If only they had left it alone. If only the communists had allowed NEP to continue “seriously and for a long time.” Such has been the retrospective plaint of western scholars and more recently, their Soviet counterparts. It is evident that Stalin was increasingly unwilling to remain within the bounds of NEP, that at some point he saw the limits on state action imposed by NEP as part of the problem rather than the solution. Historians are in general agreement that the point was reached in late 1927, early 1928. In 1925 when there was an unexpected shortfall in grain procurements, official agencies increased the price of grain at the expense of industrial crop production and the timetable for industrialization. At the end of 1927, when a similar situation arose, the price of grain was kept stable and the authorities pressed ahead with industrialization. “This was,” writes R. W. Davies, “the beginning of the end of NEP.”

Why the party acted as it did, why at this juncture it resorted to “extraordinary measures” which set in motion the Stalin revolution, requires both long-term and situational explanations.