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 was mainly affected (we all remember 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 told 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 of the 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 by that time, it was a very serious threat for 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 governing the country. And the conclusions were correct. Lenin formulated them as follows:

• 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 for the development of the economy), SOCIAL (social division was still extremely acute) and POLITICAL (new economic policy became a means of government).

Beginning of the NEP

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

1. Decision of the 10th Congress of the Bolshevik Party of 1921.
2. Replacing the apportionment with a tax (in fact, this was the introduction of the NEP). Decree of March 21, 1921.
3. Permission for free exchange of agricultural products. Decree of March 28, 1921.
4. Creation of cooperatives, which were destroyed in 1917. Decree April 7, 1921.
5. The transfer of some industry from the hands of the state to private hands. Decree of May 17, 1921.
6. Creation of conditions for the development of private trade. Decree May 24, 1921.
7. Permission to TEMPORARILY allow private owners to lease state-owned enterprises. Decree 5 July 1921.
8. 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.
9. 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 foundation 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.

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 opposition 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 realized that this movement could be continued only through the NEP. It is clear that this is not the main way, and it was contrary to 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
• the 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 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 design 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 retail trade turnover and 18% in the 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, as a result of which 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 the implementation of 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 mean not only the so-called excesses of 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 carry out its direct functions as a means of buying and selling goods. Now it has become an effective means of exploiting 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 products of the production of the peasant economy were 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 level of unemployment 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 a new war was coming in Europe. 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

If you say in simple words- 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 it held this course for another 5 years, it is not known how World War II 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 "raising from its knees" of the financial system. Do not forget that the Civil War has just died down, which almost completely destroyed financial system 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 backed by 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 changed at the rate of 1 new ruble 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 it was uneven: now a crisis, now an upsurge. 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.

New economic policy- the economic policy pursued in Soviet Russia since 1921. It was adopted on March 21, 1921 by the X Congress of the RCP (b), replacing the policy of "war communism", which was carried out during the Civil War. The New Economic Policy was aimed at restoring the national economy and the subsequent transition to socialism. The main content of the NEP is the replacement of the surplus appropriation tax in the countryside (up to 70% of grain was confiscated during the surplus appropriation tax, about 30% with the food tax), the use of the market and various forms of ownership, the attraction of foreign capital in the form of concessions, the implementation of the monetary reform (1922-1924), in as a result of which the ruble became a convertible currency.

The Soviet state faced the problem of stabilizing money, and, therefore, deflation and achieving a balanced state budget. The strategy of the state, aimed at surviving in the conditions of a credit blockade, determined the primacy of the USSR in compiling production balances and distributing products. The new economic policy assumed state regulation of a mixed economy using planned and market mechanisms. The state, which retained commanding heights in the economy, used directive and indirect methods of state regulation, based on the need to implement the priorities of the forerunner of the strategic plan - GOELRO. 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.

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 ousted, and a rigid centralized system of economic management (economic people's commissariats) was created. Stalin and his entourage headed for the collectivization of the countryside. Repressions were carried out against managerial personnel (the Shakhty case, the process of the Industrial Party, etc.). By the beginning of the 1930s, the NEP was effectively curtailed.

Prerequisites for the NEP

By 1921, Russia was literally in ruins. From the former Russian Empire the territories of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, the Kars region of Armenia and Bessarabia departed. According to experts, the population in the remaining territories barely reached 135 million. Losses in these territories as a result of wars, epidemics, emigration, and a reduction in the birth rate amounted to at least 25 million people since 1914.

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 total volume of industrial production decreased by 5 times. The equipment has not been updated for a long time. Metallurgy produced as much metal as it was smelted under Peter I.

The volume of agricultural production decreased by 40% due to the depreciation of money and the shortage of manufactured goods.

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

The peasants, outraged by the actions of the food detachments, not only refused to hand over their bread, but also rose up in 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 thrown into the suppression of these speeches.

Discontent spread to the army. 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, 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 the surplus. Convinced of the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the rebels, the authorities stormed 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.

From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the city of Kronstadt:

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. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently taken place in Petrograd and Moscow, and which showed quite clearly that the Party had lost the confidence of the working masses. 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 the workers, sailors and Red Army men clearly see at the present moment that only by joint efforts, by the common will of the working people, can bread, firewood, coal be provided to the country, to clothe the barefooted and undressed, and lead the republic out of the impasse...

Already in 1920, calls were made to abandon the surplus appropriation: 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, Rykov raised the same question in the Supreme Council of National Economy.

The course of development of the NEP

Proclamation of the NEP

By a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of March 23, 1921, adopted on the basis of decisions of the X Congress of the RCP (b), the surplus appraisal was canceled and replaced by a tax in kind, which was about half as much. Such a significant indulgence gave a certain incentive to the development of production to the war-weary peasantry.

Lenin himself pointed out that the concessions to the peasantry were subordinated to only one goal - the struggle for power: “We openly, honestly, without any deceit, declare to the peasants: in order to hold the path to socialism, we, comrade peasants, will make a number of concessions to you, but only within such and such limits and to such and such a measure, and, of course, we ourselves will judge - what is the measure and what are the limits ”(Complete Collected Works, vol. 42 p. 192).

