allowing private enterprise and even attracting foreign capital.

Postcard from the time of the NEP. Photo: Public Domain

First of all, within the framework of the NEP, instead of the surplus tax, a tax in kind was introduced, which was half as much: if earlier up to 70% of grain was confiscated from the peasants, then under the new rules - only 30%. It was assumed that in the future the tax in kind would be reduced to 10%. It was set before the start of the sowing campaign and could not be increased. The peasants could sell the grain remaining after paying the tax: free trade was legalized in the state. For farmers, this was a strong incentive to produce more.

In addition to the surplus appropriation, the decree on the complete nationalization of industry was canceled: from now on, private individuals could own small enterprises and rent large ones from the state. Moreover, since 1923, the right to use state-owned enterprises was granted to foreign companies, it was allowed to create concessions with the involvement of foreign capital, joint ventures, mixed joint-stock companies. During the NEP, there were more than 100 concession agreements with foreigners.

Another milestone of the New Economic Policy is the monetary reform, within the framework of which Soviet chervonets backed by gold were introduced. For one chervonets then they gave more than five American dollars. At the same time, the issue of Soviet banknotes continued until 1924, which was subsequently replaced by treasury notes, copper and silver coins. The monetary reform helped the Soviet government to end the budget deficit.

The NEP reforms also affected the rights of ordinary workers: forced labor was abolished in the state, a labor market was introduced, and monetary wages were restored. The new economic policy increased the number of workers.

“The task of the transition to a new economic policy lies precisely in the fact that after the experience of direct socialist construction in conditions of unheard-of difficulty, in conditions of a civil war, in conditions when the bourgeoisie imposed forms of bitter struggle on us, a clear situation became before us in the spring of 1921: not an immediate socialist construction, but a retreat in a number of areas of the economy to state capitalism, not an assault attack, but a very difficult, difficult and unpleasant task of a long siege, associated with a whole series of retreats. Here's what it takes to reach a solution economic issue, that is, ensuring the economic transition to the foundations of socialism, ”said the chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars Vladimir Lenin in October 1921.

Results of the NEP

Thanks to the NEP, the Soviet state managed to get out of the crisis in a short time, to restore industry and agriculture. Already in the autumn of 1922, hunger was overcome, private stores began to open, on the shelves of which products appeared. When the Bolsheviks decided to introduce the New Economic Policy, it was seen as a temporary measure, as it was contrary to the ideas of communism. After a while, Vladimir Lenin declared that "the NEP is serious and for a long time."

During the years of the NEP, the well-being of the rural population increased: an increase in land allotment made it possible to sell most of the agricultural products, and increased the proportion of middle peasants. Already by 1923, the sown area returned to the pre-revolutionary level. By 1927, the pre-war level of production in animal husbandry had been reached. The country's macroeconomic performance returned to pre-war levels in 1928.

It should be understood that the success of the NEP is largely due to the recovery effect: after the war, industrial and agricultural capacities were restored easily. But in the late 1920s, the reforms began to "jump": the reserves dried up, and further economic growth required huge sums for the development of the agricultural sector and the modernization of production. It was not possible to attract foreign capital.

One after another, crises began in the country. Industrial goods became very expensive, and the peasants, not interested in overpayment, simply began to hide grain, selling only the volume that was provided for by the tax in kind.

In 1926-1927. there was a grain crisis. Then 30,000 party members were sent to carry out explanatory work in the villages. First in Siberia with light handJoseph Stalin criminal liability was introduced for peasants hiding goods, then this method was extended to the whole country, but it did not give the expected effect. In April 1929, ration cards for bread were introduced; by the end of the year, the system was extended to all foodstuffs, and then to manufactured goods.

It was obvious that the New Economic Policy had outlived itself. At the end of the 1920s, the first five-year plan was announced, and the country embarked on the path of collectivization and planned industrialization. The NEP was officially ended on October 11, 1931.

NEP is an abbreviation made up of the first letters of the phrase "New Economic Policy". The NEP was introduced in Soviet Russia on March 14, 1921 by the decision of the Tenth Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks instead of politics.

"Shut up. And listen! - Izya said that he had just entered the printing house of the Odessa Provincial Committee and saw there ... (Izya choked with excitement) .. a set of a speech recently delivered by Lenin in Moscow on the new economic policy. A vague rumor about this speech had been wandering around Odessa for three days now. But no one really knew anything. “We must print this speech,” said Izya ... The operation of kidnapping the set was done quickly and silently. Together and imperceptibly, we carried out the heavy lead typed speech, put it on a cab and drove to our printing house. The set was placed in the car. The machine rumbled softly and rustled as it typed out the historic speech. We eagerly read it by the light of a kitchen kerosene lamp, agitated and realizing that history stands next to us in this dark printing house and we also participate in it to some extent ... And on the morning of April 16, 1921, the old Odessa newspaper sellers were skeptics, misanthropes and the sclerotics went hurriedly shuffling through the streets with pieces of wood and shouting in hoarse voices: “Morak newspaper!” Comrade Lenin's speech! Read everything! Only in Morak, you won't read it anywhere else! Morak Newspaper! The number of "Sailor" with a speech sold out in a few minutes. (K. Paustovsky "Time of great expectations")

Causes of the NEP

From 1914 to 1921, the volume of gross output of Russian industry decreased by 7 times
Stocks of raw materials and materials by 1920 were exhausted
Marketability of agriculture fell by 2.5 times
In 1920, traffic railways amounted to a fifth in relation to 1914.
The area under crops, grain yields, and the production of livestock products have been reduced.
Commodity-money relations were destroyed
A "black market" was formed, speculation flourished
The standard of living of workers has plummeted.
As a result of the closure of many enterprises, the process of declassing the proletariat began.
In the political sphere, the undivided dictatorship of the RCP (b) was established
Workers' strikes, uprisings of peasants and sailors began

The essence of the NEP

Revival of commodity-money relations
Granting freedom of management to small commodity producers
Replacing the surplus tax with a tax in kind, the size of the tax has almost halved compared to the surplus appraisal
Creation of trusts in industry - associations of enterprises that themselves decided what to produce and where to sell products.
Creation of syndicates - associations of trusts for the wholesale distribution of products, lending and regulation of trade operations in the market.
Reduction of the bureaucracy
Introduction of cost accounting
Creation of the State Bank, savings banks
Restoration of the system of direct and indirect taxes.
Carrying out monetary reform

Results of the NEP

The success of the NEP was the restoration of the destroyed Russian economy and overcoming hunger

Legally, the new economic policy was curtailed on October 11, 1931 by a party resolution on the complete ban on private trade in the USSR. But in fact, it ended in 1928 with the adoption of the first five-year plan and the announcement of a course towards accelerated industrialization and collectivization of the USSR.

Ninety-five years ago, on March 21, 1921, in pursuance of the decisions of the X Congress of the RCP (b), the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) of the RSFSR adopted the Decree "On the replacement of food and raw materials allocation with a tax in kind."
Recall that earlier the peasants were forced to give up to 70% of the produced product to the state, but now they had to give only about 30%. With the abolition of the surplus, in fact, it is necessary to count the beginning of the "New Economic Policy" (NEP), which was a series of reforms aimed at transforming mobilization war communism into market state capitalism.

