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1 results

  • 6 - Building a new state and society: NEP, 1921–1928

  • from Part I - Russia and the Soviet Union: The Story through Time
  • Edited by Ronald Grigor Suny
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Russia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    02 November 2006, pp 168-191

  • Summary

    As 1921 dawned, the Bolsheviks could proclaim themselves victors in the civil war and celebrate an accomplishment that would stand as one of the great triumphs in official lore for the rest of the Soviet era. The new economic policy (NEP) emerged neither as a single decree nor a planned progression but as a label pinned eventually on a series of measures that appeared over the course of several months beginning in the spring of 1921. Industrial production, both heavy and light, as well as foreign trade improved far above the abysmal levels of the civil war and the beginning of NEP. One thing that did carry over from the civil war was the Bolsheviks' view of a stratified rural society. The heart of NEP lay in a hope that peasants would produce a surplus through incentives rather than compulsion, and Lenin defended the legalisation of private trade as an important means for inducing the peasantry to boost production.