The introduction of the tax in kind did not become a single 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 - temporary, but not short-lived: Lenin himself emphasized that "NEP is serious and for a long time!". Thus, he agreed with the Mensheviks that Russia at that time was not ready for socialism, but in order to create the prerequisites for socialism, he did not at all consider it necessary to give power to the bourgeoisie.

The main political goal of the NEP is to relieve social tension, to strengthen the social base of Soviet power in the form of an alliance of workers and peasants. Economic goal- to prevent further aggravation of the devastation, to overcome the crisis and restore the economy. social purpose- 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 ties, at overcoming international isolation.

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 hard gold pieces backed by precious metals, stable foreign currency and easily sold goods. Chervonets was equated to the old 10-ruble gold coin containing 7.74 g of pure gold.

The issue of depreciating Sovznaks was used to finance the state budget deficit caused by economic difficulties. Their share in the money supply was steadily declining from 94% in February 1923 to 20% in February 1924. From the depreciation of the Soviet signs, the peasantry, which sought to delay the sale of their products, and the working class, who received wages in the Soviet signs, suffered great losses. To compensate for the losses of the working class, a budgetary policy was used to increase the taxation of the private sector and reduce the taxation of the public sector. Excises were increased on luxury goods and reduced or completely canceled on essentials. Government loans played an important role in supporting the stability of the national currency during the entire period of the NEP. However, the threat to the trade link between the city and the countryside required the elimination of parallel money circulation and the stabilization of the ruble in the domestic market.

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 in the transition to one stable currency. Canceled Soviet signs were subject to redemption with treasury notes at a fixed ratio within a month and a half. A fixed ratio was established between the treasury ruble and 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 settlements. Their rate in 1924 became higher than the official gold parity against the pound sterling and the dollar.

In the 20s. commercial credit was widely used, serving approximately 85% of the volume of transactions for the sale of goods. Banks exercised control over mutual lending to economic organizations and, with the help of accounting and collateral operations, regulated the amount commercial loan, its direction, timing and interest rate. However, its use created an opportunity for an unscheduled redistribution of funds in the national economy and hampered 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. In order to invest in industry, in 1922, the Electrocredit joint-stock company and the Industrial Bank were created, which were then transformed into the Electrobank and the Commercial and Industrial Bank of the USSR. Long-term lending to the local economy was carried out by local communal banks, transformed since 1926 into the Central Communal Bank (Tsekombank). Agriculture was provided with long-term loans by state credit institutions, credit cooperation, formed in 1924 by the Central Agricultural Bank, cooperative banks - Vsekobank and Ukrainbank. At the same time, Vneshtorgbank was established, which carried out credit and settlement services for foreign trade, and the purchase and sale of foreign currency.

NEP in agriculture

... By the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, the apportionment is canceled, and instead a tax on agricultural products is introduced. This tax should be less than the grain allocation. It should be appointed even before the spring sowing, so that each peasant can take into account in advance what share of the crop he must give to the state and how much will remain at his full disposal. The tax should be levied without mutual responsibility, that is, it should fall on an individual householder, so that a diligent and industrious owner does not have to pay for a sloppy fellow villager. When the tax is paid, the remaining surplus of the peasant is placed at his full disposal. He has the right to exchange them for food and implements, which the state will deliver to the countryside from abroad and from its own factories and factories; he can use them to exchange for the products he needs through cooperatives and in local markets and bazaars ...

The tax in kind was initially set at about 20% of the net product of peasant labor (that is, to pay it, it was necessary to turn in almost half as much bread as with food appropriation), and subsequently it was planned to be reduced to 10% of the crop and converted into cash.

On October 30, 1922, the Land Code of the RSFSR was issued, which repealed the law on the socialization of land and declared its nationalization. At the same time, the peasants were free to choose the form of land use - communal, individual or collective. The ban on the use of hired workers was also lifted.

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.

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 particularly wealthy peasants also did not help, so from the mid-1920s other, non-tax methods of replenishing the treasury began to be actively used, such as forced loans and understated grain prices 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 has emerged that light hand 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 1924-25 (that is, in the autumn 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 1927-28, 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.

So, in 1925, Bukharin called on the peasants: “Get rich, accumulate, develop your economy!”, but after a few weeks he actually retracted his words. Others, led by E.A. Preobrazhensky, demanded an intensification of the struggle against the "kulak" (which, as they claimed, took into their own hands not only economic, but also political power in the countryside), - without thinking, however, either about "liquidating the kulaks as a class" or about violent " complete collectivization”, nor about the curtailment of the NEP (unlike Bukharin, who from 1930 engaged in the theoretical justification of the new Stalinist policy, and in 1937, in his letter to the future leaders of the party, he swore that for 8 years he had no disagreements with Stalin , E. A. Preobrazhensky condemned the Stalinist policy in the Lubyanka in 1936). However, the contradictions of the NEP strengthened the anti-NEP sentiments of the lower and middle part of the party leadership.

NEP in industry

From the resolution of the XII Congress of the RCP (b), April 1923:

The revival of state industry, given the general economic structure of our country, will necessarily depend most closely on the development of agriculture; the necessary circulating assets must be formed in agriculture as a surplus of agricultural products over the consumption of the countryside, before industry can take a decisive step forward. But it is just as important for state industry not to lag behind agriculture, otherwise a private industry would be created on the basis of the latter, which, in the end, would absorb or dissolve the state industry. Only an industry that gives more than it absorbs can be victorious. An industry living off the budget, that is, on agriculture, could not create a stable and lasting support for the proletarian dictatorship. The question of creating surplus value in state industry is the question of the fate of Soviet power, that is, the fate of the proletariat.