As a result of the reforms, the peasants received the right to choose the form of land use: they could rent out land and hire workers. There was a decentralization of industrial management, enterprises were transferred to cost accounting. Individuals were allowed to open their own factories or rent them. Enterprises with up to 20 employees were nationalized. Foreign capital began to be attracted to the country, a law on concessions was adopted, in accordance with which joint-stock (foreign and mixed) enterprises began to be created. During the monetary reform, the ruble strengthened, which was facilitated by the issuance of the Soviet chervonets, equal to ten gold rubles.

Necessity or mistake?

Since the NEP meant the rejection of war communism, it is necessary to clarify what this very “communism” was and what it led to. In Soviet times, it was customary to consider it a kind of system of forced measures. Say, the Civil War was blazing in the country, and it was necessary to pursue a policy of tough mobilization of all resources. Sometimes such an excuse can be found today. However, the leaders of the Bolshevik Party themselves argued quite the opposite. So, Lenin at the IX Party Congress (March-April 1920) said that the leadership system that had developed under war communism should also be applied to "peaceful tasks of economic construction" for which an "iron system" is needed. And in 1921, already during the period of the NEP, Lenin admitted: “We expected ... by direct orders of the proletarian state to establish state production and state distribution of products in a communist way in a small-peasant country. Life has shown our mistake” (“On the 4th Anniversary of the October Revolution”). As you can see, Lenin himself considered war communism a mistake, and not some kind of necessity.

At the IX Congress of the RCP(b) (March - April 1920), a bet was made on the final eradication of market relations. The food dictatorship intensified, almost all basic foodstuffs, as well as some types of industrial raw materials, fell into the scope of apportionment.

It is characteristic that the tightening continued after the defeat of P.N. Wrangel, when the direct threat to Soviet power from the Whites had already been eliminated. At the end of 1920 - beginning of 1921, measures were taken to curtail the commodity-money system, which practically meant the abolition of money. Urban population"exempted" from paying for services for the supply of food and consumer goods, the use of transport, fuel, medicines and housing. Instead of wages, distribution in kind was now introduced. The well-known historian S. Semanov wrote: “In the country as a whole, distributions in kind accounted for the predominant share in the earnings of a worker: in 1919 - 73.3%, and in 1920 - already 92.6% ... Unhappy Russia returned to natural exchange.

They no longer traded in the markets, but “exchanged”: bread - for vodka, nails - for potatoes, a frock coat - for canvas, an awl - for soap, and what's the use of the fact that baths have become free?
In order to take a steam bath, it was necessary to obtain an “order” in the corresponding office ... workers at enterprises also tried, where they could, to pay “in kind”. At the rubber factory "Triangle" - a couple or two galoshes, at weaving factories - several arshins of fabric, etc. And at shipbuilding, metallurgical and military plants - what to give there? And the factory management looked through its fingers at how hard workers sharpened lighters on machine tools or dragged tools from the back rooms to change all this at the flea market for half a loaf of sour bread - you need to eat something. ("Kronstadt rebellion").

Besides, Supreme Council National Economy (VSNKh) nationalized the remnants of small enterprises. A powerful tightening of the surplus appraisal was planned. In December 1920, it was decided to supplement it with a new layout - seed and sowing. For this purpose, they even began to create special sowing committees. As a result of all this “communist construction”, a transport and food crisis began in the country. Russia was engulfed in the fire of numerous peasant uprisings. The Tambov one is considered the most famous of them, but serious resistance was also shown in many other regions. 100 thousand people fought in the rebel detachments of Western Siberia. Here the number of rebels even exceeded the number of Red Army soldiers. But there was also the Volga "Red Army of Truth" by A. Sapozhkov (25 thousand fighters), there were large rebel detachments in the Kuban, in Karelia, etc. This is what the "forced" policy of war communism brought the country to. The delegates of the 10th Congress were forced to travel from Siberia to Moscow with fighting - the railway communication was interrupted for several weeks.

Finally, the army rose up, an anti-Bolshevik rebellion broke out in Kronstadt - under red banners and with the slogan: "Soviets without communists!".
Obviously, at a certain stage of the Civil War, the Bolsheviks were tempted to use wartime mobilization levers in order to move on to the full-scale construction of the foundations of communism. Of course, in part, war communism was really caused by necessity, but very soon this necessity began to be perceived as an opportunity to implement some large-scale transformations.

Criticism of the NEP

The leadership realized the fallacy of the previous course, however, the “mass” of the communists had already managed to imbue the spirit of “war communism”. She was too accustomed to the harsh methods of "communist construction." And for the vast majority, the sharp change in course caused a real shock. In 1922, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee G.E. Zinoviev admitted that the introduction of the NEP caused almost complete misunderstanding. It resulted in a massive outflow from the RCP (b). In a number of counties in 1921 - early 1922, approximately 10% of its members left the party.

And then it was decided to carry out a large-scale "cleansing of the party ranks." “The purge of the party in 1921 was unprecedented in its results for the whole of Bolshevism,” writes N.N. Maslov. – As a result of the purges, 159,355 people, or 24.1% of its membership, were expelled from the party; including 83.7% of those expelled from the party were "passive", that is, people who were members of the RCP (b), but did not take any part in party life. The rest were expelled from the party for abusing their position (8.7%), for performing religious rites (3.9%), and as hostile elements "infiltrating the ranks of the party with counter-revolutionary aims" (3.7%). About 3% of the Communists voluntarily left the ranks of the party without waiting for verification. (“RKP (b) - VKP (b) during the years of the NEP (1921–1929) // “Political parties of Russia: history and modernity”).

They started talking about the "economic Brest" of Bolshevism, and fuel was added to the fire of the party protest by N.I. Ustryalov, who effectively used this metaphor. But they also spoke positively about Brest, many believed that there was a temporary retreat - as in 1918, for several months. So, the employees of the People's Commissariat of Food at first almost did not see the difference between the surplus appraisal and the tax in kind. They expected that in autumn the country would return to a food dictatorship.

Mass dissatisfaction with the NEP forced the Central Committee to convene an emergency All-Russian Party Conference in May 1921. At it, Lenin convinced the delegates of the need for new relations, explaining the policy of the leadership. But many party members were irreconcilable, they saw in what was happening a betrayal of the bureaucracy, a logical consequence of the "Soviet" bureaucracy that had developed in the "military-communist" era.

Thus, the "workers' opposition" (A.G. Shlyapnikov, G.I. Myasnikov, S.P. Medvedev and others) actively opposed the NEP. They used a mocking decoding of the NEP abbreviation - "new exploitation of the proletariat."
In their opinion, the economic reforms led to a "bourgeois degeneration" (which, by the way, Ustryalov, a member of the Smeno-Vekhites, really hoped for). Here is an example of anti-NEP "workers'" criticism: "The free market cannot possibly fit into the model of the Soviet State. Supporters of the NEP at first spoke of the presence of some market freedoms, as a temporary concession, as some retreat before a big leap forward, but now it is argued that the Sov. the economy is unthinkable without it. I believe that the emerging class of NEPmen and kulaks is a threat to the power of the Bolsheviks. (S.P. Medvedev).

