NEP - 2.g, historieopgave

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"The New Economic Policy
Main article: New Economic Policy
During the Civil War (1917-1921), Lenin adopted War Communism, which entailed the breakup of the landed estates and the forcible seizure of agricultural surpluses. The Kronstadt rebellion signaled the growing unpopularity of War Communism in the countryside: in March 1921, at the end of the civil war, disillusioned sailors, primarily peasants who initially had been stalwart supporters of the Bolsheviks under the provisional government, revolted against the new regime. Although the Red Army, commanded by Leon Trotsky, crossed the ice over the frozen Baltic Sea and quickly crushed the rebellion, this sign of growing discontent forced the party under Lenin's direction to foster a broad alliance of the working class and peasantry (eighty percent of the population), although left factions of the party favored a regime solely representative of the interests of the revolutionary proletariat. Lenin consequently ended War Communism and instituted the New Economic Policy (NEP), in which the state allowed a limited market to exist. Small private businesses were allowed and restrictions on political activity were somewhat eased.

However, the key shift involved the status of agricultural surpluses. Rather than simply requisitioning agricultural surpluses in order to feed the urban population (the hallmark of War Communism), the NEP allowed peasants to sell their surplus yields on the open market. Meanwhile, the state still maintained state ownership of what Lenin deemed the "commanding heights" of the economy: heavy industry such as the coal, iron, and metallurgical sectors along with the banking and financial components of the economy. The "commanding heights" employed the majority of the workers in the urban areas. Under the NEP, such state industries would be largely free to make their own economic decisions.

The Soviet NEP (1921-29) was essentially a period of "market socialism" similar to the Dengist reforms in Communist China after 1978 in that both foresaw a role for private entrepreneurs and limited markets based on trade and pricing rather than fully centralized planning. As an interesting aside, during the first meeting in the early 1980s between Deng Xiaoping and Armand Hammer, a U.S. industrialist and prominent investor in Lenin's Soviet Union, Deng pressed Hammer for as much information on the NEP as possible.

During the NEP period, agricultural yields not only recovered to the levels attained before the Bolshevik Revolution, but greatly improved. The break-up of the quasi-feudal landed estates of the Tsarist-era countryside gave peasants their greatest incentives ever to maximize production. Now able to sell their surpluses on the open market, peasant spending gave a boost to the manufacturing sectors in the urban areas. As a result of the NEP, and the breakup of the landed estates while the Communist Party was consolidating power between 1917-1921, the Soviet Union became the world's greatest producer of grain.

Agriculture, however, would recover from civil war more rapidly than heavy industry. Factories, badly damaged by civil war and capital depreciation, were far less productive. In addition, the organization of enterprises into trusts or syndicates representing one particular sector of the economy would contribute to imbalances between supply and demand associated with monopolies. Due to the lack of incentives brought by market competition, and with little or no state controls on their internal policies, trusts were likely to sell their products at higher prices.

The slower recovery of industry would pose some problems for the peasantry, who accounted for eighty percent of the population. Since agriculture was relatively more productive, relative price indexes for industrial goods were higher than those of agricultural products. The outcome of this was what Trotsky deemed the "scissors crisis" because of the scissors-like shape of the graph representing shifts in relative price indexes. Simply put, peasants would have to produce more grain to purchase consumer goods from the urban areas. As a result, some peasants withheld agricultural surpluses in anticipation of higher prices, thus contributing to mild shortages in the cities. This, of course, is speculative market behavior, which was frowned upon by many Communist Party cadres, who considered it to be exploitative of urban consumers.

In the meantime the party took constructive steps to offset the crisis, attempting to bring down prices for manufactured goods and stabilize inflation, by imposing price controls on key industrial goods and breaking-up the trusts in order to increase economic efficiency.

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The death of Lenin and the fate of the NEP
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Party factionalization
Since succession mechanisms had not been established in party procedure, Lenin's death in 1924 heightened fierce factional fighting in the party over the fate of the NEP.

The Left Opposition within the Party, led by Trotsky, had long opposed the NEP for various ideological and practical reasons (the market system was beginning to create negative results typical of capitalism: inflation, unemployment, and the rise of a wealthy class). They used the "Scissors Crisis" to gain ideological capital over the moderate wing of the party (supportive of the NEP), led by Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin. Initially, Stalin united with the Bukharinite faction of the Party to defeat Trotsky. But he eventually turned against the moderates who favored the NEP once Trotsky was exiled, in order to consolidate his control over the party and the state.

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Stalin's consolidation of power
For more on the succession battle within the party, see Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

In order to devise a pretext for abandoning the NEP, Stalin moved to exploit the problems associated with the "Scissors Crisis." Moreover, he pointed to the rise of the Nepmen (small retailers profiting off the growing urban-rural trade) and Kulaks (the emerging upper-middle class of wealthy peasant farmers) under the NEP as new capitalistic classes. He also brought up the arguments used by his enemies in the Left Opposition, such as inflation and unemployment, as the evils of the market.

Stalin shifted from side to side and eventually rid the party of both factions by forging a path of development that integrated the ideas of both camps. He adapted the "leftist" stance that opposed market agriculture because they wanted to produce the material basis for communism quickly, through a planned economy, despite unfavorable conditions. But he also endorsed the "rightist" faction's notion of "socialism in one country" which favored concentrating on internal development rather than exporting revolution. In that respect, he also favored extensive exports of grain and raw materials; the revenues from foreign exchange allowing the Soviet Union to import foreign technologies needed for industrial development.

Stalin first formed a troika with Zinoviev and Kamenev against Trotsky. Then, with Trotsky marginalised and removed from his position as People's Commissar of War and a member of the Politburo, Stalin joined with Bukharin against his former allies. Then, finally, he turned against the NEP, forcing Bukharin, its main proponent, into opposition and leaving Stalin as the dominant figure in the party and the country.

By then, Stalin had a reputation as a revolutionary, "devoted Bolshevik," and Lenin's "right hand man." However, in reality Lenin had distrusted Stalin, and before his death had written a letter, often referred to as Lenin's Testament, warning against giving power to Stalin, calling him "rude," "intolerant," and "capricious." Stalin and his supporters had covered this letter up. Parts of it were leaked to members of the party but the full contents were not published until after Stalin's death in 1953."

Kilde: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union


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