Radical transformations also took place in industry. Glavki were abolished, and trusts were created instead - associations of homogeneous or interconnected enterprises that received complete economic and financial independence, up to the right to issue long-term bonded loans. By the end of 1922, about 90% of industrial enterprises were united in 421 trusts, 40% of which were centralized, and 60% were local subordination. The trusts themselves decided what to produce and where to sell their products. The enterprises that were part of the trust were removed from the state supply and switched to purchasing resources on the market. The law provided that "the state treasury is not responsible for the debts of trusts."

The Supreme Council of National Economy, having lost the right to interfere in the current activities of enterprises and trusts, turned into a coordinating center. His apparatus was drastically reduced. It was at that time that economic accounting appeared, in which the enterprise (after mandatory fixed contributions to the state budget) has the right to independently manage the income from the sale of products, is itself responsible for the results of its economic activity, independently uses profits and covers losses. Under the NEP, Lenin wrote, "state enterprises are transferred to the so-called economic accounting, that is, in fact, to a large extent on commercial and capitalist principles."

At least 20% of the profits of the trusts were to be directed to the formation of reserve capital until it reached a value equal to half authorized capital(Soon this standard was reduced to 10% of the profit until it reached a third of the initial capital). And the reserve capital was used to finance the expansion of production and compensate for losses in economic activity. The bonuses received by members of the board and workers of the trust depended on the amount of profit.

In the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of 1923, the following was written:

Syndicates began to emerge - voluntary associations of trusts on the basis of cooperation, engaged in marketing, supply, lending, and foreign trade operations. By the end of 1922, 80% of the trusted industry was syndicated, and by the beginning of 1928, there were 23 syndicates operating in almost all branches of industry, concentrating the bulk of wholesale trade in their hands. The board of syndicates was elected at a meeting of representatives of the trusts, and each trust could, at its own discretion, transfer a greater or lesser part of its supply and sales to the syndicate.

The sale of finished products, the purchase of raw materials, materials, equipment was carried out on a full-fledged market, through wholesale trade channels. There was a wide network of commodity exchanges, fairs, trade enterprises.

In industry and other sectors, wages in cash were restored, tariffs and wages were introduced that excluded equalization, and restrictions were lifted to increase wages with an increase in output. Labor armies were liquidated, compulsory labor service and basic restrictions on changing jobs were abolished. The organization of labor was based on the principles of material incentives, which replaced the non-economic coercion of "war communism". The absolute number of unemployed registered by labor exchanges during the NEP increased (from 1.2 million people at the beginning of 1924 to 1.7 million people at the beginning of 1929), but the expansion of the labor market was even more significant (the number of workers and employees in all sectors of the national economy increased from 5.8 million in 1924 to 12.4 million in 1929), so that in fact the unemployment rate fell.

A private sector emerged in industry and commerce: 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 traders" there were those that numbered 200-300 people, and in general, the share of 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.

A number of enterprises have been leased to foreign firms in the form of concessions. In 1926-27. there were 117 existing agreements of this kind. They covered enterprises that employed 18,000 people and produced just over 1% of industrial output. In some industries, however, the share of concession enterprises and mixed joint-stock companies, in which foreigners owned part of the share, was significant: in the extraction of lead and silver - 60%; manganese ore - 85%; gold - 30%; in the production of clothing and toilet articles - 22%.

In addition to capital, a stream of immigrant workers from all over the world was sent to the USSR. In 1922, the American trade union of garment workers and the Soviet government created the Russian-American Industrial Corporation (RAIK), which received six textile and clothing factories in Petrograd and four in Moscow.

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 1928, non-production cooperatives of various types, primarily peasant cooperatives, included 28 million people (13 times more than in 1913). 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 depreciated and actually already rejected by the turnover of the Soviet signs, in 1922 the production of 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 1924, 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 basic foreign currencies at the pre-war rate of the tsarist ruble (1 American dollar= 1.94 rubles).

The credit system has revived. In 1921, the State Bank of the USSR was recreated, which began lending to industry and trade on a commercial basis. In 1922-1925. a number of specialized banks were created: joint-stock, 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.

In just 5 years, from 1921 to 1926, the index of industrial production more than tripled; agricultural production doubled and exceeded the level of 1913 by 18%. But even after the end of the recovery period, economic growth continued at a rapid pace: the increase in industrial production amounted to 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 to the 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. In the conditions of NEP, the economic functions of the state turned out to be completely new; the goals, principles and methods of government economic policy have changed radically. If earlier the center directly established by order the natural, technological proportions of reproduction, now it has switched to price regulation, trying indirectly, economic methods ensure balanced growth.

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

A broad campaign to reduce prices was launched by the government as early as the end of 1923, but a 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 area of ​​price regulation. The measures taken then were successful: wholesale prices for manufactured goods fell by 26% from October 1923 to May 1, 1924 and continued to decline further.