But there were also much more radical currents operating underground: “The year 1921 gave birth to several small Bolshevik Kronstadts,” writes M. Magid. - In Siberia and the Urals, where the traditions of partisanism were still alive, opponents of the bureaucracy began to create secret workers' unions. In the spring, the Chekists uncovered an underground organization of local communist workers in the Anzhero-Sudzhensky mines. It set as its goal the physical destruction of party officials, as well as specialists (state economic workers), who, even under Kolchak, had proven themselves to be obvious counter-revolutionaries, and then received warm places in state institutions. The core of this organization, numbering 150 people, was a group of old party members: a people's judge with party experience since 1905, the chairman of the mine cell - in the party since 1912, a member of the Soviet executive committee, etc. The organization, which consisted mainly of former anti-Kolchak partisans, was divided into cells. The latter kept a record of the persons to be destroyed during the action scheduled for May 1. In August of the same year, the regular report of the Cheka repeats that the most acute form party opposition to the NEP are groups of party activists in Siberia. There the opposition took on the character of "positively dangerous" and "red banditry" arose. Now, at the Kuznetsk mines, a conspiratorial network of communist workers has been uncovered, which has set as its goal the extermination of responsible workers. Another similar organization was found somewhere in Eastern Siberia. The traditions of “red banditry” were also strong in the Donbass. From the closed report of the secretary of the Donetsk provincial committee Kviring for July 1922, it follows that the hostile attitude of the workers towards the specialists reaches outright terror. So, for example, an engineer was blown up in the Dolzhansky district and a foreman was murdered by two communists. ("The Workers' Opposition and the Workers' Insurrection").

Much was said about the danger of “capitalist restoration” on the left flank, where in the mid-1920s a “new opposition” (G.E. Zinoviev, L.B. Kamenev) and a “Trotsky-Zinoviev anti-party bloc” would arise. One of its leaders will be the chairman of the Financial Committee of the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars (SNK) E.A. Preobrazhensky, who already in December 1921 raised the alarm about the development of "farmer-kulak" farms. And in March 1922, this unusually vigilant comrade presented his theses to the Central Committee, in which he tried to give a thorough analysis of what was happening in the country. The conclusion was drawn as follows: “The process of smoothing out class contradictions in the countryside has stopped ... The process of differentiation has resumed with renewed vigor, and it manifests itself most of all where the restoration of agriculture is most successful and where the area cultivated by the plow is increasing ... In conditions of extreme decline peasant economy as a whole and the general impoverishment of the countryside, the growth of the rural bourgeoisie continues.

Preobrazhensky did not confine himself to one statement and presented his own "anti-crisis" program. He proposed to "develop state farms, support and expand proletarian agriculture on the plots given to factories, encourage the development of agricultural collectives and involve them in the orbit of a planned economy as the main form of transforming a peasant economy into a socialist one."

But the most interesting thing is that, along with all these "ultra-left" proposals, Preobrazhensky called for help in ... the capitalist West. In his opinion, foreign capital had to be widely poured into the country in order to create "large agricultural factories."
Sweet pieces for abroad

It is not surprising that with such love for foreign capital, Preobrazhensky in 1924 became deputy chairman of the Main Concession Committee (GKK) under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. A year later, L.D. became the chairman of this committee. Trotsky, closely associated with the countries of the West. It was under him that this organization was extraordinary strengthened, although the concessions themselves were allowed at the very beginning of the NEP.

Under Trotsky, the GKK included such prominent leaders as Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs M.M. Litvinov, Plenipotentiary A.A. Ioffe, Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Economic Council of the USSR G.L. Pyatakov, Secretary of the All-Union Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU) A.I. Dogadov, the largest theorist and propagandist, member of the Central Committee A.I. Stetsky, People's Commissar for Foreign Trade L.B. Krasin and others. A representative assembly, you can't say anything. (It is significant that Krasin put forward a project to create large trusts for the extraction of oil and coal with the participation of foreign capital. He believed that it was necessary to provide parts of the shares of these trusts to the owners of nationalized enterprises. And in general, in his opinion, foreigners should have been actively involved in the management of trusts ).

In the GKK, deals were made with foreigners and a lot fell to the functionaries themselves. A.V. Boldyrev writes: “When people talk about the NEP, “Nepmen” or “Nepachi” usually come to mind - these characters stood out brightly with their ostentatious, but vulgar luxury against the backdrop of the devastation and poverty of the “war communism” era. However, a small freedom of entrepreneurship and the emergence of a small stratum of private entrepreneurs who took out hidden gold coins from caches and put them into circulation are only part of what was happening in the country. By orders of magnitude big money was spinning in concessions. It's like an entrepreneur of the 1990s - the owner of a couple of stalls in a raspberry jacket, with a "purse", on a used, but foreign car, imported from Kazakhstan - to compare with Yukos. Petty speculation and huge funds flowing abroad. (“Did Trotsky change fronts in 1925?”).

The largest and at the same time strange transaction was the agreement with the gold mining company Lena Goldfields. It was owned by a British banking consortium associated with the American banking house Kuhn Leeb. By the way, the infamous execution of Lena workers in 1912 was largely associated with the activities of Lena Goldfields.
The workers protested against exploitation by "domestic" and foreign capitalists, and most of the shares in the mines belonged to the owners of "Lena". And so, in September 1925, this company was given a concession to develop the Lena mines. The GKK was very generous - Western bankers received the territory stretching from Yakutia to the Ural Mountains. The company could mine, in addition to gold, also iron, copper, gold, lead. Many have been placed at her disposal. metallurgical enterprises-Bisertsky, Seversky, Revdinsky metallurgical plants, Zyuzelsky and Degtyarsky copper deposits, Revdinsky iron mines, etc. The share of the USSR in the extracted metals was only 7%.

Foreigners were given the go-ahead, and they began to manage - in the spirit of their "best" colonial traditions. “This foreign company, headed by the Englishman Herbert Guedal, behaved in the first socialist state in an extremely cheeky and impudent way,” notes N.V. Starikov. - At the conclusion of the concession agreement, she promised "investment", but did not invest a single ruble in the development of mines and enterprises. On the contrary, it came to the point that Lena Goldfields demanded state subsidies for itself and in every possible way evaded payment of all fees and taxes. ("Crisis: how it's done").

This continued until Trotsky was in the USSR - until 1929. The workers of the mines organized a series of strikes, and the Chekists simultaneously conducted a series of searches. After that, the company was deprived of the concession.