For the entire subsequent period until the end of the NEP, the question of prices continued to be the core of state economic policy: raising them by trusts and syndicates threatened to repeat the sales crisis, while lowering them beyond measure when existing along with the state-owned private sector inevitably led to the enrichment of the private owner at the expense of state industry, to the transfer of resources from state 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 the regulation of prices was carried out by the bureaucracy, which was not controlled sufficiently by the direct producers. The lack of democracy in the decision-making process regarding pricing became the "Achilles' heel" of the market socialist economy and played a fatal role in the fate of the NEP.

Brilliant as the economic advances were, their recovery was limited by hard limits. It was not easy to reach the pre-war level, but even this meant a new clash with the backwardness of yesterday's Russia, now already isolated and surrounded by a hostile world. Moreover, the most powerful and wealthy capitalist powers began to strengthen again. American economists have calculated that the per capita national income in the late 1920s in the USSR was less than 19% of the American one.

The political struggle of the NEP

Economic processes during the NEP period were superimposed on political development and were largely determined by the latter. These processes throughout the entire period of Soviet power were characterized by an inclination towards dictatorship and authoritarianism. As long as Lenin was at the helm, one could speak of a "collective dictatorship"; he was a leader solely due to 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 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, opposed Lenin's authority to him and in a short time inflated him to a real cult - in order to gain the opportunity to proudly be called "faithful Leninists" and "defenders of Leninism".

This was especially dangerous when combined with the dictatorship of the Communist Party. As Mikhail Tomsky, one of the top Soviet leaders, 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 that year an open trial of the Right SRs 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 (later the convicts were pardoned). In the same 1922, more than two hundred of the largest representatives of Russian philosophical thought were sent abroad just because they did not hide their disagreement with the Soviet system - this measure went down in history under the name "Philosophical steamboat".

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 both in the party (Politburo) and in 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 of 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 bureaucratization of the party and the 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 was for him the last year of a full 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 1924 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 from the proletarians, to cut down the excessively swollen and therefore incapacitated RCI (Workers - peasant inspection).

In the note "Letter to the Congress" (known as "Lenin's Testament") there was another component - the personal characteristics of the largest party leaders (Trotsky, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Pyatakov). Often this part of the Letter is interpreted as a search for a successor (heir), but Lenin, unlike Stalin, was never a sole dictator, he could not take 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 was occupied by independent people who often disagreed with Lenin in their views. Therefore, there could be no question of any "heir" (and it was not Lenin who called the Letter to the Congress a "testament"). Assuming that after him the party would continue to have a collective leadership, Lenin characterized the alleged members of this leadership, for the most part ambiguous. Only one definite indication was in his Letter: the post of general secretary gives Stalin too much power, dangerous in 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 its rank-and-file participants only in fragments, and the letter, in which comrades-in-arms were given personal characteristics, was not shown to the party at all by the inner circle. We agreed among ourselves that Stalin promised to improve, and that was the end of the matter.

Even before the physical death of Lenin, 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. It was not for the first time that sharp disputes arose in 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. The substitution of labeling for a real dispute is a new phenomenon: it did not exist before, but it will become more and more common as the political process develops in the 1920s.

Trotsky was defeated quite easily. The 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. Until autumn. In the autumn of 1924, however, he published the book Lessons of October, 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 had been a Menshevik. In December 1924, Trotsky was removed from the post of People's Commissar of the Navy, but left 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, not a project developed by the USSR State Planning Committee was adopted as a plan for the first five years, but an overestimated version, drawn up by the Supreme Council of National Economy not so much taking into account objective possibilities, but under pressure from party slogans. In June 1929, mass collectivization began (contradicting even the plan of the Supreme Council of National Economy) - it was carried out with the widespread use of coercive measures. In autumn, it was supplemented by forced grain procurements.

As a result of these measures, the unification into collective farms really acquired a mass character, which gave Stalin reason in November of the same 1929 to make a statement that the middle peasant went to the collective farms. Stalin's article was called "The Great Break". Immediately after this article, the next plenum of the Central Committee approved new, increased and accelerated plans for collectivization and industrialization.

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 1926/1927. 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 "fists" - the most decisive and effective owners - were clearly oppressed. They had no incentive to work better.

NEP and culture

It is impossible not to mention the very important influence of the NEP, the impact on culture. The 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 remembered their hungry childhood and there was no force that could stop the satisfaction of that childhood hunger. They set their fashion.

The main entertainment was cabarets and restaurants - a pan-European trend of that time. The Berlin cabarets were especially famous in the 1920s. One of the most famous couplet artists of the time was Mikhail Savoyarov.

In the cabaret, couplet artists performed simple song plots and simple rhymes and rhythms, performers of funny feuilletons, sketches, and entreprise. The artistic value of those works is very controversial, and many of them have long been forgotten. Nevertheless, simple unpretentious words 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 "Bablis", "Lemons", "Murka", "Lanterns", "The blue ball is spinning and spinning" ...

These songs were repeatedly criticized and ridiculed for being apolitical, lack of ideas, petty-bourgeois taste, even outright vulgarity. But the longevity of these verses proved their originality and talent. The author of the texts for the songs "Babliki" and "Lemons" was the disgraced poet Yakov Yadov. 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.

Light genres also reigned in drama theatres. And here not everything was kept within the required boundaries. Moscow Vakhtangov Studio, the future theater named after. Vakhtangov, 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. The vaudeville merry, seemingly unprincipled play hid serious social satire behind its outward 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: Krokodil, Satirikon, Smekhach, Splinter, a little later, in 1923, Searchlight (with the newspaper Pravda); in the 1921/22 season, the magazine "Ekran" 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.

Acceptance on X Congress of the RCP (b) the decision to replace the surplus appropriation with the tax in kind is the starting point in the transition from the policy of “war communism” to a new economic system, to the NEP.

V. I. Lenin and K. E. Voroshilov among the delegates of the X Congress of the RCP (b). 1921

It is quite obvious that the introduction of a tax in kind is not the only characteristic of the NEP, which has become a definite feature for the Soviet country. system of political and economic measures carried out for nearly a decade. But these were the first steps, and taken very carefully. Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of March 29, 1921 No. Was installed grain tax in the amount of 240 million poods (with an average harvest) instead of 423 million poods when apportioned in 1920.

Peasants were able to sell their surplus products on the market.

For V.I. For Lenin, as for all Bolsheviks, this entailed a profound revision of his own ideas about the incompatibility of socialism and private trade. Already in May 1921, 2 months after the Tenth Congress, the Tenth Extraordinary Party Conference was convened to discuss a new course. There could no longer be any doubts - the course, as Lenin clarified, was taken "in earnest and for a long time." This was " reformist” method of action, the rejection of the revolutionary Red Guard attack on capital, this was the “admission” to socialism of the elements of the capitalist economy.

VI Lenin in his office. October 1922

For the formation of a market and the establishment of commodity exchange, it was necessary to revive the industry, to increase the output of its products. There have been radical changes in the management of industry. Trusts were created - associations of homogeneous or interconnected enterprises that received complete economic and financial independence, up to the right to issue long-term bonded loans. By the end of 1922, about 90% of industrial enterprises were united in trusts.

N.A. Berdyaev.

S.L. Frank, L.P. Karsavin; historians A.A. Kizevetter, S.P. Melgunov, A.V. Florovsky; economist B.D. Brutskus and others.

Particular emphasis is placed on the elimination Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary parties, in 1922 arrests became massive. By this time RCP (b) remained the only legal political party in the country.

The New Economic Policy combined two contradictory trends from the very beginning: one is to liberalize the economy, the other is to preserve the communist party's monopoly on power. These contradictions could not but see V.I. Lenin and other party leaders.

Established in the 20s. the NEP system, therefore, was supposed to contribute restoration and development of the national economy, which collapsed during the years of the imperialist and civil wars, but at the same time, this system initially contained internal inconsistency which inevitably led to deep crises directly arising from the nature and essence of NEP.

The first steps in the liberalization of the economy, the introduction of market relations contributed to the solution of the problem restoration of the national economy country devastated by civil war. A clear rise was indicated by the beginning of 1922. The implementation of the plan began GOELRO.

V.I.Lenin at the GOELRO map. VIII All-Russian Congress of Soviets. December 1920 Hood. L. Shmatko. 1957

From the state of devastation began to emerge railway transport, the movement of trains was restored throughout the country. By 1925, large-scale industry reached the level of 1913. The Nizhegorodskaya, Shaturskaya, Yaroslavskaya, and Volkhovskaya hydroelectric power stations were put into operation.

Start of the 1st stage of the Kashirskaya GRES. 1922

The Putilov machine-building plant in Petrograd, and then the Kharkov and Kolomna plants began to produce tractors, the Moscow AMO plant - trucks.

For the period 1921 - 1924. the gross output of large-scale state industry more than doubled.

Rising in agriculture. In 1921 - 1922. the state received 233 million poods of grain, in 1922-1923 - 429.6 million, in 1923-1924 - 397, in 1925-1926 - 496 million poods. State procurement of butter increased 3.1 times, eggs - 6 times.

The transition to a tax in kind improved the socio-political situation in the countryside. In the information reports of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), relating to the summer of 1921, it was reported: “Peasants everywhere increase the area of ​​​​sowing, armed uprisings have subsided, the attitude of the peasants is changing in favor of the Soviet regime.”

But the first successes were prevented by extreme disasters that hit the main grain regions of the country. 25 provinces of the Volga, Don, North Caucasus and Ukraine were hit by a severe drought, which, in the conditions of the post-war food crisis, led to a famine that claimed about 6% of the population. The fight against hunger was conducted as a broad state campaign with the involvement of enterprises, organizations, the Red Army, international organizations (ARA, Mezhrabpom).

In the famine-stricken areas, martial law was maintained, introduced there during the years of the civil war, there was a real threat of revolts, and banditry intensified.

On the first plan a new problem emerges. The peasantry showed its dissatisfaction with the tax rate which turned out to be unbearable.

In the reports of the GPU for 1922 "On the political state of the Russian countryside," the extremely negative impact of the food tax on the financial situation of the peasants was noted. The local authorities took drastic measures against the debtors up to and including reprisals. In some provinces, an inventory of property, arrests and trials were carried out. Such measures met with active resistance from the peasants. So, for example, the inhabitants of one of the villages of the Tver province shot a detachment of Red Army soldiers who arrived to levy a tax.