Criminal semi-capitalism

For the peasants, the NEP meant almost immediate relief. But for urban workers, even more difficult times have come. “... The workers suffered significantly from the transition to the market,” writes V.G. Sirotkin. - Previously, under "war communism", they were guaranteed a "party maximum" - some bread, cereals, meat, cigarettes, etc. - and everything is free, "distribution". Now the Bolsheviks offered to buy everything with money. But there was no real money, gold chervonets (they will appear only in 1924) - they were still replaced by "sovznaks". In October 1921, the bunglers from the Narkomfin printed so many of them that hyperinflation began - by May 1922 prices had increased 50 times! And no “pay” of the workers could keep up with them, although at that time the wage growth index was already introduced, taking into account the rise in prices. This is what caused the workers' strikes in 1922 (about 200 thousand people) and in 1923 (about 170 thousand). ("Why did Trotsky lose?").

On the other hand, a prosperous stratum of private entrepreneurs, the “Nepmen”, immediately arose. Not only did they manage to profit, they managed to enter into very profitable, and by no means always legal, connections with the administrative apparatus. This was facilitated by the decentralization of industry. Homogeneous and closely related enterprises united in trusts (while only 40% were centrally subordinated, the rest were subordinated to local authorities). They were transferred to self-financing and provided greater independence. So, they themselves decided what to produce and where to sell their products. The enterprises of the trust had to do without state supplies, purchasing resources on the market. Now they were fully responsible for the results of their activities - they themselves used the proceeds from the sale of their products, but also covered their own losses.

It was then that the Nepachi speculators arrived in time, who tried in every possible way to "help" the management of the trusts. And from their trading and intermediary services, they had very solid profits. It is clear that the economic bureaucracy also fell under the influence of the "new" bourgeoisie - either due to inexperience, or for reasons of a "commercial" nature.

During the three years of the NEP, private traders controlled two-thirds of the entire wholesale and retail trade in the country.
Of course, all this was riddled with desperate corruption. Here are two examples of criminal semi-capitalism. In November 1922, the so-called. "Black Trust". It was created by the head of Mostabak A.V. Spiridonov and director of the Second State Tobacco Factory Ya.I. Circassian. The sale of tobacco products itself was to be carried out, first of all, to state institutions and cooperatives. However, this trust, which consisted of former tobacco wholesalers, received 90% of the total production of the tobacco factory. At the same time, they were provided with the best assortment, and even a 7–10-day loan.

In Petrograd, a private entrepreneur, metal merchant S. Plyatsky founded a supply and sales office, which had an annual turnover of three million rubles. As it turned out later, such solid incomes were possible as a result of close "cooperation" with 30 state institutions.

Researcher S.V. Bogdanov, referring to these and other facts of the “NEP” crime, notes: “Bribery among civil servants of the NEP period was a specific form of adaptation to the radically changed socio-economic realities of society. The salary of Soviet employees who were not included in the nomenclature lists was very low, and, from the point of view of social security, their position was unenviable. There were a lot of temptations to improve their financial situation through semi-legal deals with NEPmen. To this fact, it is necessary to add numerous reorganizations of the state administration apparatus, which were permanently going on throughout the entire period of the existence of the NEP and, of course, not only brought confusion, but also gave rise to the desire of individual officials to protect themselves in case of sudden dismissal. (“NEP: criminal entrepreneurship and power” // Rusarticles.Com).

Thus, the reforms led to the revival of the economy and the rise in living standards. However, it was very difficult and contradictory…

NEP (New Economic Policy) was carried out by the Soviet government in the period from 1921 to 1928. It was an attempt to bring the country out of the crisis and give impetus to the development of the economy and agriculture. But the results of the NEP turned out to be terrible, and in the end, Stalin had to hastily interrupt this process in order to create industrialization, since the NEP policy almost completely killed heavy industry.

Reasons for the introduction of the NEP

With the beginning of the winter of 1920, the RSFSR plunged into a terrible crisis. In many ways, it was due to the fact that in 1921-1922 there was a famine in the country. The Volga region suffered mainly (we all understand the infamous phrase "Starving Volga region"). To this was added the economic crisis, as well as popular uprisings against the Soviet regime. No matter how many textbooks tell us that people met the power of the Soviets with applause, this was not so. For example, uprisings took place in Siberia, on the Don, in the Kuban, and the largest - in Tambov. It went down in history under the name Antonov uprising or "Antonovshchina". In the spring of 21, about 200 thousand people were involved in the uprisings. Considering that the Red Army was extremely weak at this point, it was a very serious threat to the regime. Then the Kronstadt rebellion was born. At the cost of efforts, but all these revolutionary elements were suppressed, but it became obvious that it was necessary to change the approach to managing the country. And the conclusions were correct. Lenin formulated them thus:

the driving force of socialism is the prolitariat, which means the peasants. Therefore, the Soviet government must learn to get along with them.
it is necessary to create a single party system in the country and destroy any dissent.

This is the whole essence of the NEP - "Economic liberalization under tight political control."

In general, all the reasons for the introduction of the NEP can be divided into ECONOMIC (the country needed an impetus to develop the economy), SOCIAL (social division was still extremely acute) and POLITICAL (the new economic policy became a means of managing power).

Beginning of the NEP

The main stages of the introduction of the NEP in the USSR:

Decision of the 10th Congress of the Bolshevik Party of 1921.
Replacing the allotment tax (in fact, this was the introduction of the NEP). Decree of March 21, 1921.
Permission for free exchange of agricultural products. Decree of March 28, 1921.
Creation of cooperatives, which were destroyed in 1917. Decree April 7, 1921.
The transfer of some industry from the hands of the state to private hands. Decree of May 17, 1921.
Creation of conditions for the development of private trade. Decree May 24, 1921.
Permission to TEMPORARILY allow private owners to lease state-owned enterprises. Decree 5 July 1921.
Permission for private capital to create any enterprises (including industrial ones) with a staff of up to 20 people. If the enterprise is mechanized - no more than 10. Decree July 7, 1921.
Adoption of a "liberal" Land Code. He allowed not only the lease of land, but also hired labor on it. Decree of October 1922.

The ideological beginning of the NEP was laid at the 10th Congress of the RCP (b), which met in 1921 (if you remember its participants, right from this congress of delegates, went to suppress the Kronstadt rebellion), adopted the NEP and introduced a ban on "dissent" in the RCP (b). The fact is that until 1921 there were different factions in the RCP (b). It was allowed. Logically, and this logic is absolutely correct, if economic concessions are introduced, then inside the party should be a monolith. Therefore, no factions and divisions.

Justification of the NEP from the point of view of the Soviet ideology

The ideological concept of the NEP was first given by V.I. Lenin. This happened at a speech at the tenth and eleventh congresses of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which took place in 1921 and 1922, respectively. Also, the rationale for the New Economic Policy was voiced at the third and fourth congresses of the Comintern, which were also held in 1921 and 1922. In addition, Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin played an important role in formulating the tasks of the NEP. It is important to remember that for a long time Bukharin and Lenin acted as an apposition to each other on the issues of the NEP. Lenin proceeded from the fact that the moment had come to ease the pressure on the peasants and "make peace" with them. But Lenin was not going to get along with the peasants forever, but for 5-10 years. Therefore, most members of the Bolshevik Party were sure that the NEP, as a forced measure, was introduced only for one grain procurement company, as a trick for the peasantry. But Lenin especially stressed that the course of the NEP was taken for a longer period. And then Lenin said a phrase that showed that the Bolsheviks keep their word - "but we will return to terror, including economic terror." If we recall the events of 1929, then this is exactly what the Bolsheviks did. The name of this terror is Collectivization.