According to the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars "On a single tax in kind on agricultural products for 1922 - 1923." dated March 17, 1922, instead of a whole host of product taxes, single tax in kind, which assumed the unity of the salary sheet, pay periods and a common unit of calculation - a pood of rye.

AT May 1922 All-Russian Central Executive Committee accepted Basic Law on Labor Land Use, the content of which later, almost unchanged, formed the basis of the Land Code of the RSFSR, approved on October 30 and entered into force on December 1 of the same year. Within the framework of state ownership of land, confirmed by the code, the peasants were given the freedom to choose forms of land use, up to the organization of individual farms.

The development of individual farms in the countryside led to strengthening class stratification. As a result, small farms found themselves in a difficult situation. In 1922, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) began to receive information about the spread of the system of enslaving transactions in the countryside. This meant that the poor, in order to get a loan or inventory from the kulaks, were forced to pawn their crops “on the vine” for next to nothing. These phenomena are also the face of NEP in the countryside.

In general, the first years of NEP became a serious test of the new course, since the difficulties that arose were due not only to the consequences of a poor harvest in 1921, but also to the complexity of restructuring the entire system. economic relations in the country.

Spring 1922 erupted financial crisis directly related to the introduction of capitalist forms of economy.

Decrees of the Council of People's Commissars of 1921 on freedom of trade, on the denationalization of enterprises marked the rejection of the policy of "communist" distribution. This means that banknotes have returned to life as an integral part of free enterprise and trade. As M. Bulgakov wrote, at the end of 1921, “trillionaires” appeared in Moscow, i.e. people who had trillions of rubles. Astronomical figures became a reality because it became possible to buy goods with them, but this opportunity was limited by the constant depreciation of the ruble, which naturally narrowed the possibilities of free trade and the market.

At this time, a new Nepman entrepreneur, the “Soviet capitalist”, also showed himself, who, in the conditions of a commodity shortage, inevitably became an ordinary dealer and speculator.

Strastnaya (now Pushkinskaya) Square. 1920s

IN AND. Lenin, evaluating the speculation, said that "the car breaks out of the hands, it does not go quite the way the one who sits at the helm of this car imagines."

The communists recognized that the old world had burst in with buying and selling, clerks, speculators - with what they had recently fought against. Problems were added with the state industry, which was removed from the state supply and, in fact, left without working capital. As a result, workers either replenished the army of the unemployed, or did not receive wages for several months.

The situation in the industry has seriously deteriorated. in 1923 - early 1924., when there was a sharp decline in the growth of industrial production, which, in turn, led to the mass closure of enterprises, rising unemployment, the emergence of a strike movement that swept the whole country.

The reasons for the crisis that struck the country's economy in 1923 became the subject of discussion at XII Congress of the RCP (b) held in April 1923. “Price scissor crisis”- so they began to call him according to the famous diagram, which L.D. Trotsky, who spoke about that phenomenon, showed it to the congress delegates. The crisis was associated with a divergence in prices for industrial and agricultural goods (this was called “price scissors”). This happened because during the recovery period, the village was ahead in terms of the scale and pace of recovery. Handicraft and private production grew faster than large-scale industry. By the middle of 1923, agriculture was restored in relation to the pre-war level by 70%, and large-scale industry - by only 39%.

Discussion on the issue scissors” took place on October Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) in 1923, a decision was made to lower the prices of manufactured goods, which, of course, prevented the deepening of the crisis, which posed a serious threat of a social explosion in the country.

The entire socio-political crisis that hit the USSR in 1923 cannot be limited only by the narrow framework of the “price scissors” problem. Unfortunately, the problem was even more serious than it might seem at first glance. Serious conflict between government and people, who was dissatisfied with the policy of power, the policy of the Communist Party. Both the working class and the peasantry expressed their protest both in the form of passive resistance and active actions against the Soviet regime.

AT 1923. many provinces of the country were covered strike movements. In the reports of the OGPU “On the political state of the USSR”, a whole range of reasons stood out: these are long-term delays wages, its low level, increase in production rates, staff reductions, mass layoffs. The most acute disturbances took place at the textile enterprises of Moscow, at the metallurgical enterprises of the Urals, Primorye, Petrograd, at railway and water transport.

The year 1923 was also difficult for the peasantry. The defining moment in the mood of the peasantry was dissatisfaction with the excessively high level of the single tax and the "price scissors". In some areas of the Primorsky and Trans-Baikal provinces, in the Mountainous Republic (Northern Caucasus), the peasants generally refused to pay taxes. Many peasants were forced to sell their livestock and even implements in order to pay the tax. There was a threat of famine. In the Murmansk, Pskov, Arkhangelsk provinces, surrogates have already begun to be eaten: moss, fish bones, straw. Banditry has become a real threat (in Siberia, Transbaikalia, the North Caucasus, Ukraine).

The socio-economic and political crisis could not but affect the position of the party.

On October 8, 1923, Trotsky outlined his point of view on the causes of the crisis and ways out of it. Trotsky's conviction that "chaos comes from above," that the crisis is based on subjective causes, was shared by many heads of economic departments and organizations.

This position of Trotsky was condemned by the majority of the members of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), and then he turned to the masses of the party. December 11, 1923 in " Pravda Trotsky's "Letter to Party Conferences" was published, where he accused the party of bureaucratic transformation. For a whole month from mid-December 1923 to mid-January 1924, 2-3 pages of Pravda were filled with debatable articles and materials.

The difficulties that arose as NEP developed and deepened in the first half of the 1920s inevitably led to internal party disputes. The emerging “ left direction”, defended by Trotsky and his supporters, actually reflected disbelief of a certain part of the communists in the prospects for NEP in the country.

At the VIII All-Union Party Conference, the results of the discussion were summed up and a detailed resolution was adopted condemning Trotsky and his supporters for their petty-bourgeois deviation. The accusations of factionalism, anti-Bolshevism, revisions of Leninism shook his authority, became the beginning of the collapse of his political career.

AT 1923 in connection with Lenin's illness, there is a gradual process of concentration of power in the hands of the main " triplets” Central Committee: Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev. In order to rule out opposition within the Party in the future, the seventh point of the resolution "On the Unity of the Party", adopted at the Tenth Congress and until that time kept secret, was promulgated at the conference.

Farewell to V.I. Lenin. January 1924 Hood. S.Boim. 1952

While Lenin actually led the party, his authority in it was indisputable. Therefore, the struggle for power between representatives of the political currents that were emerging in connection with the transition to NEP could only have the character of hidden rivalry.

FROM 1922. when I.V. Stalin took office General Secretary of the RCP(b), he gradually placed his supporters in key positions in the party apparatus.

At the XIII Congress of the RCP (b) on May 23-31, 1924, two trends in the development of Soviet society were clearly noted: “one is capitalist, when capital accumulates at one pole, wage labor and poverty at the other; the other - through the most understandable, accessible forms of cooperation - to socialism.

FROM late 1924. the course starts facing the village”, elected by the party as a result of the increased dissatisfaction of the peasantry with the policy pursued, the emergence of mass demands for the creation of a peasant party (the so-called Peasant Union), which, unlike the RCP (b), would protect the interests of the peasants, resolve tax issues, and contribute to the deepening and expansion of private property in the countryside.

The developer and ideologist of the “village NEP” was N.I. Bukharin, who believed that it was necessary to move from a policy of tactical concessions to the peasantry to a sustainable course of economic reforms, since, as he said, “we have a NEP in the city, we have a NEP in relations between town and country, but we do not have a NEP in village."

With the rationale for a new turn in economic policy in the village, Bukharin spoke April 17, 1925. at a meeting of the Moscow party activists, a week later this report in the form of an article was published in Pravda. It was in this report that Bukharin uttered the famous phrase, addressing the entire peasantry with an appeal: “ Get rich!”.

This course was put into practice at the April 1925 Plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), which stated that “together with the development of market relations in the countryside, as well as the strengthening of trade relations with the city and the external market, the strengthening of the bulk of the middle peasant farms with simultaneous growth (at least for the next few years) on one side of the prosperous strata of the countryside with the separation of capitalist elements (merchants) and on the other, farm laborers and the rural poor.

And in December 1925. took place XIV congress where the course was officially approved for the victory of socialism in the USSR.

The workers' delegations of Moscow and Donbass welcome the XIV Party Congress. Hood. Yu.Tsyganov

K.E. Voroshilov and M.V. Frunze during the parade on Red Square on May 1, 1925

The congress called this “the main task of our Party” and emphasized that “there is an economic offensive of the proletariat on the basis of the New Economic Policy and the advance of the economy of the USSR towards socialism, and the state socialist industry is increasingly becoming the vanguard of the national economy”, therefore, “it is necessary to set the task of the victory of socialist economic forms over private capital.

In this way, XIV Congress of the RCP (b) became a kind frontier in the reorientation of the party's policy towards the strengthening of socialist principles in the economy.

Nevertheless, the beginning of the second half of the 1920s still took place under the sign of the preservation and development of NEP principles. But the grain procurement crisis in the winter of 1927-1928 created a real threat to plans for industrial construction, complicating the overall economic situation in the country.

In determining the fate of the NEP in the current economic conditions, two groups of the country's political leadership clashed. The first - Bukharin, Rykov, Pyatakov, Tomsky, Smilga and other supporters of the active growth of agriculture, the deepening of the NEP in the countryside, lost the ideological battle to the other - Stalin and his supporters (Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, etc.), who by that time had achieved a majority in the political leadership of the country.

In January 1928, Stalin proposed to expand the construction of collective farms and state farms in order to stabilize grain procurements. Stalin's speech in July 1928, published only a few years later, emphasized that politics NEP has reached an impasse that the bitterness of the class struggle is due to the ever more desperate resistance of the capitalist elements, that the peasantry will have to spend money on the needs of industrialization.

Bukharin, in his own words, “was horrified” by the General Secretary’s conclusions and tried to organize a controversy by publishing “Notes of an Economist” in Pravda on September 30, 1928, where he outlined the economic program of the opposition (Bukharin, Rykov, Tomsky compiled the so-called “ Right Opposition). The author of the article explained the crisis by errors in planning, pricing, unpreparedness of agricultural cooperation and advocated a return to economic and financial measures to influence the market under the NEP.

AT November 1928. The Plenum of the Central Committee unanimously condemned right bias”, and Bukharin, and Rykov, and Tomsky dissociated themselves from him, who were guided by the desire to preserve the unity of the party. In the same month, the party and state bodies decide on forcing collectivization processes.