The New Economic Policy was designed for 5, maximum 10 years. And she certainly fulfilled her task, although at some point she threatened the existence of the Soviet Union.

Briefly, according to Lenin, the NEP is a bond between the peasantry and the proletariat. This is what formed the basis of the events of those days - if you are against the bond between the peasantry and the proletariat, then you are against the workers' power, the Soviets and the USSR. The problems of this bond became a problem for the survival of the Bolshevik regime, because the regime simply had neither the army nor the equipment to crush the peasant riots if they started massively and in an organized manner. That is, some historians say - the NEP is the Brest peace of the Bolsheviks with their own people. That is, what kind of Bolsheviks - International Socialists who wanted a world revolution. Let me remind you that this idea was promoted by Trotsky. First, Lenin, who was not a very great theoretician (he was a good practitioner), he defined the NEP as state capitalism. And immediately for this he received a full portion of criticism from Bukharin and Trotsky. And after that, Lenin began to interpret the NEP as a mixture of socialist and capitalist forms. I repeat - Lenin was not a theorist, but a practitioner. He lived according to the principle - it is important for us to take power, but it does not matter what it will be called.

Lenin, in fact, accepted the Bukharin version of the NEP with the wording and other attributes ..

The NEP is a socialist dictatorship based on socialist production relations and regulating the broad petty-bourgeois organization of the economy.
Lenin

According to the logic of this definition, the main task facing the leadership of the USSR was the destruction of the petty-bourgeois economy. Let me remind you that the Bolsheviks called the peasant economy petty-bourgeois. It must be understood that by 1922 the building of socialism had reached a dead end, and Lenin understood that this movement could be continued only through the NEP. It is clear that this is not the main way, and it contradicted Marxism, but as a workaround, it fit perfectly. And Lenin constantly emphasized that the new policy was a temporary phenomenon.

General characteristics of the NEP

The totality of the NEP:

rejection of labor mobilization and equal pay system for all.
transfer (partial, of course) of industry into private hands from the state (denationalization).
creation of new economic associations - trusts and syndicates. The widespread introduction of cost accounting
formation of enterprises in the country at the expense of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, including the Western one.

Looking ahead, I will say that the NEP led to the fact that many idealistic Bolsheviks put a bullet in their foreheads. They believed that capitalism was being restored, and they shed their blood in vain during the Civil War. But the non-idealistic Bolsheviks used the NEP very well, because during the NEP it was easy to launder what was stolen during the Civil War. Because, as we will see, the NEP is a triangle: it is the head of a separate link in the Central Committee of the party, the head of a syndicator or trust, as well as NEPman as a "huckster", in modern terms, through which this whole process goes. It was generally a corruption scheme from the very beginning, but the NEP was a forced measure - the Bolsheviks would not have retained power without it.

NEP in trade and finance

Development of the credit system. In 1921, a state bank was created.
Reforming the financial and monetary system of the USSR. It was achieved through the reform of 1922 (monetary) and the replacement of money in 1922-1924.
The emphasis is on private (retail) trade and the development of various markets, including the All-Russian one.

If we try to briefly characterize the NEP, then this construction was extremely unreliable. It took ugly forms of merging the personal interests of the country's leadership and everyone who was involved in the "Triangle". Each of them played a role. The black work was done by the Nepman speculator. And this was especially emphasized in Soviet textbooks, they say, it was all the private traders who spoiled the NEP, and we fought them as best we could. But in fact - the NEP led to a colossal corruption of the party. This was one of the reasons for the abolition of the NEP, because if it had been preserved further, the party would simply have completely disintegrated.

Beginning in 1921, the Soviet leadership took a course towards weakening centralization. In addition, much attention was paid to the element of reforming the economic systems in the country. Labor mobilizations were replaced by the labor exchange (unemployment was high). Equalization was abolished, the rationing system was abolished (but for some, the rationing system was a salvation). It is logical that the results of the NEP almost immediately had a positive effect on trade. Naturally in the retail trade. Already at the end of 1921, the NEPmen controlled 75% of the trade turnover in retail and 18% in wholesale trade. NEPmanship became a profitable form of money laundering, especially for those who looted heavily during the civil war. The loot from them lay idle, and now it could be sold through the NEPmen. And a lot of people have laundered their money this way.

NEP in agriculture

Adoption of the Land Code. (22nd year). The transformation of the tax in kind into a single agricultural tax since 1923 (since 1926, completely in cash).
Agricultural cooperation cooperation.
Equal (fair) exchange between agriculture and industry. But this was not achieved, and as a result, the so-called "price scissors" appeared.

At the bottom of society, the turn of the party leadership towards the NEP did not find much support. Many members of the Bolshevik Party were sure that this was a mistake and a transition from socialism to capitalism. Someone simply sabotaged the decision of the NEP, and especially ideological ones, and completely committed suicide. In October 1922, the New Economic Policy affected agriculture - the Bolsheviks began to implement the Land Code with new amendments. Its difference was that it legalized hired labor in the countryside (it would seem that the Soviet government fought precisely against this, but it did the same thing itself). The next step took place in 1923. This year, something happened that many have been waiting for and demanding for so long - the tax in kind has been replaced by the agricultural tax. In 1926, this tax began to be collected entirely in cash.

In general, the NEP was not an absolute triumph of economic methods, as was sometimes written in Soviet textbooks. It was only outwardly a triumph of economic methods. In fact, there were a lot of other things. And I don't just mean the so-called kinks local authorities. The fact is that a significant part of the peasant product was alienated in the form of taxes, and taxation was excessive. Another thing is that the peasant got the opportunity to breathe freely, and this solved some problems. And here, an absolutely unfair exchange between agriculture and industry, the formation of so-called "price scissors" came to the fore. The regime inflated the prices of industrial products and lowered the prices of agricultural products. As a result, in 1923-1924 the peasants worked practically for nothing! The laws were such that about 70% of everything that the village produced, the peasants were forced to sell for next to nothing. 30% of the product they produced was taken by the state at market value, and 70% at a lower price. Then this figure decreased, and it became about 50 to 50. But in any case, this is a lot. 50% of products at a price below the market.

As a result, the worst happened - the market ceased to perform its direct functions as a means of buying and selling goods. Now it has become an effective time for the exploitation of the peasants. Only half of the peasant goods were purchased for money, and the other half was collected in the form of tribute (this is the most accurate definition of what happened in those years). The NEP can be characterized as follows: corruption, the apparatus swelled, mass theft of state property. The result was a situation where the production of the peasant economy was used irrationally, and often the peasants themselves were not interested in high yields. This was a logical consequence of what was happening, because the NEP was originally an ugly construct.

NEP in industry

The main features that characterize the New Economic Policy in terms of industry are the almost complete lack of development of this industry and the huge unemployment rate among ordinary people.

The NEP was originally supposed to establish interaction between the city and the countryside, between workers and peasants. But this was not possible. The reason is that the industry was almost completely destroyed as a result of the Civil War, and it was not able to offer something significant to the peasantry. The peasantry did not sell their grain, because why sell it if you can't buy anything with money anyway. They just piled grain and didn't buy anything. Therefore, there was no incentive for the development of industry. It turned out such a "vicious circle". And in 1927-1928, everyone already understood that the NEP had outlived itself, that it did not give an incentive for the development of industry, but, on the contrary, destroyed it even more.

At the same time, it became clear that sooner or later new war. Here is what Stalin said about this in 1931:

If in the next 10 years we do not run the path that the West has traveled in 100 years, we will be destroyed and crushed.
Stalin

To put it in simple terms - in 10 years it was necessary to raise the industry from the ruins and put it on a par with the most developed countries. The NEP did not allow this, because it was focused on light industry, and on the fact that Russia was a raw materials appendage of the West. That is, in this regard, the implementation of the NEP was a ballast that slowly but surely dragged Russia to the bottom, and if this course were held for another 5 years, then it is not known how World War 2 would end.

The slow rate of industrial growth in the 1920s caused a sharp rise in unemployment. If in 1923-1924 there were 1 million unemployed in the city, then in 1927-1928 there were already 2 million unemployed. The logical consequence of this phenomenon is a huge increase in crime and discontent in cities. For those who worked, of course, the situation was normal. But in general the position of the working class was very difficult.

The development of the USSR economy during the NEP

Economic booms alternated with crises. Everyone knows the crises of 1923, 1925 and 1928, which led, among other things, to famine in the country.
Lack of a unified system for the development of the country's economy. The NEP crippled the economy. It did not allow the development of industry, but agriculture could not develop under such conditions. These 2 spheres slowed down each other, although the opposite was planned.
The crisis of grain procurements in 1927-28 28 and as a result - the course towards the curtailment of the NEP.

The most important part of the NEP, by the way, one of the few positive features of this policy, is the "uplifting" of the financial system. Do not forget that the Civil War has just died down, which almost completely destroyed the financial system of Russia. Prices in 1921 compared with 1913 increased 200 thousand times. Just think about this number. For 8 years, 200 thousand times ... Naturally, it was necessary to introduce other money. Reform was needed. The reform was carried out by People's Commissar for Finance Sokolnikov, who was assisted by a group of old specialists. In October 1921, the State Bank began its work. As a result of his work, in the period from 1922 to 1924, depreciated Soviet money was replaced by Chervonets

Chervonets was provided with gold, the content of which corresponded to the pre-revolutionary ten-ruble coin, and cost 6 US dollars. Chervonets was backed by our gold and foreign currency.
History reference

Soviet signs were withdrawn and exchanged at the rate of 1 new ruble for 50,000 old signs. This money was called "Sovznaki". During the NEP, cooperation actively developed and economic liberalization was accompanied by the strengthening of communist power. The repressive apparatus was also strengthened. And how did it happen? For example, on June 6, 22, GlavLit was created. This is censorship and establishing control over censorship. A year later, GlavRepedKom appeared, which was in charge of the theater's repertoire. In 1922, more than 100 people, active cultural figures, were deported from the USSR by decision of this body. Others were less fortunate, they were sent to Siberia. The teaching of bourgeois disciplines was banned in schools: philosophy, logic, history. Everything was restored in 1936. Also, the Bolsheviks and the church did not bypass their "attention". In October 1922, the Bolsheviks confiscated jewelry from the church, allegedly to fight hunger. In June 1923, Patriarch Tikhon recognized the legitimacy of Soviet power, and in 1925 he was arrested and died. A new patriarch was no longer elected. The patriarchate was then restored by Stalin in 1943.

On February 6, 1922, the Cheka was transformed into the state political department of the GPU. From emergency, these bodies have turned into state, regular ones.

The culmination of the NEP was 1925. Bukharin appealed to the peasantry (primarily to the prosperous peasant).

Get rich, accumulate, develop your economy.
Bukharin

Bukharin's plan was adopted at the 14th party conference. Stalin actively supported him, and Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev acted as critics. Economic development during the NEP period was uneven: now a crisis, now an upswing. And this was due to the fact that the necessary balance between the development of agriculture and the development of industry was not found. The grain procurement crisis of 1925 was the first bell toll on the NEP. It became clear that the NEP would soon end, but due to inertia, he drove for a few more years.

Cancellation of the NEP - reasons for the cancellation

July and November Plenum of the Central Committee of 1928. Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party and the Central Control Commission (to which one could complain about the Central Committee) April 1929.
reasons for the abolition of the NEP (economic, social, political).
was the NEP an alternative to real communism.

In 1926, the 15th party conference of the CPSU (b) met. It condemned the Trotskyist-Zinoviev opposition. Let me remind you that this opposition actually called for a war with the peasantry - to take away from them what the authorities need, and what the peasants hide. Stalin sharply criticized this idea, and also directly voiced the position that the current policy has become obsolete, and the country needs a new approach to development, an approach that will allow the restoration of industry, without which the USSR cannot exist.

Since 1926, a trend towards the abolition of the NEP began to gradually emerge. In 1926-27, grain stocks for the first time exceeded pre-war levels and amounted to 160 million tons. But the peasants still did not sell bread, and the industry was suffocating from overexertion. The left opposition (its ideological leader was Trotsky) proposed to withdraw 150 million poods of grain from the wealthy peasants, who made up 10% of the population, but the leadership of the CPSU (b) did not agree to this, because this would mean a concession to the left opposition.

Throughout 1927, the Stalinist leadership conducted maneuvers for the final elimination of the Left Opposition, because without this it was impossible to solve the peasant question. Any attempt to put pressure on the peasants would mean that the party has taken the path of which the "Left Wing" speaks. At the 15th Congress, Zinoviev, Trotsky and other left oppositionists were expelled from the Central Committee. However, after they repented (this was called in the party language "disarm before the party") they were returned, because the Stalinist center needed them for the future struggle with the Bucharest team.

The struggle to abolish the NEP unfolded as a struggle for industrialization. This was logical, because industrialization was the number 1 task for the self-preservation of the Soviet state. Therefore, the results of the NEP can be briefly summarized as follows - the ugly system of the economy created many problems that could only be solved thanks to industrialization.

Prerequisites

During the hostilities, the Donbass, the Baku oil region, the Urals and Siberia were especially affected, many mines and mines were destroyed. Factories stopped due to lack of fuel and raw materials. The workers were forced to leave the cities and go to the countryside. The volume of industrial production has significantly decreased, and as a result, agricultural production as well.

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

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

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

Discontent spread to the army as well. On March 1, 1921, the 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 the socialist parties, the holding of re-elections of the Soviets and, as follows from the slogan, the exclusion of all communists from them, the granting of freedom of speech, assembly 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 the city of Kronstadt:

V. I. Lenin

Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, economic ruin have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, ruling the country, broke away from the masses and proved unable to lead it out of the state of general ruin. With the excitement that Lately took place in Petrograd and Moscow, and which pointed quite clearly to the fact that the party had lost the confidence of the working masses, it was not considered. Nor did they take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the intrigues of the counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of the entire people, of all working people. All workers, sailors and Red Army men are clearly in currently they see that only by joint efforts, by the common will of the working people, can bread, firewood, coal be given to the country, that the barefooted and undressed can be clothed, and that the republic can be led out of the impasse...

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 taken by March 18; some of the rebels died, the rest went to Finland or surrendered.

The course of development of the NEP

Proclamation of the NEP

In connection with the introduction of the NEP, certain legal guarantees were introduced for private property. So, on May 22, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree “On the Basic Private Property Rights Recognized by the RSFSR, Protected by Its Laws and Protected by the Courts of the RSFSR.” Then, by a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of November 11, 22, from January 1, 23, the Civil Code of the RSFSR was put into effect, 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 economic policy of the state, was the stabilization of the monetary and credit relations of the USSR with other countries. After two denominations, as a result of which 1 million rubles. former banknotes was equated to 1 p. new state marks, a parallel circulation of depreciating state marks was introduced to serve small trade and solid chervonets backed by precious metals, stable foreign currency and easily marketable goods. Chervonets was equated to the old 10-ruble gold coin containing 7.74 g of pure gold.

It is necessary, however, to note the fact that wealthy peasants were taxed at higher rates. Thus, on the one hand, an opportunity was given 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 "average" of the village. The well-being of the peasants as a whole has increased in comparison with the pre-war level, the number of poor and rich has decreased, and the proportion of middle peasants has increased.

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

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

In general, the NEP had a beneficial effect on the state of the countryside. First, the peasants had an incentive to work. Secondly (compared to pre-revolutionary times), many have increased 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 him. But the peasantry was not rich enough to provide all the needs of the state, 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 began to be actively used, such as forced loans, underpriced grain and overpriced industrial goods. As a result, industrial goods, if we calculate their value in poods of wheat, turned out to be several times more expensive than before the war, despite their lower quality. A phenomenon was formed, which, with the light hand of Trotsky, began to be called "price scissors." The peasants reacted simply - they stopped selling grain in excess of what they needed to pay taxes. The first crisis in the sale of manufactured goods arose in the autumn of 1923. Peasants needed plows and other industrial products, but refused to buy them at inflated prices. The next crisis arose in the financial year (that is, in the fall of 1924 - in the spring of 1925). The crisis was called "procurement" because the procurement amounted to only two-thirds of the expected level. Finally, in the financial 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: political and ideological factors, the fear of the “degeneration” of power, prevented further progress towards the market; the return to the military-communist type of economy was hampered by memories of the peasant war of 1920 and mass famine, the fear of anti-Soviet speeches.

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 - by the end of the 1920s covered more than half of all peasant farms. By the end of the year, non-production cooperation various kinds, primarily peasant, 28 million people were covered (13 times more than in the city). In the socialized retail trade, 60-80% accounted for the cooperative and only 20-40% - for the state proper, in industry in 1928, 13% of all products were produced by cooperatives. There was cooperative legislation, lending, insurance.

Instead of the depreciated and actually already rejected by the turnover of the Soviet signs, a new monetary unit was launched in the city - chervonets, which had a gold content and a gold exchange rate (1 chervonets \u003d 10 pre-revolutionary gold rubles \u003d 7.74 g of pure gold). In the city, the Soviet signs, which were quickly supplanted by the chervonets, ceased to be printed altogether and were withdrawn from circulation; in the same year, the budget was balanced and the use of money emission to cover state expenses was prohibited; new treasury notes were issued - rubles (10 rubles = 1 gold piece). On the foreign exchange market, both within the country and abroad, chervonets were freely exchanged for gold and major foreign currencies at the pre-war rate of the tsarist ruble (1 US dollar = 1.94 rubles).

The credit system has revived. The State Bank of the RSFSR was created in 1923 (transformed into the State Bank of the USSR in 1923), 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 State Bank, syndicates, cooperatives, private and even at one time foreign, were shareholders, for lending to certain sectors of the economy and regions of the country; cooperative - for lending to consumer cooperation; organized on the shares of the agricultural credit society, closed on the republican and central agricultural banks; mutual credit societies - for lending to private industry and trade; savings banks - to mobilize the savings of the population. As of October 1, 1923, there were 17 independent banks operating in the country, and the share of the State Bank 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 share of the State Bank in lending to the national economy decreased to 48%.

Commodity-money relations, which were previously tried to be banished from production and exchange, in the 1920s penetrated into all the pores of the economic organism, 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 the trade unions. In order to stop such attempts, the X Congress of the RCP (b) in 1921 adopted a resolution on the unity of the party. According to this resolution, the decisions taken by the majority must be carried out by all members of the party, including those who do not agree with them.

The consequence of the one-party system was the merging of the party and the government. The same people occupied the main positions in the party (Politburo) and state bodies (SNK, All-Russian Central Executive Committee, etc.). At the same time, the personal authority of the people's commissars and the need to make urgent, urgent decisions in the conditions of the Civil War led to the fact that the center of power was concentrated not in the legislative body (VTsIK), 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 20s than his place in the formal structure. state power. That is why, speaking about the figures of the 20s, we first of all name not positions, but surnames.

In parallel with the change in the position of the party in the country, the rebirth of the party itself took place. It is obvious that there will always be many more people wishing to join the ruling party than an underground party, membership in which cannot give other privileges than iron bunks or a noose around the neck. At the same time, the party, having become the ruling one, began to need to increase its membership in order to fill government posts at all levels. This led to a rapid growth in the size 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 “adhering” pseudo-communists, on the other hand, the growth of the party was from time to time spurred on by mass recruitments, the most significant of which was the “Lenin appeal” in 1924, after the death of Lenin. The inevitable consequence of this process was the dissolution of the old, ideological, Bolsheviks among the young party members and not at all young neophytes. In 1927, out of 1,300,000 people who were members of the party, only 8,000 had pre-revolutionary experience; most of the rest did not know the communist theory at all.

Not only the intellectual and educational, but also the moral level of the party went down. Indicative in this regard are 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. Of the 732,000 members, only 410,000 members remained 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 government", "selfishness", "careerism", "bourgeois lifestyle", "decomposition in everyday life".

In connection with the growth of the party, the initially inconspicuous post of secretary began to acquire more and more importance. Any secretary is a secondary position by definition. This is a person who, during official events, monitors compliance with the necessary formalities. Since April 1922, the Bolshevik Party had the post 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. This position was given to Stalin.

Soon the expansion of the privileges of the upper stratum of party members began. Since 1926, this layer has received a special name - "nomenclature". So they began to call the party and state posts included in the list of posts, the appointment to which was subject to approval in the Accounting and Distribution Department of the Central Committee.

The processes of party bureaucratization 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 last year a fulfilling life. In May 1922, he was struck by the first blow - his brain was damaged, so that the almost helpless Lenin was given a very sparing work schedule. In March 1923, there was a second attack, after which Lenin fell out of life for half a year, almost learning to pronounce words again. As soon as he began to recover from the second attack, in January the third and last happened. As the autopsy showed, for the last almost two years of his life, only one hemisphere of the brain was active in Lenin.

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 his letters to the congress, known as his "political testament" (December 1922 - January 1923), Lenin proposes to expand the Central Committee at the expense of the workers, to elect a new Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) from among the proletarians, to cut the excessively swollen and therefore incapacitated RCI (Workers - peasant inspection).

Even before Lenin's death, at the end of 1922, a struggle began between his "heirs", more precisely, the pushing of Trotsky from the helm. In the autumn of 1923, the struggle took on an open character. In October, Trotsky addressed a letter to the Central Committee, in which he pointed out the formation of a bureaucratic intra-party regime. A week later, an open letter in support of Trotsky was written by a group of 46 old Bolsheviks ("Statement 46"). The Central Committee, of course, responded with a decisive refutation. The leading role in this was played by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. This was not the first time that bitter disputes arose within the Bolshevik Party, but, unlike previous discussions, this time the ruling faction actively used labeling. Trotsky was not refuted by reasonable arguments - he was simply accused of Menshevism, deviationism and other mortal sins. Labeling a real argument is a new phenomenon: it hasn't happened before, but it will become more common as it develops. political process in the 20s.

Trotsky was defeated rather easily - the very next party conference, held in January 1924, promulgated a resolution on the unity of the party (previously kept secret), and Trotsky was forced to silence, but not for long. In the autumn of 1924, however, he published the book " October Lessons”, in which he unequivocally stated that he made the revolution with Lenin. Then Zinoviev and Kamenev “suddenly” remembered that before the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) in July 1917, Trotsky was a Menshevik. In December 1924, Trotsky was removed from the post of People's Commissar of the Navy, but left in the Politburo.

results

The NEP, that is, Lenin's retreat from communism to some free market practice and the emergence of an incentive for free management, led to a rapid improvement in living conditions. Peasants began to sow again, private trade and handicrafts began to bring goods that had long disappeared to the market, the country began to revive. The monetary reform that had begun led to the replacement of worthless billions by a solid and firm red ruble.

Curtailment of the NEP

Findings and Conclusions

The undoubted success of the NEP was the restoration of the destroyed economy, and, given that after the revolution, Russia lost highly qualified personnel (economists, managers, production workers), the success of the new government becomes a "victory over devastation." At the same time, the lack of those same highly qualified personnel has become the cause of miscalculations and errors.

Significant economic growth rates, however, were achieved only due to the return to operation of pre-war capacities, because Russia reached the economic indicators of the pre-war years only by 1923/1924. The potential for further economic growth turned out to be extremely low. The private sector was not allowed to "command heights in the economy", foreign investment was not welcomed, and investors themselves were not particularly in a hurry to Russia because of the ongoing instability and the threat of nationalization of capital. The state, on the other hand, was unable to make long-term capital-intensive investments only from its own funds.

The situation in the village was also contradictory, where the “kulaks” were clearly oppressed.

Women's fashion since the NEP

Lenin's opinion

When asked whether Lenin believed that the NEP was the collapse of communist theory, the leader of the world proletariat gave the following answer in a private conversation:

Of course we failed. We thought of bringing about a new communist society at the behest of a pike. Meanwhile, this is a matter of decades and generations. In order for the Party not to lose its soul, faith and will to fight, we must portray before it the return to the exchange economy, to capitalism, as some kind of temporary retreat. But for ourselves, we must clearly see that the attempt failed, that it is impossible to suddenly change the psychology of people, the habits of their age-old life. You can try to drive the population into new system force, but the question is whether we would have retained power in this all-Russian meat grinder.

NEP and culture

It is impossible not to say about the very important influence of the NEP - the impact on culture. Wealthy Nepmen - private merchants, shopkeepers and artisans, not preoccupied with the romantic revolutionary spirit of universal happiness or opportunistic considerations about the successful service of the new government, turned out to be in the first roles during this period.

The new rich had little interest in classical art - they did not have enough education to understand it. They set their fashion. Cabarets and restaurants became the main entertainment - a pan-European trend of that time (the cabarets of Berlin were especially famous in the 1920s).

In the cabaret, couplet artists performed simple song plots and uncomplicated rhymes and rhythms, performers of funny feuilletons, sketches, and entreprise (one of the most famous couplet artists of the time was Mikhail Savoyarov). The artistic value of such performances was highly controversial, and many of them have long been forgotten. But, nevertheless, simple and unpretentious texts and light musical motives of some songs entered the history of the country's culture. And they not only entered, but began to be passed on from generation to generation, acquiring new rhymes, changing some words, merging with folk art. It was then that such popular songs as “Bablichki”, “Lemons”, “Murka”, “Lanterns”, “The blue ball is spinning and spinning” ...(The author of the lyrics for the songs "Babliki" and "Lemons" was the disgraced poet Yakov Yadov).

These songs have been repeatedly criticized and ridiculed for being apolitical, unprincipled, petty-bourgeois taste, even outright vulgarity. But the longevity of these verses proved their originality and talent. Yes, and many other of these songs carry the same style: at the same time ironic, lyrical, poignant, with simple rhymes and rhythms - they are similar in style to Bagels and Lemons. But the exact authorship has not yet been established. And all that is known about Yadov is that he composed a huge number of uncomplicated and very talented couplet songs of that period.

NEP postcard

Light genres also reigned in drama theaters. And here not everything was kept within the required boundaries. The Moscow Vakhtangov Studio (the future Vakhtangov Theatre) in 1922 turned to the production of Carlo Gozzi's fairy tale "Princess Turandot". It would seem that a fairy tale is such a simple and unpretentious material. The actors laughed and joked while rehearsing. So, with jokes, sometimes very sharp, a performance appeared that was destined to become a symbol of the theater, a pamphlet performance, concealing wisdom and a smile at the same time behind the lightness of the genre. Since then, there have been three different productions of this performance. A somewhat similar story happened with another performance of the same theater - in 1926, Mikhail Bulgakov's play "Zoyka's Apartment" was staged there. The theater itself turned to the writer with a request to write a light vaudeville on a modern NEP theme. A vaudeville merry, seemingly unprincipled play hid serious social satire behind external lightness, and the performance was banned by decision of the People's Commissariat of Education on March 17, 1929 with the wording: "For distorting Soviet reality."

In the 1920s, a real magazine boom began in Moscow. In 1922, several satirical humorous magazines began to be published at once: "Crocodile", "Satyricon", "Smekhach", "Splinter", a little later, in 1923 - "Projector" (with the newspaper "Pravda"); in the 1921/22 season, the magazine "Screen" appeared, among the authors of which are A. Sidorov, P. Kogan, G. Yakulov, J. Tugendhold, M. Koltsov, N. Foregger, V. Mass, E. Zozulya and many others . In 1925, the famous publisher V. A. Reginin and the poet V. I. Narbut founded the monthly "30 days". All this press, in addition to news from working life, constantly publishes humoresques, funny unpretentious stories, parody poems, caricatures. But with the end of the NEP, their publication ends. Since 1930, Krokodil has remained the only all-Union satirical magazine. The era of the New Economic Policy ended tragically, but the trace of this rampant time has been preserved forever.