In 1929, emergency measures were legalized in the Ukraine and the RSFSR to restrict the free sale of grain, the priority sale of grain under state obligations was established, and the policy of expropriating the merchant class as a class began to be implemented. The country is entering the first five-year plan, the plans of which provide for accelerated rates of industrialization and collectivization of the country. And in these plans already There is no place.

In the many years of struggle between socialist and market principles, victory was directed from above, the party leadership of the country, who made his final choice in favor of socialism.

However, giving decisive importance to the subjective factor - the volitional actions of Stalin and his entourage, oriented towards an accelerated socialist industrialization, cannot be the only explanation for the “death of NEP” in the USSR.

The actual practice of implementing this policy throughout the 20s. identifies and objective factor— i.e. those contradictions and crises that were inherent in the very nature of NEP. The interweaving of market and administrative command principles of management, maneuvering between the market and the directive economy led to a “turn” 1929. This year has become the end of the new economic policy carried out by the party and the government during the recovery period. There were undoubted successes at that time, and losses, and phenomena of stabilization, and internal crises. But the positive, constructive transformations of the 20s. undoubtedly connected with the more flexible strategy and tactics of the NEP compared to the policy of the total regime of the subsequent “Stalinist” decades.

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, the volume of railway traffic was one-fifth of that in 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

  “When I saw Moscow again, I was amazed: after all, I went abroad in the last weeks of war communism. Everything looked different now. The cards disappeared, people were no longer attached. The staff of various institutions was greatly reduced, and no one made grandiose projects ... Old workers, engineers with difficulty restored production. Goods have arrived. Peasants began to bring living creatures to the markets. Muscovites ate, cheered up. I remember how, having arrived in Moscow, I froze in front of a grocery store. What was not there! Most convincing was the sign: "Estomak" (stomach). The belly was not only rehabilitated, but exalted. In a cafe on the corner of Petrovka and Stoleshnikov, the inscription made me laugh: "Children visit us to eat cream." I did not find children, but there were many visitors, and it seemed that they were getting fat before our eyes. Many restaurants were opened: here is Prague, there is Hermitage, then Lisbon, Bar. On every corner there were noisy pubs - with a foxtrot, with a Russian choir, with gypsies, with balalaikas, just with scuffles. Reckless drivers stood near the restaurants, waiting for those who were on a spree, and, as in the distant times of my childhood, they said: “Your Excellency, I’ll give you a ride ...” Here you could see beggars, homeless people; they plaintively pulled: "Kopeck". There were no kopecks: there were millions (“lemons”) and brand new chervonets. Several million were lost overnight in the casino: the profits of brokers, speculators or ordinary thieves ”( I. Ehrenburg "People, years, life")

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.

(NEP) - carried out in the period from 1921 to 1924. in Soviet Russia, the economic policy that replaced the policy of "war communism".

The crisis of the Bolshevik policy of "war communism" manifested itself most acutely in the economy. Most of the food, metal and fuel supplies went to the needs of the civil war. Industry also worked for military needs, as a result, agriculture was supplied with 2-3 times fewer machines and tools than required. The lack of workers, agricultural equipment and seed fund led to a reduction in the area under crops, the gross harvest of agricultural products decreased by 45%. All this caused a famine in 1921, as a result of which almost 5 million people died.

The deterioration of the economic situation, the preservation of emergency communist measures (surplus appropriation) led to the emergence in 1921 of an acute political and economic crisis in the country. The result was anti-Bolshevik protests by peasants, workers, and the military demanding the political equality of all citizens, freedom of speech, the establishment of workers' control over production, the encouragement of private enterprise, etc.

In order to normalize the economy, destroyed by the Civil War, intervention and measures of "war communism", and to stabilize the socio-political sphere, the Soviet government decided to make a temporary retreat from its principles. The policy of a temporary transition to a capitalist economy with the aim of raising the economy and settling social and political problems was called the NEP (New Economic Policy).

The departure from the NEP was facilitated by such factors as the weakness of domestic private enterprise, which was the result of its long-term prohibition and excessive state intervention. The unfavorable world economic background (the economic crisis in the West in 1929) was interpreted as the "decay" of capitalism. The economic rise of Soviet industry by the mid-1920s. hampered by the lack of new reforms needed to sustain growth (for example, the creation of new industries, weakening state control, tax revision).

In the late 1920s reserves dried up, the country was faced with the need for huge investments in agriculture and industry for the reconstruction and modernization of enterprises. Due to the lack of funds for the development of industry, the city could not meet the rural demand for urban goods. They tried to save the situation by raising prices for manufactured goods ("commodity famine" of 1924), which led to the loss of the peasantry's interest in selling food to the state or its unprofitable exchange for manufactured goods. Decreased production volumes, in 1927-1929. aggravated the crisis of grain procurements. The printing of new money, the rise in the cost of agricultural and industrial products led to the depreciation of the chervonets. In the summer of 1926, the Soviet currency ceased to be convertible (transactions with it abroad were terminated after the gold standard was abandoned).

Faced with a lack of public financial resources on the development of industry, from the mid-1920s. all NEP activities were curtailed with the aim of greater centralization of the financial and material resources available in the country, and by the end of the 1920s. the country followed the path of planned and directive development of industrialization and collectivization.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources