NEP distribution. New Economic Policy (NEP) in brief

The first attempts to curtail the NEP began. Syndicates in industry were liquidated, from which private capital was administratively squeezed out, and a rigid centralized system of economic management was created (economic people's commissariats). Stalin and his entourage headed for the forced confiscation of grain and the forced collectivization of the countryside. Repressions were carried out against management personnel (the Shakhty case, the Industrial Party trial, etc.). By the beginning of the 1930s, the NEP was actually curtailed.

Prerequisites for the NEP

Agricultural production fell by 40% due to the depreciation of money and a shortage of industrial goods.

Society has degraded, its intellectual potential has weakened significantly. Most of the Russian intelligentsia were 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 grain, but also rose up in armed struggle. Uprisings spread across the Tambov region, Ukraine, Don, Kuban, Volga region and Siberia. The peasants demanded a change in agrarian policy, the elimination of the dictates of the RCP (b), and the convening of a Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal equal suffrage. Units of the Red Army were sent to suppress these protests.

Discontent spread to the army. On March 1 of the year, 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 socialist parties, re-election of the Soviets and, as follows from the slogan, the expulsion of all communists from them, granting 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 farms , that is, the elimination of surplus appropriation. Convinced of the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the rebels, the authorities launched an assault on Kronstadt. By alternating artillery shelling and infantry actions, Kronstadt was captured by March 18; Some of the rebels died, the rest went to Finland or surrendered.

From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt:

Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic devastation have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has become disconnected from the masses and has been unable to bring it out of the state of general devastation. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow and which quite clearly indicated that the party had lost the trust of the working masses. It also did not take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the machinations of counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of all the people, all the working people. All workers, sailors and Red Army soldiers clearly see at the moment that only through common efforts, the common will of the working people, can we give the country bread, firewood, coal, clothe the shoeless and undressed, and lead the republic out of the dead end...

The uprisings that swept across the country convincingly showed that the Bolsheviks were losing support in society. Already in the year there were calls to abandon the food appropriation system: 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, the same question was raised by Rykov at the Supreme Economic Council.

The policy of war communism had exhausted itself, but Lenin, despite everything, persisted. Moreover, at the turn of 1920 and 1921, he strongly insisted on strengthening this policy - in particular, plans were made for the complete abolition of the monetary system.

V. I. Lenin

Only by the spring of 1921 did it become obvious that the general discontent of the lower classes and their armed pressure could lead to the overthrow of the power of the Soviets led by the Communists. Therefore, Lenin decided to make a concession in order to maintain power.

Progress of development of NEP

Proclamation of the NEP

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

To replace the depreciated and in fact already rejected by the turnover of Sovznaki, the city began issuing 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 the city, the sovznaki, which were quickly being replaced by chervonets, stopped printing altogether and were withdrawn from circulation; in the same year the budget was balanced and the use of money emissions to cover government expenses was prohibited; new treasury notes were issued - rubles (10 rubles = 1 chervonets). On the foreign exchange market, both domestically and abroad, chervonets were freely exchanged for gold and major foreign currencies at the pre-war exchange rate of the Tsar's ruble (1 US dollar = 1.94 rubles).

The credit system has been revived. In the city, 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 banks, in which the shareholders were the State Bank, syndicates, cooperatives, private and even at one time foreign, for lending to certain sectors of the economy and regions of the country; cooperative - for lending to consumer cooperation; agricultural credit societies organized on shares, linked to the republican and central agricultural banks; mutual credit societies - for lending to private industry and trade; savings banks - to mobilize the population's savings. As of October 1, 1923, there were 17 independent banks operating in the country, and the State Bank’s share 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 State Bank's share in lending to the national economy decreased to 48%.

The economic mechanism during the NEP period was based on market principles. Commodity-money relations, which they had previously tried to banish from production and exchange, in the 1920s penetrated into all pores of the economic organism and became the main link between its individual parts.

Discipline within the Communist Party itself was also tightened. At the end of 1920, an opposition group appeared in the party - the “workers' opposition”, which demanded the transfer of all power in production to trade unions. In order to stop such attempts, the X Congress of the RCP (b) in 1921 adopted a resolution on party unity. According to this resolution, decisions made by the majority must be implemented by all party members, including those who disagree with them.

The consequence of one-party rule was the merging of the party and the government. The same people occupied the main positions in both party (Politburo) and government bodies (SNK, All-Russian Central Executive Committee, etc.). At the same time, the personal authority of the people's commissars and the need in the conditions of the Civil War to make urgent, urgent decisions led to the fact that the center of power was concentrated not in the legislative body (the All-Russian Central Executive Committee), 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 1920s than his place in the formal structure of state power. That is why, when speaking about figures of the 1920s, we first of all name not positions, but surnames.

In parallel with the change in the position of the party in the country, the degeneration of the party itself took place. It is obvious that there will always be much more people willing to join the ruling party than to join the underground party, membership in which cannot provide any other privileges than iron bunks or a noose around the neck. At the same time, the party, having become the ruling party, began to need to increase its numbers in order to fill government posts at all levels. This led to the rapid growth of the Communist Party after the revolution. From time to time it was spurred on by mass recruitments, such as the "Lenin recruitment" after Lenin's death. The inevitable consequence of this process was the dissolution of the old, ideological Bolsheviks among the young party members. In 1927, out of 1,300 thousand people who were members of the party, only 8 thousand had pre-revolutionary experience; Most of the rest did not know communist theory at all.

Not only the intellectual and educational level, but also the moral level of the party decreased. In this regard, 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 are indicative. Out of 732 thousand, only 410 thousand members were retained 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 regime,” “selfishness,” “careerism,” “bourgeois lifestyle,” and “decay in everyday life.”

In connection with the growth of the party, the initially inconspicuous position of secretary began to acquire increasing importance. Any secretary is a secondary position by definition. This is a person who ensures that the necessary formalities are observed during official events. Since April of the year, the Bolshevik Party has had the position 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. Stalin received this position.

Soon the privileges of the upper layer of party members began to expand. Since 1926, this layer has received a special name - “nomenclature”. This is how they began to call party-state positions included in the list of positions, 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 centralization of power took place against the backdrop of a sharp deterioration in Lenin's health. Actually, the year of the introduction of the NEP became for him the last year of a full life. In May of this year, he was struck by the first blow - his brain was damaged, so the almost helpless Lenin was given a very gentle work schedule. In March of the year, a second attack occurred, after which Lenin dropped out of life altogether for six months, almost learning to pronounce words all over again. He had barely begun to recover from the second attack when the third and last one occurred in January. As an autopsy showed, for the last almost two years of Lenin’s life, only one hemisphere of his brain was active.

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 letters to the congress, known as his “political testament” (December 1922 - January 1923), Lenin proposed expanding the Central Committee at the expense of the workers, choosing a new Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) - from the proletarians, cutting back the enormously swollen and therefore ineffective RKI (Workers' -peasant inspection).

There was one more component in “Lenin’s Testament” - the personal characteristics of the largest party leaders (Trotsky, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Pyatakov). This part of the Letter is often interpreted as a search for a successor (heir), but Lenin, unlike Stalin, was never a sole dictator, he could not make 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, contained independent people who often disagreed with Lenin in their views. Therefore, there could be no question about any “heir” (and it was not Lenin who called the Letter to the Congress a “testament”). Assuming that the party would retain its collective leadership after him, Lenin gave mostly ambivalent characteristics to the prospective members of this leadership. There was only one definite indication in his Letter: the post of General Secretary gives Stalin too much power, which is dangerous given 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 the rank-and-file participants only in fragments, and the letter in which personal characteristics were given to the comrades-in-arms was not shown to the party by those closest to them at all. We agreed among ourselves that Stalin would promise to improve, and that was the end of the matter.

Even before Lenin’s physical death, at the end of the year, a struggle began between his “heirs,” or rather, pushing Trotsky away from the helm. In the autumn of the year the struggle became open. In October, Trotsky addressed the Central Committee with a letter in which he pointed out the formation of a bureaucratic intra-party regime. A week later, a group of 46 old Bolsheviks (“Statement 46”) wrote an open letter in support of Trotsky. The Central Committee, of course, responded with a decisive denial. The leading role in this was played by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. This was not the first time that heated disputes arose within the Bolshevik Party. But unlike previous discussions, this time the ruling faction actively used labeling. Trotsky was not refuted with reasonable arguments - he was simply accused of Menshevism, deviationism and other mortal sins. The substitution of labels for actual dispute is a new phenomenon: it has not happened before, but it will become increasingly common as the political process develops in the 1920s.

Trotsky was defeated quite easily. The next party conference, held in January of the year, published a resolution on party unity (previously kept secret), and Trotsky was forced to remain silent. Until autumn. In the fall of 1924, however, he published the book “Lessons of October,” in which he unequivocally stated that he and Lenin made the revolution. Then Zinoviev and Kamenev “suddenly” remembered that before the VI Congress of the RSDLP(b) in July 1917, Trotsky was a Menshevik. The party was shocked. In December 1924, Trotsky was removed from the post of People's Commissar of Military Affairs, but remained 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, it was not the project developed by the USSR State Planning Committee that was adopted as a plan for the first five-year plan, but an inflated version drawn up by the Supreme Economic Council, not so much taking into account objective possibilities, but under the pressure of party slogans. In June 1929, mass collectivization began (which contradicted even the plan of the Supreme Economic Council) - it was carried out with the widespread use of coercive measures. In the autumn it was supplemented by forced grain procurements.

As a result of these measures, unification into collective farms really became widespread, which gave Stalin reason in November of the same 1929 to make a statement that the middle peasants joined collective farms. Stalin’s article was called “The Great Turning Point”. Immediately after this article, the next plenum of the Central Committee approved new, increased and accelerated plans for collectivization and industrialization.

Conclusions and Conclusions

The undoubted success of the NEP was the restoration of the destroyed economy, and if we take into account that after the revolution Russia lost highly qualified personnel (economists, managers, production workers), then the success of the new government becomes a “victory over devastation.” At the same time, the lack of those highly qualified personnel became the cause of miscalculations and mistakes.

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY (NEP) — “a special policy of the proletarian state, designed to allow capitalism, in the presence of commanding heights in the hands of the proletarian state, designed for the struggle of capitalist and socialist elements, designed for the increasing role of socialist elements to the detriment of capitalist elements, designed for the victory of socialist elements over capitalist elements, designed for the destruction of classes, to build the foundation of a socialist economy"(Stalin, On the Opposition, 1928, p. 211).

The need for NEP - the only correct policy of the victorious proletariat - follows from the teachings of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin about transition period (cm.), as a period of revolutionary transformation by the dictatorship of the proletariat of capitalist society into a socialist society. Having created the organs of state power during the victorious socialist revolution, the proletariat must suppress any attempts by the exploiters to regain lost dominance, organize the defense of the country, create socialist production, rebuild the fundamental foundations of the lives of millions of people, re-educate itself and the entire mass of working people; The proletariat uses its power to strengthen the alliance with the working people of the city and countryside, to involve small, scattered commodity producers in the construction of socialism, to re-educate them, to transfer their farms to the rails of socialism, to abolish classes, to build socialism.

Lenin, developing the doctrine of Marx-Engels about the transition period, about the dictatorship of the proletariat, justified, based on the law of uneven development of capitalism under imperialism, the possibility of building and winning socialism in one single country and the impossibility of the simultaneous victory of socialism in all countries, brilliantly developed the question of the NEP, of specific paths of economic policy, “with the help of which the proletariat, having in its hands the economic commanding heights (industry, land, transport, banks, etc.), links socialized industry with agriculture (“the link between industry and peasant farming”) and thus leads all national economy to socialism"(Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th ed., p. 171).

Comrade Stalin continued the development of Marxist theory, enriching it with new experience in the new conditions of class struggle. The diversity of economic structures, inherent to one degree or another not only in economically backward, but also highly developed capitalist countries, and the class relations hidden behind them, the preservation in a number of areas of economic life of skills and traditions inherited from bourgeois society, require the proletarian state to carry out such measures that ensure the victory of socialist forms of economy, the strengthening of the union of the proletariat with the working people of the city and countryside with the hegemony of the proletariat in this union.

“10-20 years of correct relations with the peasantry,” said Lenin, “and victory on a global scale is guaranteed.”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVI, p. 313).

The NEP, therefore, is a necessary stage of any socialist revolution (see Program and Charter of the Communist International, 1937, pp. 37-38).

The international character of the NEP was pointed out by Lenin, who said during the transition to the NEP that “the task that we are solving now, for now - temporarily - alone, seems to be a purely Russian task, but in reality it is a task that will face all socialists”(Lenin, Works, volume XXVII, pp. 140-141).

Only on the basis of the NEP did it become possible in the USSR to create a large socialist industry, prepare and carry out a socialist transformation of the peasant economy, defeat capitalist elements, uproot the roots of capitalism, move from a mixed economy to a socialist one, and ensure the victory of socialism throughout the national economy.

The transition to the NEP in the Soviet Republic was carried out in the spring of 1921 after the victorious end of a three-year war with foreign invaders and a civil war that defended the integrity and independence of the Soviet country. However, the foundations of the NEP, this ingeniously outlined plan for building socialism, were developed by Lenin back in 1918 in his remarkable works “The Immediate Tasks of Soviet Power” and “On “Left” Childhood and Petty-Bourgeoisism” and others. The plan for socialist construction developed by Lenin, included the organization of strict and nationwide accounting and control over the production and distribution of products, the creation of a new socialist discipline, the organization of socialist competition, increasing labor productivity, the introduction of the socialist principle of payment according to work, the use of bourgeois specialists, the implementation of unity of command, etc.

Traitors to the motherland who have slipped into the swamp of the fascist secret police - Trotsky, Bukharin and the so-called headed by the latter. a group of “left communists” led a fierce struggle against Lenin’s plan for building socialism, against the introduction of socialist accounting and control, curbing the petty-bourgeois element, against socialist labor discipline, defended the kulak, the quitter, the speculator. The Party crushed all attempts by disguised enemies of the people to interfere with socialist construction.

Lenin repeatedly emphasized the continuity of the NEP with the policies pursued by the Soviet government in the first period of its existence. “In fact,” Lenin said about the NEP, “there is more of the old in it than in our previous economic policy.”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVII, p. 37), that is, in the policy of war communism, which was a forced policy, imposed on the proletarian state by the civil war, intervention. In his report at the X Congress of the RCP(b), Lenin emphasized that the decree on the tax in kind - the first decree of the NEP - already had its predecessor in the law on the tax in kind from farmers (30/X 1918).

Expanding his plan for building socialism, Lenin spoke about the bizarre interweaving of patriarchal, small-scale commodity, private capitalist, state capitalist and socialist structures in the economy of the Soviet Republic. The task was to carry out measures in economic policy that would ensure the systematic influence of the working class on the peasantry, the leading role of the socialist sector and its victory.

"Either we subjugate to his control and accounting of this petty bourgeoisie (we can do this if we organize the poor, that is, the majority of the population or semi-proletarians, around a conscious proletarian vanguard),- Lenin wrote, - or he will overthrow our workers' power inevitably and inevitably, as the Napoleons and Cavaignacs overthrew the revolution, precisely on this small-proprietary soil that grows. That's the question. That’s the only question.”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVI, pp. 323-324).

In the conditions of the predominance of small-scale peasant farming in the country and the still relatively weak socialist industry, Lenin considered state capitalism - that is, the assumption of capitalist relations under the control of the Soviet state, while maintaining commanding economic heights in the hands of the proletariat - one of the possible transitional forms of economy. " State capitalism - Lenin said, “This is the capitalism that we will be able to limit, the limits of which we will be able to establish, this state capitalism is connected with the state, and the state is the workers, this is the advanced part of the workers, this is the vanguard, this is us.”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVII, p. 237). In his speech “On Amendments to the Soviet Constitution,” Comrade Molotov emphasized that “at that time the party considered the transition of a significant part of the country’s economy to state capitalism as one of the most desirable prerequisites for accelerating preparations for the socialist restructuring of the national economy”(Molotov V.M., On changes in the Soviet Constitution, 1935, p. 6).

The outbreak of the civil war and the intervention of imperialist predators forced the Lenin-Stalin party to highlight the task of armed defense of the proletarian state. The proletarian state was forced to introduce war communism, which meant the mobilization of all the forces and material resources of the country for the cause of defense. Prodrazverstka (see), nationalization of all industry, prohibition of private trade, centralization of all the country's resources in the hands of the state - these were the measures required by defense tasks. In the conditions of the civil war, a military-political alliance of the working class and peasantry was created and consolidated, which was based on the fact that “The peasant received land from the Soviet government and protection from the landowner, from the kulak; the workers received food from the peasantry through surplus appropriation”[History of the CPSU(b). Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, p. 238].

The transition from armed struggle to peaceful socialist construction took place in an extremely difficult situation. During the years of imperialism, and then civil war and foreign intervention, the country's economy fell into complete decline. In 1920, industrial output was only 14% of pre-war production, and agriculture about 50%; Famine was raging in the country, and there was an acute shortage of the most necessary consumer goods. The peasantry, which during the period of the fight against the intervention had put up with the confiscation of all surpluses through surplus appropriation, now began to express dissatisfaction with the policy of war communism, the surplus appropriation system, and demanded that the villages be supplied with a sufficient amount of goods. “The entire system of war communism, as Lenin noted, came into conflict with the interests of the peasantry.”(ibid.).

The deepest economic devastation also had an impact on the working class. Due to hunger and fatigue, discontent manifested itself among the least stable, least hardened part of the workers. The class enemy tried to take advantage of the difficult economic situation, to exploit the discontent of the peasants: kulak revolts, organized by the White Guards and Socialist Revolutionaries, broke out in a number of regions.

In this tense situation, the Communist Party, under the leadership of Lenin and Stalin, made the transition to a new economic policy. The main document that determined the transition to the NEP was the decision of the X Congress of the RCP (b) on the transition from surplus appropriation to tax in kind (see), about the transition to a new economic policy. “This turn from war communism to NEP reflected all the wisdom and foresight of Lenin’s policy.”(ibid., p. 244). In his report on the tax in kind, Lenin pointed out that with the transition from appropriation to tax in kind, the middle peasant - the main figure of the village - receives an incentive to run his own farm, gets the opportunity to freely dispose of his food and raw material surpluses, and the opportunity to trade them. Lenin pointed out that free trade would first lead to some revival of the capitalist elements, that private trade would have to be allowed and private industrialists would have to be allowed to open private enterprises. But a certain freedom of trade turnover and the associated certain allowance of capitalist elements in conditions when the proletariat owns political power and all the commanding heights of the national economy does not pose a danger to the proletarian state. On the contrary, some freedom of trade turnover will create economic interest among peasants, lead to an increase in labor productivity, to a rapid rise in agriculture, to the creation of a solid base - food, raw materials, fuel - for the development of large-scale industry, which is the basis of socialism. For “the only material basis of socialism can be large-scale machine industry, capable of reorganizing agriculture”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVI, p. 434). Therefore, even with the first signs of the end of the civil war, Lenin was developing a plan for the electrification of the country (GOELRO), a plan for the transfer of the country’s economy, including agriculture, “to a new technical base, to the technical base of modern large-scale production”(ibid., p. 46). The task was to accumulate strength and resources, create a powerful socialist industry, launch a decisive offensive against capitalist elements, and destroy the remnants of capitalism in the country.

War communism, caused solely by the tasks of national defense, “was an attempt to take the fortress of capitalist elements in the city and countryside by storm, by a frontal attack”[History of the CPSU(b). Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, p. 245]. In the spring of 1921, in connection with the end of the civil war, it became clear that it was impossible to continue the policy of war communism, that this “the direct transition to purely socialist forms, to purely socialist distribution exceeds our strength”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVII, p. 345) and that it is necessary to make a temporary retreat in order to better communicate with your rear base and, having accumulated strength, go on a new offensive. Indeed, the first year of implementation of the NEP showed that the country is on the rise. The country not only successfully coped with the famine, but also received hundreds of millions of pounds of bread; Some improvement has been achieved in stabilizing the ruble; socialist industry as a whole reached 19.5% of the pre-war level against 13.8% in 1921; the alliance of workers and peasants strengthened; The power and strength of the dictatorship of the proletariat increased. Already at the XI Party Congress, Lenin declared that the retreat was over, that the slogan was "preparation of an attack on private economic capital» (Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVII, p. 213). In November 1922, Lenin’s words that “from NEP Russia there will be socialist Russia”(ibid., p. 366).

The Trotskyists and their right-wing allies, who fought for the restoration of capitalism in our country, did not want to understand either this feature of the retreat undertaken by the party at the beginning of the NEP, or the essence of the NEP; They “they believed that the NEP was only a retreat. This interpretation was beneficial to them, because they were pursuing a line towards the restoration of capitalism. This was a deeply harmful, anti-Leninist interpretation of the NEP."(History of the CPSU(b). Edited by the Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU(b), 1938, p. 245].

The decision of the X Congress of the RCP(b) on the transition to the NEP ensured a strong economic union of the working class and the peasantry for the construction of socialism. By making concessions to the middle peasantry, that is, by allowing a certain freedom of trade in which the middle peasants were interested as small producers, the party and the working class laid a solid economic basis for the alliance of the working class and the peasantry. “We openly, honestly, without any deception, declare to the peasants; in order to maintain the path to socialism, we, comrade peasants, will make a whole series of concessions to you, but only within such and such limits and to such and such an extent, and, of course, we ourselves will judge what measure this is and what limits.”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVI, p. 401).

Without strengthening the alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, without strengthening the leading role of the proletariat in this alliance, the strengthening of the proletarian state would be unthinkable, and, consequently, the victorious construction of socialism would be impossible. That's why Lenin said that “the task of the NEP, the main, decisive one, subordinating everything else, is to establish a link between the new economy that we began to build... and the peasant economy”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXV11, p. 230). The assumption of freedom of trade and the associated inevitable growth of capitalist elements meant “economic competition between socialism under construction and capitalism striving for revival on the basis of satisfaction through the market of the multimillion-dollar peasantry”(Lenin, ibid., p. 147).

The NEP is dual in nature - Comrade Stalin taught. Allowing capitalist relations within certain limits, using them in the interests of socialist construction, the dictatorship of the proletariat simultaneously leads a stubborn systematic struggle against capitalist elements, pursuing a policy of limiting (and ousting) capitalist elements at the initial stage of the NEP and eliminating the kulaks as a class based on complete collectivization at a later stage. On the rails of the NEP, in stubborn battles, the problem of “who will win” was resolved. The NEP, as Lenin put it, was introduced by the party “seriously and for a long time.”

“If we adhere to the NEP,” Stalin said in 1929, “it is because it serves the cause of socialism. And when he stops serving the cause of socialism, we will throw him to hell. Lenin said that the NEP was introduced seriously and for a long time. But he never said that the NEP was introduced forever."(Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th ed., p. 317).

The bourgeoisie, defeated in open battle but not completely finished off, tried to take advantage of the transition to the NEP in its struggle against socialist construction, actively supported by the Trotskyists, Bukharinites and other opposition groups, who imposed a trade union discussion on the party, in which essentially the dispute was about the attitude of the party to the masses in the conditions transition to peaceful work. Trotskyist-Bukharin traitors and traitors to the motherland, proceeding from the counter-revolutionary “theory” of the impossibility of building socialism in one single country, denying the duality of the NEP, fought against the NEP as a policy designed to strengthen the dictatorship of the proletariat, to build a socialist society. Admiring capitalism and striving to strengthen the position of capitalism in the country, they demanded concessions to private capital both inside and outside the country, demanded the surrender of a number of commanding heights of Soviet power to private capital on the basis of concessions or mixed joint-stock companies with the participation of foreign capital, and demanded unlimited freedom of trade. On the other hand, “leftist” loudmouths, political freaks like Lominadze, Shatskin and others fell into panic and sowed decadent sentiments around them. They tried to “prove” that the introduction of the NEP meant a rejection of the gains of the October Revolution, a return to capitalism, and the death of Soviet power. “Both of them were alien to Marxism and Leninism. The Party exposed and isolated both. The party gave a decisive rebuff to alarmists and capitulators.”[History of the CPSU(b). Edited by the Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, p. 247]. The greater the victories socialism won, the more hopeless the position of the exploiting classes became, the more furious and desperate became their attacks against the dictatorship of the proletariat, against the leading force in the system of the dictatorship of the proletariat - the party of Lenin-Stalin. After the destruction of the exploiting classes in the USSR, the frantic struggle against the dictatorship of the proletariat and the Bolshevik Party continues to be waged by elements hostile to socialism, Trotskyist-Bukharin degenerates - agents of fascist intelligence services.

The period of the party’s struggle for the restoration of the national economy (1921-25). The first period of the NEP, the stage immediately following the civil war, is the period restorative. During this period, the party and the Soviet government faced the following main tasks:

a) to provide an economic basis for the workers’ and peasants’ union;

b) restore agriculture and small industry and thereby create a strong raw material and food base for the restoration and development of large-scale industry;

c) save the main productive force of the country - the working class - from hunger;

d) master trade - the main form of connection between city and village in that period;

e) strengthen and expand socialist positions in the national economy on the basis of the NEP.

The main document that determined the transition of the Soviet country to the new economic policy was the decree published on 11/IV 1921 “On replacing food and raw materials allocation with a tax in kind” (see. In-kind tax ).

"Food tax"- Lenin said, - represents the measure to which we see both something of the past and something of the future.”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVI, p. 299).

From the past, the tax in kind was the withdrawal by the state of part of the production from the population without remuneration; from the future - the peasants exchange their surpluses for the products of socialist industry.

The replacement of surplus appropriation with a tax in kind created an incentive among peasants to expand arable land, to improve land cultivation, and increased their demand for industrial goods. Peasants were levied taxes in kind taking into account their class and property status. Small-scale farms were completely exempted from the tax in kind. The transition to a new economic policy required a number of serious organizational measures to streamline peasant land use, regulate rent and hired labor.

All these issues were given legislative form in the decisions of the 9th Congress of Soviets (December 1921), which instructed the All-Russian Central Executive Committee “to issue a resolution on the temporary short-term assignment of land use rights to weakened labor farms (lease) and on the conditions for the use of hired labor in peasant farming”(Collection of laws... Government [RSFSR], 1922, No. 4, Art. 41). The concessions made by the workers' state to the working peasantry during the transition to the NEP did not go beyond the most important principles of the dictatorship of the proletariat: the nationalization of land remained an unshakable principle throughout the entire period of socialist construction.

The methods of planned influence of the Soviet state on the agricultural economy during the recovery period can be divided into three categories:

a) legislative measures (laws and regulations on taxes, land use, land management, rent, waste industries);

b) measures of economic influence (prices, cooperation, credit, insurance, encouragement of artels, communes, construction of state farms);

c) measures of cultural influence (agricultural propaganda, agricultural education, breeding stations, breeding nurseries).

Using all these levers, the party and the Soviet government systematically managed small-peasant agriculture day after day, directing its development along the path of preparation for a decisive socialist offensive. Using these levers, the party limited and ousted the kulaks, while at the same time helping the poor to improve their economy. The central figure in agriculture remained middle peasant, whose specific gravity increased due to the rise of low-capacity farms. The party was then faced with a task in the countryside: the rise of agriculture, increasing its production while simultaneously limiting the exploitative tendencies of the kulaks and supporting low-power farms.

“The formal contradiction that is created by the need to simultaneously solve both problems is resolved only by the massive growth of genuine cooperation that Comrade Lenin wrote about.”[VKP(b) in resolutions..., part 1, 5th ed., 1936, p. 602].

The activities of the party and the Soviet government in the field of agriculture were reduced to the consistent systematic implementation of the Leninist cooperative plan, which is a specific program of action of the proletarian state, designed to involve tens of millions of peasants, first in consumer, marketing, and then production cooperation. Lenin's Cooperative Plan ).

"In essence,- Lenin wrote, - to cooperate sufficiently broadly and deeply with the Russian population under the rule of the NEP is all we need, because now we have found that degree of combination of private interest, private commercial interest, verification and control by the state... which previously constituted a stumbling block for many and many socialists"(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVII, pp. 391-392).

The enemies of socialism - the Trotskyists-Bukharinites - waged a furious struggle against Lenin's cooperative plan. The Trotskyists contrasted the Lenin-Stalinist program of the bond between the proletariat and the working peasantry with the provocative program of “devouring” peasant farms by the proletarian state and the forced pumping of funds from the countryside. The fascist hirelings - the right, led by Bukharin - in the struggle against the implementation of Lenin's cooperative plan tried to limit it to the framework of purchasing and sales cooperation, disrupted production cooperation, demanded the implementation of such economic measures that would contribute to the growth of kulak farms, etc. The enemies of socialism tried to do this to achieve the rupture of the alliance of the working class with the peasantry, to achieve the restoration of capitalism in our country. Only in a fierce struggle against the enemies of socialism did the Communist Party and the Soviet government ensure that by the end of the restoration period the country's agriculture exceeded the pre-war level. The cost of agricultural products by 1925-1926. amounted to 11.9 billion rubles compared to 11.7 billion rubles in 1913 (in pre-war prices).

The assumption under the NEP of a certain freedom of trade turnover, as a necessary condition at the initial stage for establishing correct economic relations between the working class and the peasantry, raised the question of trade, of mastering trade turnover, as the most important political task. Trade during this period was the main link in the chain of tasks facing the party. “The main lever of the new economic policy is the exchange of goods”, says the resolution of the May (1921) All-Russian Conference of the RCP (b) [see. CPSU(b) in resolutions..., part. 1.5 ed., 1936, pp. 405-406]. Without solving this problem, it was impossible to develop trade turnover between city and countryside, it was impossible to strengthen the economic union of workers and peasants, it was impossible to improve agriculture, restore and further develop industry. Meanwhile, Soviet trade was still very weak; Taking advantage of this, private capital first of all rushed into trade in the hope of easy money.

“A contradiction is created,- says the decisions of the XIII Party Congress, - when industry is in the hands of the state, and private trade acts as an intermediary between it and the peasant. That is why the task of developing cooperation is, first of all, the task of ousting private capital from trade and thereby creating a continuous connection between peasant farming and socialist industry.”[VKP(b) in resolutions..., part 1.5 ed., 1936, p. 596].

It was possible to win private capital in trade turnover only by learning to trade. The assumption of a certain freedom of trade under the NEP did not at all mean complete freedom of trade.

Comrade Stalin said, - doesn't mean at all full freedom of trade, free play of prices on the market. NEP is freedom of trade in famous within famous within, while ensuring the regulatory role of the state and its role in the market» (Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th ed., p. 260).

By contrasting private trade with cooperative and state trade, the party and the Soviet government already at this stage achieved the displacement of private trade. By the end of the recovery period, cooperation and state trade already covered about 60% of retail trade and 95% of wholesale trade.

"Our main task is- Lenin said at the All-Russian Conference of the RCP(b) in May 1921, - restoration of large-scale industry. And in order for us to move any seriously and systematically towards the restoration of this large-scale industry, we need the restoration of small-scale industry.”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVI, p. 391).

Based on this Leninist instruction, on the one hand, the largest, most important for the country’s economy, were singled out from the total mass of industrial enterprises, and production was launched at them first. Lenin suggested:

"Immediately a list of the best enterprises(certainly enterprises) by industry sector. Close from 1/2 to 4/5 of the present. The rest will be put into 2 shifts. Only those who have enough fuel and bread, even with a minimum production of bread (200 million poods) and fuel (?) for the whole year... Everything else is for rent or given to anyone, or closed or “thrown away”, forgotten until lasting improvement, which allows us to absolutely count not on 200 million poods of bread + X million poods of fuel, but on 300 million poods of bread + 150% X fuel"(ibid., pp. 466 and 467).

On the other hand, the limited resources of fuel, raw materials and food forced the proletarian state to lease out some small enterprises, which, as is known, Lenin considered as one of the forms of state capitalism allowed under the NEP. As of 1/1 1923, a total of 4,330 manufacturing enterprises were leased, which amounted to 16,6% all nationalized enterprises (this number includes enterprises handed over not only to private individuals, but also to cooperative and other public organizations). The average number of workers per leased enterprise was 16.

The most typical form of state capitalist enterprises allowed under the NEP were concessions(cm.). By transferring enterprises in concession, the party pursued a dual goal: on the one hand, "distracting imperialist forces from us"(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXV, p. 505), and on the other hand, the development of those types of production that could not be put into use with the own resources of the Soviet Republic.

"We admit quite openly- Lenin said, - we do not hide the fact that concessions in the system of state capitalism mean a tribute to capitalism. But we are gaining time, and gaining time means winning everything.”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVI, p. 461).

The Trotskyist capitulators, who considered the NEP as a retreat from socialist positions, proposed to grant a concession vital for the Soviet state industries. Thus they offered go into bondage to capitalism, capitulate to him, surrender to the mercy of foreign capitalists.

“The party branded these capitulating proposals as treasonous. She did not refuse to use the policy of concessions, but only in such industries and in such sizes that were beneficial to the Soviet state."[History of the CPSU(b). Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, p. 250].

For the period 1921-26. The Soviet government received about 2 thousand proposals for concluding concessions from foreign capitalists, but only 135 contracts. The role of concessions was insignificant in restoring our economy.

The party also decisively rejected the proposal of the Trotskyists-Bukharinites to eliminate the foreign trade monopoly as capitulatory, aimed at protecting the speculator, the Nepman, the kulak.

New conditions for industry (relative freedom of trade, the need to deal with the market, etc.) required the transfer of state industry to economic accounting. Economic calculation becomes under NEP the only possible industrial management method [see. Resolutions of the XI Congress of the RCP(b)]. The transition to the NEP also required a new organization of state industry: trusts and syndicates were created. By the beginning of 1923, there were 172 trusts subordinated directly to the Supreme Council of the National Economy, and 258 local trusts. The 17 syndicates that existed by this time concentrated the trading activities of 176 trusts and 48 trusted enterprises.

Under the daily leadership of the Lenin-Stalin party, in a fierce struggle with all the restorers of capitalism, socialist industry was quickly restored on the rails of the NEP. If in 1921, during the transition to the NEP, the gross output of the licensed industry was only 13.8% of the pre-war level, then in 1922 it reached 19.5%, in 1923 - 39.1%, in 1924 - 45 .5%, in 1925 - 75.8%. The annual increase in the output of Soviet industry during the recovery period of the NEP can be seen from the following data: in 1921 +41.1%, in 1922 +30.7%, in 1923 +22.9%, in 1924 +14 .4%, in 1925 +66.1%.

The development of the national economy on the basis of the NEP required the creation of a strong, stable monetary unit, without which it was impossible to implement the principle of cost accounting, it was impossible to establish a comprehensive exchange of goods between city and countryside, between individual branches of industry, and between different regions of the country. The monetary reform carried out by our party in 1923-24, despite the opposition of the Trotskyists, gave the country a stable red ruble, which ensured the rapid growth of the entire national economy and the ability to confidently plan its development.

“On the path of the new economic policy, decisive successes were achieved in restoring the national economy. The Country of Soviets successfully passed the recovery period in the development of the national economy and began to move on to a new period, the period of industrialization of the country."[History of the CPSU(b). Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, p. 266].

The period of the party’s struggle for the socialist industrialization of the country (1926-29). Consistent and steady implementation of party policy on the basis of the NEP ensured by 1926. restoration of pre-war levels industry, agriculture, freight and trade turnover. At the same time, the socialist sector took decisive positions in everyone sectors of the national economy (except agriculture). The dictatorship of the proletariat has strengthened. This created the necessary material prerequisites for the further development of socialist construction. At the same time, the contradictions between the most advanced political power in the world and the backward technical base of the country, between socialist concentrated industry and small, fragmented peasant farming, between the weak defense capability of the Soviet country and the capitalist world, armed to the teeth, emerged with particular force. To resolve these contradictions, it was necessary to quickly create a large socialist industry, because “the real and only basis for consolidating resources, for creating a socialist society is one and only one - this is large-scale industry”(Lenin, Soch., vol. XXVI, p. 390). The XIV Congress of the CPSU (b) (1925) clearly defined the line of economic development of the USSR, giving a firm directive “to carry out economic construction from such an angle as to transform the USSR from a country importing machinery and equipment into a country producing machinery and equipment”[VKP(b) in resolutions..., part 2, 5th ed., 1936, p. 48].

This Leninist-Stalinist policy industrialization(cm. Socialist industrialization ), which provided the material and technical basis for socialist production relations, was met with hostility by all the enemies of socialism: the kulaks and the urban bourgeoisie, the Mensheviks and Shakhty wreckers, Trotskyists and the right. The counter-revolutionary “theory” about the impossibility of building socialism in the USSR, put forward by the Trotskyists and Zinovievites in the struggle against the party, became the banner around which all anti-Soviet elements, all enemies of the people in the USSR and beyond were grouped.

Step by step, in a stubborn struggle against enemies, the Lenin-Stalin party strengthened the position of socialism in the national economy. Based on the successes in the development of the national economy “and bearing in mind the organization of a systematic offensive of socialism against capitalist elements throughoutfrontfolkfarms"[History of the CPSU(b). Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, p. 276], it began to compile first five year plan development of the national economy. Already the first successes in carrying out the policy of socialist industrialization, noted by Stalin in the article “The Year of the Great Turnaround” (1929), were expressed in the resolution of the problem of accumulation by the socialist country, in the accelerated movement forward of our heavy industry, in the growth of labor productivity, in exceeding the planned rates the first five-year plan, in turning the middle peasants towards collective farms. By 1930, the party achieved that socialist industry took over the national economy decisive place. The share of industry in gross output increased from 42.1% in 1913 to 53%, and the share of agriculture, with its absolute growth, decreased from 57.9% to 47%. At the same time, the share of the socialized sector in large-scale industry increased from 97.7% in 1926/27. to 99.3% in 1929/30 with a decrease in the share of the private economic sector from 2.3% in 1926/27. to 0.7% in 1929/30

“It is clear,” Stalin said at the 16th Party Congress, “that the question of “who will win”, the question of whether socialism will defeat the capitalist elements in industry or they will defeat socialism, has already been decided mainly in favor of socialist forms of industry. Decided finally and irrevocably"(Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th edition, p. 366).

The party also successfully launched an offensive against the kulaks, relying on the poor peasants and strengthening the alliance with the middle peasants. In response to the kulaks’ refusal to sell surplus grain to the state at fixed prices, the party and government carried out a number of emergency measures against the kulaks, which had their effect: “the poor and middle peasants joined the decisive struggle against the kulaks, the kulaks were isolated, the resistance of the kulaks and speculators was broken”[History of the CPSU(b). Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, p. 279].

The period of the party's struggle for the collectivization of agriculture (1930-34). The rapid growth of socialist industry, which prepared the material and technical basis for the widespread development of collective farm construction, the party’s consistently pursued policy of educating the masses, bringing the peasantry to collective farms through the establishment of a cooperative society, extensive production assistance to the peasantry from the proletarian state (supply of agricultural implements, etc. .), a decisive struggle against the kulaks, the good experience of the first collective and state farms, the struggle for the implementation of the general line of the party ensured the turn of the peasantry onto the socialist path of development, the deployment of extensive work on collectivization of agriculture (cm.). Only along the path of collectivization was it possible to overcome the lag of agriculture, which was unable to satisfy the rapidly growing needs of industry for raw materials and food; only collectivization made it possible to eliminate such an abnormal situation, when the proletarian state was based on two opposing foundations: on large, concentrated socialist industry, which destroyed capitalism, and on a fragmented and backward small-peasant economy, which revived capitalism.

"Exit,- said Comrade Stalin at the XV Congress of the CPSU (b), - in the transition of small and scattered peasant farms to large and united farms based on social cultivation of the land, in the transition to collective cultivation of the land on the basis of new, higher technology. The solution is to unite small and minute peasant farms gradually, but steadily, not by pressure, but by demonstration and persuasion, into large farms on the basis of social, comradely, collective cultivation of the land, with the use of agricultural machines and tractors, using scientific methods of agricultural intensification"[Stalin, Political Report of the Central Committee to the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 1937, p. 31].

At the same time, the party outlined and implemented a broad program for the construction of powerful state farms, which were not only a source of grain resources, but “were the leading force that facilitated the turn of the peasant masses and moved them towards collectivization”(Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th ed., p. 373).

At the end of 1929, due to the growth of collective and state farms, Soviet power made a sharp turn from the policy of limiting the kulaks to the policy of liquidation, to the policy of destroying the kulaks as a class. The laws on renting land and hiring labor were abolished, and peasants were allowed to confiscate livestock, cars, and other agricultural products from the kulaks in favor of collective farms. inventory.

“The kulaks were expropriated... It was a profound revolutionary revolution, a leap from the old qualitative state of society to a new qualitative state, equivalent in its consequences to the revolutionary coup in October 1917.

The uniqueness of this revolution was that it was carried out above, on the initiative of government authorities, with direct support from below on the part of the millions of peasants who fought against kulak bondage and for free collective farm life.

This revolution resolved at one stroke three fundamental issues of socialist construction:

a) She eliminated the largest exploiting class in our country, the kulak class, the stronghold of the restoration of capitalism;

b) She transferred the most numerous working class in our country, the class of peasants, from the path of individual farming, which gives rise to capitalism, to the path of public, collective farm, socialist farming;

c) It gave Soviet power a socialist base in the most extensive and vital, but also in the most backward area of ​​the national economy - agriculture.

Thus, the last sources of restoration of capitalism were destroyed within the country and at the same time new, decisive conditions necessary for building a socialist national economy were created.”[History of the CPSU(b). Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, pp. 291-292].

With the transition to the policy of eliminating the kulaks as a class, the offensive against capitalist elements became general and went on the offensive along the entire front.

“Going on the offensive along the entire front,- said Comrade Stalin at the XVI Party Congress, - we are not canceling the NEP yet, because private trade and capitalist elements still remain, commodity circulation and the money economy still remain, - but we are certainly canceling the initial stage of the NEP, unfolding its subsequent stage, the current stage of the NEP, which is the last stage of the NEP.”(Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th ed., pp. 388-389).

The successes of socialist industrialization, the decisive victory of the socialist sector in industry, and the unfolding socialist reconstruction of agriculture have introduced changes in the forms of connection between city and countryside, the working class and the peasantry. The main form of the link during this period is the production link, which is only supplemented by the commodity link.

"While it was all about restoration agriculture and the development by peasants of former landowners and kulak lands, we could be content with the old forms of the bond. But now that it's about reconstruction agriculture is no longer enough. Now we need to go further, helping the peasantry to rebuild agricultural production on the basis of new technology and collective labor.”(Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th ed., p. 264).

The proletarian state supplied the villages with ever-expanding means of production - machines, mineral fertilizers, agricultural implements.

As a result of the implementation of the first five-year plan in 4 years, the USSR turned from an agricultural country into powerful industrial country, and agriculture of the Soviet Union turned into the largest in the world socialist agriculture. As a result of the implementation of the first five-year plan, the socialist economic system became the only one economic system in industry and the dominant force in agriculture. By the XVII Party Congress, which went down in history as the “Congress of the Winners,” socialist industry already accounted for 99% of the country’s total industry. Socialist agriculture - collective farms and state farms - occupied about 90% of all sown areas of the country. The growth in the output of socialist industry and socialist agriculture, the revival and expansion of trade turnover radically changed the nature of trade. The trade of the initial period of the NEP was replaced by Soviet trade, i.e. “trade without capitalists - small and large, trade without speculators - small and large.”(Stalin, ibid., p. 505).

A desperate struggle was waged against the Stalinist policy of industrialization and collectivization, which directed the Soviet country to industrial power, to technical and economic independence, and to the destruction of the exploiting classes, by enemies of socialism of all stripes, by bourgeois-restoration elements lurking within our party. Under the leadership of Stalin, the party suppressed the resistance of the kulaks, exposed the restorationist essence of the Trotskyist-Zinovievist and Bukharinist installations, designed to restore the power of capitalists and landowners in our country, and ensured the triumph of the Leninist-Stalinist plan for building socialism in our country.

When introducing the New Economic Policy in 1921, Lenin spoke about the presence in our country of elements of five socio-economic structures:

1) patriarchal, largely subsistence economy,

2) small-scale production (the majority of peasants involved in the sale of agricultural products and artisans),

3) private economic capitalism,

4) state capitalism (mainly concessions) and

5) socialism (socialist industry, state farms and collective farms and state trade and cooperation).

“Lenin pointed out that of all these structures, the socialist structure should prevail. The new economic policy was designed for the complete victory of socialist forms of economy."[History of the CPSU(b), Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1938, p. 306].

By the XVII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, this goal had been achieved, socialism had won in all spheres of the national economy and "socialist way of life"- said Comrade Stalin, - is the undivided dominant and sole commanding force in the entire national economy."(Stalin, Questions of Leninism, 10th edition, p. 555).

The period of the party’s struggle to complete the construction of socialism and implement a new constitution (1935-37). The last stage of the NEP, coinciding with the end of the transition period, is the period of struggle to complete the construction of socialism and the adoption of the Stalin Constitution, which legislated the victory of socialism in the USSR. As a result of the victorious completion of two Stalinist five-year plans, the Soviet Union turned into a powerful, technically equipped socialist power, the unshakable basis of which is socialist ownership of the means of production. The multi-structured economy of the transition period has been completely eliminated. In 1936, socialist forms of economy accounted for 99.1% of the national income, 99.8% of gross industrial output, 97.7% of gross agricultural output, 100% of trade turnover, 98.7% of industrial production. funds of the entire national economy. Comparing the economy of the USSR in 1924 and 1936, Comrade Stalin said:

“If we then had the first period of the NEP, the beginning of the NEP, a period of some revival of capitalism, then we now have the last period of the NEP, the end of the NEP, the period of the complete elimination of capitalism in all spheres of the national economy.”(Stalin, On the draft Constitution of the USSR, 1936, p. 8).

The USSR is a socialist country. The victory of socialism in the USSR is recorded in the greatest document of our time - in the Stalin Constitution, article 4 of which reads:

“The economic basis of the USSR is the socialist economic system and socialist ownership of the tools and means of production, established as a result of the liquidation of the capitalist economic system, the abolition of private ownership of the tools and means of production and the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.”(Constitution of the USSR 1936, Art. 4).

The exploitation of man by man has been completely and forever destroyed in the USSR, the very possibility of appropriating the labor of others has been uprooted, the exploiting classes have been completely eliminated. Soviet society consists of two friendly classes - workers and peasants, between whom class differences still remain. The Soviet intelligentsia is an equal member of socialist society and, together with workers and peasants, is building a new socialist society. The fundamental changes that have taken place in the class structure of the country's population are clearly illustrated in the table.

The preservation of class differences between the two friendly classes - the working class and the peasantry - is due to the presence in the USSR of two forms of socialist property - state and cooperative-collective farm.

However, from the fact of the liquidation of the exploiting classes one cannot at all draw the conclusion that the socialist state of workers and peasants no longer has enemies. There remains a hostile capitalist environment, feeding all the enemies of socialism, the Trotskyist-Bukharin gang of fascist spies, saboteurs, saboteurs and murderers. Socialism won only in one country, surrounded by capitalist states. This means that the danger of intervention, and therefore restoration of capitalism has not yet been removed by history. In his response to Komsomol member Ivanov’s letter, Comrade Stalin wrote:

“We could say that this victory is final if our country were on an island and if there were not many other capitalist countries around it. But since we do not live on an island, but “in a system of states,” a significant part of which are hostile to the country of socialism, creating the danger of intervention and restoration, we say openly and honestly that the victory of socialism in our country is not yet final.”(Letter from Comrade Ivanov and response from Comrade Stalin, 1938, p. 12).

Hence the task of strengthening the socialist state, strengthening its army, punitive agencies and intelligence, which “their edge is no longer directed towards the inside of the country, but outside it, against external enemies”[Stalin, Report at the XVIII Party Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, 1939, p. 57].

As a result of the implementation of the second five-year plan, an unprecedented growth in the productive forces and culture of the Soviet country was achieved. In terms of industrial output, the USSR ranked first place in Europe and second in the world. The technical reconstruction of the national economy of the USSR has been largely completed. “The USSR has turned into an economically independent country, providing its economy and defense needs with all the necessary technical weapons”[Resolutions of the XVIII Congress of the CPSU(b), 1939, p. 12]. By production technology, industry of the USSR surpassed advanced capitalist countries.

The third five-year plan set the main economic task - “to catch up and surpass economically also the most developed capitalist countries of Europe and the United States of America”(ibid., p. 13).

The construction of a socialist society and the elimination of the exploiting classes basically exhausts the tasks of the transition period, and, consequently, of the NEP. The USSR entered the third five-year plan “into a new period of development, into the period of completion of the construction of a classless socialist society and the gradual transition from socialism to communism, when crucial gains the cause of the communist education of the working people, overcoming the remnants of capitalism in the minds of people - the builders of communism"(ibid., p. 11). There is still a lot of work to be done to strengthen labor discipline in all enterprises, institutions, collective farms, to create high labor productivity worthy of a socialist society; The entry of a peasant into a collective farm does not yet exhaust the problem of re-educating him, turning him into a socialist worker. This problem can be solved only in the process further growth and strengthening of socialism. The implementation of the third five-year plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR (1938-42), adopted by the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b), will be a new giant step towards the complete triumph of communism.

TSB, 1st ed., vol. 42, 1939, room 207-223

Lit.: Lenin V.I., Soch., 3rd ed., vol. XXII (“On “leftist” childishness and petty-bourgeoisism”); t. XXVII (“New economic policy and tasks of political education. Outline of speech at the II All-Russian Congress of Political Education on October 17-22, 1921”; “New economic policy and tasks of political education. Report at the II All-Russian Congress of Political Education on October 17, 1921”; “On the new economic policy "; "On the internal and foreign policy of the republic. Report of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars to the IX All-Russian Congress of Soviets on December 23, 1921"; "On the international and internal situation of the Soviet Republic. Report at the meeting of the communist faction of the All-Russian Congress of Metalworkers 6/III 1922"; "XI Congress of the RCP (b) 27/III-2/IV 1922. Political report of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) 27/SH"; "Plan of speech at the IV Congress of the Comintern"; "Five years of the Russian revolution and prospects for the world revolution. Report at the IV Congress of the Comintern 13 /XI 1922"); t. XXVI (“On the food tax”, “Report on the tax in kind” 15/111 1921; “Speech on the food tax at the meeting of secretaries and responsible representatives of the cells of the RCP (b) of Moscow and Moscow province. 9/IV 1921"; “Plan and notes of the brochure “On food tax””); Stalin I. Questions of Leninism, 10th ed., [M.], 1938 [“On questions of Leninism”; “Political report of the Central Committee to the XVI Congress of the CPSU (b)”; “On the right-wing danger in the CPSU (b)”; “Results of the first five-year plan”; “Report to the XVII Party Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)”; “On the right deviation in the CPSU (b)”]; Final word on the political report of the Central Committee to the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), in the book: Lenin and Stalin, C6. works for the study of the history of the CPSU (b), vol. III, M., 1937; Stalin I., On the draft Constitution of the USSR, Report at the Extraordinary VIII All-Union Congress of Soviets, [M.], 1936; Molotov V.M., On changes in the Soviet Constitution. Report at the VII Congress of Soviets, [M.], 1935; CPSU(b) in resolutions and decisions of congresses, conferences and plenums of the Central Committee (1898-1935), parts 1-2, [M.], 1936; Resolutions and Decrees of the IX All-Russian Congress of Soviets (Collection of Legislations... Governments, [RSFSR], M., 1922, No. 4); History of the CPSU(b). Ed. Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, [M.], 1938; Constitution (Basic Law) of the USSR, [M.], 1938; Stalin I., Report at the XVIII Party Congress on the work of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, [M.], 1939; Molotov V., The Third Five-Year Plan for the Development of the National Economy of the USSR, [M.], 1939; Resolutions of the XVIII Congress of the CPSU (b), [M.], 1939.

New Economic Policy(abbr. NEP or NEP) - economic policy pursued in the 1920s in Soviet Russia. It was adopted on March 14, 1921 by the X Congress of the RCP(b), replacing the policy of “military communism” carried out during the Civil War, which led Russia to economic decline. The New Economic Policy aimed to introduce private entrepreneurship and revive market relations, with the restoration of the national economy. The NEP was a forced measure and largely improvised. However, during the seven years of its existence, it became one of the most successful economic projects of the Soviet period. The main content of the NEP is the replacement of surplus appropriation with a tax in kind in the countryside (up to 70% of grain was confiscated during the surplus appropriation system, about 30% with the tax in kind), the use of the market and various forms of ownership, attracting foreign capital in the form of concessions, carrying out a monetary reform (1922-1924), in as a result of which the ruble became a convertible currency.

The Soviet state faced the problem of financial stabilization, and, therefore, suppressing inflation and achieving a balanced state budget. The state's strategy, aimed at survival under the credit blockade, determined the USSR's primacy in compiling production balances and distributing products. The New Economic Policy assumed state regulation of a mixed economy using planned and market mechanisms. 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.

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Prerequisites

By 1921, Russia was literally in ruins. The territories of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, and Bessarabia emerged from the former Russian Empire. According to experts, the population in the remaining territories barely reached 135 million. During the hostilities, the Donbass, the Baku oil region, the Urals and Siberia were especially damaged, and many mines and mines were destroyed. Factories shut down due to a lack of fuel and raw materials. Workers were forced to leave the cities and go to the countryside. The volume of industrial production decreased significantly, and as a result, agricultural production.

Society has degraded, its intellectual potential has weakened significantly. Most of the Russian intelligentsia were 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 grain, but also rose up in armed struggle. Uprisings spread across the Tambov region, Ukraine, Don, Kuban, Volga region and Siberia. Units of the Red Army were sent to suppress these protests.

Discontent also spread to the army. On March 1, 1921, sailors and Red Army soldiers of the Kronstadt garrison under the slogan “ For Soviets without communists!"demanded the release from imprisonment of all representatives of socialist parties, re-election of the Soviets and, as follows from the slogan, the expulsion of all communists from them, granting 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 surplus appropriation.

From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Kronstadt:

Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, and economic devastation have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, which rules the country, has become disconnected from the masses and has been unable to bring it out of the state of general devastation. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently occurred in Petrograd and Moscow and which quite clearly indicated that the party had lost the trust of the working masses. It also did not take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the machinations of counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of all the people, all the working people. All workers, sailors and Red Army soldiers clearly see at the moment that only through common efforts, the common will of the working people, can we give the country bread, firewood, coal, clothe the shoeless and undressed, and lead the republic out of the dead end...

Convinced of the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the rebels, the authorities launched an assault on Kronstadt. By alternating artillery shelling and infantry actions, Kronstadt was captured by March 18; Some of the rebels died, the rest went to Finland or surrendered.

Progress of development of NEP

Proclamation of NEP

In connection with the introduction of the NEP, certain legal guarantees were introduced for private property. Thus, on May 22, 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a decree “On basic private property rights recognized by the RSFSR, protected by its laws and protected by the courts of the RSFSR.” Then, by decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of November 11, 1922, the Civil Code of the RSFSR was put into effect on January 1, 1923, which, in particular, provided that every citizen has the right to organize industrial and commercial enterprises.

NEP in the financial sector

The task of the first stage of the monetary reform, implemented within the framework of one of the directions of the state’s economic policy, was to stabilize the monetary and credit relations of the USSR with other countries. After two denominations, as a result of which 1 million rubles in the old banknotes were equated to 1 ruble in the new sovznak, parallel circulation of depreciating sovznak was introduced to service small trade turnover and hard chervonets, backed by precious metals, stable foreign currency and easily marketable goods. Chervonets was equal to the old 10-ruble gold coin, which contained 7.74 grams of pure gold.

It is necessary, however, to note the fact that wealthy peasants were taxed at higher rates. Thus, on the one hand, the opportunity was provided 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 “middleization” of the village. The well-being of peasants as a whole has increased compared to the pre-war level, the number of poor and rich has decreased, and the share of middle peasants has increased.

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

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

In general, the NEP had a beneficial effect on the condition of the village. Firstly, the peasants had an incentive to work. Secondly (compared to pre-revolutionary times), many people have increased their 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 them. But the peasantry was not rich enough to provide all the needs of the state and the necessary tax revenues. Increased taxation on especially wealthy peasants also did not help, therefore, from the mid-1920s, other, non-tax methods of replenishing the treasury, such as forced loans and reduced prices for grain and inflated prices for industrial goods, began to be actively used. As a result, industrial goods, if we calculate their cost in pounds of wheat, turned out to be several times more expensive than before the war, despite their lower quality. A phenomenon emerged that, thanks to Trotsky’s light hand, began to be called “price scissors.” The peasants reacted simply - they stopped selling grain beyond what they needed to pay taxes. The first crisis in the sales of industrial goods arose in the fall of 1923. The peasants needed plows and other industrial products, but refused to buy them at inflated prices. The next crisis arose in the 1924-1925 business year (that is, in the fall of 1924 - spring of 1925). The crisis was called the “procurement” crisis, since procurement amounted to only two-thirds of the expected level. Finally, in the 1927-1928 business year there was a new crisis: it was not possible to collect even the most necessary things.

So, by 1925, it became clear that the national economy had come to a contradiction: further progress towards the market was hampered by political and ideological factors, the fear of the “degeneration” of power; a return to the military-communist type of economy was hampered by memories of the peasant war of 1920 and mass famine, and fear of anti-Soviet protests.

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 - covered more than half of all by the end of the 1920s. peasant farms. By the end of 1928. Non-production cooperation of various types, primarily peasant cooperation, covered 28 million people (13 times more than in 1913). In socialized retail trade, 60-80% was accounted for by cooperatives and only 20-40% by the state itself; in industry in 1928, 13% of all production was provided by cooperatives. There was cooperative legislation, lending, and insurance.

To replace the depreciated and in fact already rejected by the turnover of Sovznak, in 1922, the release of a new monetary unit was started - chervonets, which had a gold content and exchange rate in gold (1 chervonets = 10 pre-revolutionary gold rubles = 7.74 grams of pure gold). In 1924, the sovznaki, which were quickly being replaced by chervonets, stopped printing altogether and were withdrawn from circulation; in the same year the budget was balanced and the use of money emissions to cover government expenses was prohibited; new treasury notes were issued - rubles (10 rubles = 1 chervonets). On the foreign exchange market both domestically and abroad, chervonets were freely exchanged for gold and major foreign currencies at the pre-war exchange rate of the Tsar's ruble (1 US dollar = 1.94 rubles).

The credit system has been revived. In 1921, the State Bank of the RSFSR was created (transformed in 1923 into the State Bank of the USSR), which began lending to industry and trade on a commercial basis. In 1922-1925, a number of specialized banks were created: joint-stock banks, in which the shareholders were the State Bank, syndicates, cooperatives, private and even at one time foreign, for lending to certain sectors of the economy and regions of the country; cooperative - for lending to consumer cooperation; agricultural credit societies organized on shares, linked to the republican and central agricultural banks; mutual credit societies - for lending to private industry and trade; savings banks - to mobilize the population's savings. As of October 1, 1923, there were 17 independent banks operating in the country, and the State Bank’s share 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 State Bank’s share in lending to the national economy decreased to 48%.

Commodity-money relations, which they had previously tried to banish from production and exchange, in the 1920s penetrated into all pores of the economic organism and became the main link between its individual parts.

In just 5 years, from 1921 to 1926, the index of industrial production increased more than 3 times; agricultural production doubled and exceeded the 1913 level by 18%. But even after the end of the recovery period, economic growth continued at a rapid pace: in 1927 and 1928, the increase in industrial production was 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 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. Under the NEP conditions, the economic functions of the state also turned out to be completely new; The goals, principles and methods of government economic policy have changed radically. If previously the center directly established natural, technological proportions of reproduction by order, now it has moved on to regulating prices, trying to ensure balanced growth through indirect, economic methods.

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

A broad campaign to reduce prices was launched by the government at the end of 1923, but 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 field of rationing prices The measures taken then turned out to be successful: wholesale prices for industrial goods decreased from October 1923 to May 1, 1924 by 26% and continued to decline further.

Throughout the subsequent period until the end of the NEP, the question of prices continued to remain the core of state economic policy: raising them by trusts and syndicates threatened to repeat the sales crisis, while their excessive reduction, given the existence of a private sector along with the state sector, inevitably led to the enrichment of the private owner at the expense of state industry, to transfer of resources from state-owned 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 price regulation was carried out by a bureaucratic apparatus that was not sufficiently controlled by direct producers. The lack of democracy in the decision-making process regarding pricing became the “Achilles heel” of a market socialist economy and played a fatal role in the fate of the NEP.

No matter how brilliant the successes in the economy were, its rise was limited by strict limits. Reaching the pre-war level was not easy, but this also meant a new clash with the backwardness of yesterday's Russia, now isolated and surrounded by a world hostile to it. At the end of 1917, the US government stopped trade relations with Soviet Russia, and in 1918, the governments of England and France did so. In October 1919, the Supreme Council of the Entente announced a complete ban on all forms of economic ties with Soviet Russia. As a result of the failure of the intervention against the Soviet Republic and the growing contradictions in the economies of the imperialist countries themselves, the Entente states were forced to lift the blockade (January 1920). Having suffered defeat in organizing a general blockade, the imperialist states tried to organize the so-called. the gold blockade, refusing to accept Soviet gold as a means of payment, and a little later - the credit blockade, refusing to provide loans to the USSR. The Soviet Union successfully broke through one form of economic blockade after another.

Political struggle during the NEP

Economic processes during the NEP period overlapped with political development and were largely determined by the latter. These processes throughout the entire period of Soviet power were characterized by a tendency toward dictatorship and authoritarianism. While Lenin was at the helm, one could speak of a “collective dictatorship”; he was a leader solely due to his 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 also 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, contrasted him with the authority of Lenin and in a short time inflated him into a real cult - in order to gain the opportunity to proudly call themselves “faithful Leninists” and “ defenders of Leninism."

This was especially dangerous in combination with the dictatorship of the Communist Party. As Mikhail Tomsky, one of the senior 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 the same year an open trial of the Right Socialist Revolutionaries 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 (the convicts were later pardoned). In the same year, 1922, more than two hundred of the largest representatives of Russian philosophical thought were exiled abroad simply because they did not hide their disagreement with the Soviet system - this measure went down in history under the name “Philosophical Steamer”.

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 trade unions. In order to stop such attempts, the X Congress of the RCP (b) in 1921 adopted a resolution on party unity. According to this resolution, decisions made by the majority must be implemented by all party members, including those who disagree with them.

The consequence of one-party rule was the merging of the party and the government. The same people occupied the main positions in both party (Politburo) and government bodies (SNK, All-Russian Central Executive Committee, etc.). At the same time, the personal authority of the people's commissars and the need in the conditions of the Civil War to make urgent, urgent decisions led to the fact that the center of power was concentrated not in the legislative body (the All-Russian Central Executive Committee), 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 1920s than his place in the formal structure of state power. That is why, when speaking about figures of the 1920s, we first of all name not positions, but surnames.

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

Not only the intellectual and educational level, but also the moral level of the party decreased. In this regard, 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 are indicative. Of the 732 thousand members, only 410 thousand members were retained 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 regime,” “selfishness,” “careerism,” “bourgeois lifestyle,” and “decay in everyday life.”

In connection with the growth of the party, the initially inconspicuous position of secretary began to acquire increasing importance. Any secretary is a secondary position by definition. This is a person who ensures that the necessary formalities are observed during official events. Since April 1922, the Bolshevik Party had the position 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. Stalin received this position.

Soon the privileges of the upper layer of party members began to expand. Since 1926, this layer has received a special name - “nomenclature”. This is how they began to call party-state positions included in the list of positions, 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 centralization of power took place against the backdrop of a sharp deterioration in Lenin’s health. Actually, the year of the introduction of NEP became for him the last year of a full life. In May 1922, he was struck by the first blow - his brain was damaged, so the almost helpless Lenin was given a very gentle work schedule. In March 1923, a second attack occurred, after which Lenin dropped out of life altogether for six months, almost learning to pronounce words all over again. He had barely begun to recover from the second attack when the third and final one occurred in January 1924. As an autopsy showed, for the last almost two years of Lenin’s life, only one hemisphere of his brain was active.

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 letters to the congress, known as his “political testament” (December 1922 - January 1923), Lenin proposed expanding the Central Committee at the expense of the workers, choosing a new Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) - from the proletarians, cutting back the disproportionately swollen and therefore ineffective RKI ( Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate).

Even before Lenin’s death, at the end of 1922, a struggle began between his “heirs,” or rather, pushing Trotsky away from the helm. In the fall of 1923, the struggle took on an open character. In October, Trotsky addressed the Central Committee with a letter in which he pointed out the formation of a bureaucratic intra-party regime. A week later, a group of 46 old Bolsheviks (“Statement 46”) wrote an open letter in support of Trotsky. The Central Committee, of course, responded with a decisive denial. The leading role in this was played by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. This was not the first time that heated disputes had arisen within the Bolshevik Party, but, unlike previous discussions, this time the ruling faction actively used labeling. Trotsky was not refuted with reasonable arguments - he was simply accused of Menshevism, deviationism and other mortal sins. The substitution of labels for actual dispute is a new phenomenon: it has not happened before, but it will become increasingly common as the political process develops in the 1920s.

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

New Economic Policy(NEP) is an economic policy pursued in Soviet Russia and the USSR in the 20s. It was adopted on March 15, 1921 by the X Congress of the RCP (b), replacing the policy of “war communism” pursued during the Civil War. The New Economic Policy aimed at restoring the national economy and the subsequent transition to socialism. The main content of the NEP is the replacement of surplus appropriation with a tax in kind in the countryside (up to 70% of grain was confiscated during surplus appropriation, and about 30% with the tax in kind), the use of the market and various forms of ownership, attracting foreign capital in the form of concessions, carrying out a monetary reform (1922-1924), in as a result of which the ruble became a convertible currency.

Prerequisites for the transition to the NEP

Factories shut down due to a lack of fuel and raw materials. Workers were forced to leave the cities and go to the countryside. The volume of industrial production decreased significantly, and as a result, agricultural production.

Society has degraded, its intellectual potential has weakened significantly. Most of the Russian intelligentsia were 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 grain, but also rose up in armed struggle. Uprisings swept the Tambov region, Ukraine, Don, Kuban,

Discontent also spread to the army. On March 1, 1921, sailors and Red Army soldiers of the Kronstadt garrison under the slogan

suppression of the Kronstadt rebellion

After the end of the civil war, the country found itself in a difficult situation and faced a deep economic and political crisis. As a result of almost seven years of war, Russia lost more than a quarter of its national wealth. Industry suffered particularly heavy losses. The volume of its gross output decreased by 7 times. By 1920, reserves of raw materials and supplies were largely exhausted. Compared to 1913, the gross production of large-scale industry decreased by almost 13%, and small-scale industry by more than 44%.

Huge destruction was caused to transport. In 1920, the volume of railway transportation was 20% of the pre-war level.

The situation in agriculture has worsened. Cultivated areas, yields, gross grain harvests, and production of livestock products have decreased. Agriculture has increasingly acquired a consumer nature, its marketability has fallen by 2.5 times. There was a sharp decline in the living standards and labor of workers. As a result of the closure of many enterprises, the process of declassification of the proletariat continued.

Enormous deprivations led to the fact that, from the autumn of 1920, discontent began to intensify among the working class. The situation was complicated by the beginning demobilization of the Red Army. As the fronts of the civil war retreated to the country's borders, the peasantry began to increasingly actively oppose the surplus appropriation system, which was implemented by violent methods with the help of food detachments.

The policy of “war communism” led to the destruction of commodity-money relations. The sale of food and industrial goods was limited; they were distributed by the state in the form of wages in kind. An equalization system of wages among workers was introduced. This gave them the illusion of social equality. The failure of this policy was manifested in the formation of a “black market” and the flourishing of speculation. In the social sphere, the policy of “war communism” was based on the principle “ Who does not work shall not eat».

In 1918, labor conscription was introduced for representatives of the former exploiting classes, and in 1920, universal labor conscription. Forced mobilization of labor resources was carried out with the help of labor armies sent to restore transport, construction work, etc. Naturalization of wages led to the free provision of housing, utilities, transport, postal and telegraph services. During the period of “war communism”, an undivided dictatorship of the RCP(b) was established in the political sphere, which also subsequently became one of the reasons for the transition to the NEP. The Bolshevik Party ceased to be a purely political organization; its apparatus gradually merged with state structures. It determined the political, ideological, economic and cultural situation in the country, even the personal life of citizens. Essentially, it was about the crisis of the policy of “war communism.”

Devastation and hunger, workers' strikes, uprisings of peasants and sailors - everything indicated that a deep economic and social crisis was brewing in the country. In addition, by the spring of 1921, the hope for an early world revolution and material and technical assistance from the European proletariat had been exhausted. Therefore, V.I. Lenin revised the internal political course and recognized that only satisfying the demands of the peasantry could save the power of the Bolsheviks.

The essence of the NEP

The essence of the NEP was not clear to everyone. Disbelief in the NEP and its socialist orientation gave rise to disputes about the ways of developing the country's economy and about the possibility of building socialism. With very different understandings of the NEP, many party leaders agreed that at the end of the civil war in Soviet Russia, two main classes of the population remained: workers and peasants, and at the beginning of the 20 years after the implementation of the NEP, a new bourgeoisie appeared, the bearer of restorationist tendencies. A wide field of activity for the Nepman bourgeoisie consisted of industries serving the basic most important consumer interests of the city and countryside. V.I. Lenin understood the inevitable contradictions and dangers of development along the path of the NEP. He considered it necessary to strengthen the Soviet state to ensure victory over capitalism.

In general, the NEP economy was a complex and unstable market-administrative structure. Moreover, the introduction of market elements into it was of a forced nature, while the preservation of administrative-command elements was fundamental and strategic. Without abandoning the ultimate goal (creation of a non-market economic system) of the NEP, the Bolsheviks resorted to the use of commodity-money relations while simultaneously maintaining the “commanding heights” in the hands of the state: nationalized land and mineral resources, large and most of medium-sized industry, transport, banking, monopoly foreign trade. It was assumed that there would be a relatively long coexistence of socialist and non-socialist (state-capitalist, private capitalist, small-scale commodity, patriarchal) structures with the gradual displacement of the latter from the economic life of the country while relying on “commanding heights” and the use of levers of economic and administrative influence on large and small owners (taxes, loans , pricing policy, legislation, etc.).

From the point of view of V.I. Lenin, the essence of the NEP maneuver was to lay an economic foundation under the “union of the working class and the working peasantry,” in other words, to provide a certain freedom of management that prevailed in the country among small commodity producers in order to relieve their acute dissatisfaction with the authorities and ensure political stability in society. As the Bolshevik leader emphasized more than once, the NEP was a roundabout, indirect path to socialism, the only one possible after the failure of the attempt to directly and quickly break all market structures.

The direct path to socialism, however, was not rejected by him in principle: Lenin recognized it as quite suitable for developed capitalist states after the victory of the proletarian revolution there.

NEP in agriculture

The resolution of the 10th Congress of the RCP(b) on replacing the appropriation system with a tax in kind, which laid the foundation for the new economic policy, was legislated by a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in March 1921. The tax amount was reduced by almost half compared to the surplus appropriation system, with the main burden falling on wealthy rural peasants.

The decree limited the freedom of trade in the products remaining with the peasants after paying the tax “within the limits of local economic turnover.” Already by 1922, there was a noticeable growth in agriculture. The country was fed. In 1925, the sown area reached pre-war levels. The peasants sown almost the same area as in pre-war 1913. The gross grain harvest was 82% compared to 1913. The number of livestock exceeded the pre-war level. 13 million peasant farms were members of agricultural cooperation. There were about 22 thousand collective farms in the country. The implementation of grandiose industrialization required a radical restructuring of the agricultural sector. In Western countries, the agricultural revolution, i.e. the system of improving agricultural production preceded the revolutionary industry, and therefore in general it was easier to supply the urban population with food. In the USSR, both of these processes had to be carried out simultaneously. At the same time, the village was considered not only as a source of food, but also as the most important channel for replenishing financial resources for the needs of industrialization.

NEP in industry

Radical changes also took place in industry. The chapters were abolished, and in their place trusts were created - associations of homogeneous or interconnected enterprises that received complete economic and financial independence, up to the right to issue long-term bond issues. By the end of 1922, about 90% of industrial enterprises were united into 421 trusts, with 40% of them being centralized and 60% of local subordination. The trusts themselves decided what to produce and where to sell the products. The enterprises that were part of the trust were withdrawn from state supplies and began purchasing resources on the market. The law provided that “the state treasury is not responsible for the debts of trusts.”

VSNKh, having lost the right to intervene in the current activities of enterprises and trusts, turned into a coordination center. His staff was sharply reduced. It was at that time that economic accounting appeared, in which an enterprise (after mandatory fixed contributions to the state budget) has the right to independently dispose of income from the sale of products, is itself responsible for the results of its economic activities, independently uses profits and covers losses. Under the conditions of the NEP, Lenin wrote, “state enterprises are transferred to the so-called economic accounting, that is, in fact, to a large extent to commercial and capitalist principles.”

The Soviet government tried to combine two principles in the activities of trusts - market and planned. Encouraging the first, the state sought, with the help of trusts, to borrow technology and work methods from the market economy. At the same time, the principle of planning in the activities of trusts was strengthened. The state encouraged the areas of activity of trusts and the creation of a system of concerns by joining the trusts with enterprises producing raw materials and finished products. The concerns were supposed to serve as centers for planned economic management. For these reasons, in 1925, the motivation for “profit” as the goal of their activities was removed from the regulations on trusts and only the mention of “commercial calculation” was left. So, the trust as a form of management combined planned and market elements that the state tried to use to build a socialist planned economy. This was the complexity and contradictory nature of the situation.

Almost simultaneously, syndicates began to be created - associations of trusts for the wholesale distribution of products, lending and regulation of trade operations on the market. By the end of 1922, the syndicates controlled 80% of the industry covered by the trusts. In practice, three types of syndicates have emerged:

1. with a predominance of trade function (Textile, Wheat, Tobacco);

2. with a predominance of the regulatory function (Council of Congresses of the Main Chemical Industry);

3. syndicates created by the state on a compulsory basis (Salt Syndicate, Oil Syndicate, Coal Syndicate, etc.) to maintain control over the most important resources.

Thus, syndicates as a form of management also had a dual character: on the one hand, they combined elements of the market, since they were focused on improving the commercial activities of the trusts that were part of them, on the other hand, they were monopoly organizations in this industry, regulated by higher government authorities. bodies (VSNKh and People's Commissariats).

From right to left: Commissioner of the Supreme Council of National Economy (VSNKh) F.E. Dzerzhinsky, Deputy People's Commissar M.M., Litvinov, member of the Main Concession Committee A.E. Minkin, head of the foreign department of the Supreme Economic Council M.G. Gurevich, head of the legal department of the Main Concession Committee Stepukhovich, director of the Lena Goldfields company Gwynne, attorney professor A.M. Worme, secretary of the society V. Lopukhina. Moscow 1925.

Financial reform of the NEP

The transition to the NEP required the development of a new financial policy. Experienced pre-revolutionary financiers took part in the reform of the financial and monetary system: N. Kutler, V. Tarnovsky, professors L. Yurovsky, P. Genzel, A. Sokolov, Z. Katsenelenbaum, S. Volkner, N. Shaposhnikov, N. Nekrasov, A. Manuilov, former assistant to minister A. Khrushchev. Great organizational work was carried out by the People's Commissar of Finance G. Sokolnikov, a member of the Narkomfin Board V. Vladimirov, and the Chairman of the Board of the State Bank A. Sheiman.

The main directions of the reform were identified: stopping the issue of money, establishing a deficit-free budget, restoring the banking system and savings banks, introducing a unified monetary system, creating a stable currency, and developing an appropriate tax system.

By decree of the Soviet government of October 4, 1921, the State Bank was formed as part of the Narkomfin, savings and loan banks were opened, and payment for transport, cash register and telegraph services was introduced. The system of direct and indirect taxes was restored. To strengthen the budget, all expenses that did not correspond to state revenues were sharply reduced. Further normalization of the financial and banking system required the strengthening of the Soviet ruble.

In accordance with the decree of the Council of People's Commissars, the issue of a parallel Soviet currency, the “chervonets”, began in November 1922. It was equal to 1 spool - 78.24 shares or 7.74234 g of pure gold, i.e. the amount contained in the pre-revolutionary gold ten.

It was forbidden to pay off the budget deficit in chervonets. They were intended to service the credit operations of the State Bank, industry, and wholesale trade.

To maintain the stability of the chervonets, a special part (OS) of the currency department of the People's Commissariat of Finance bought or sold gold, foreign currency and chervonets. Despite the fact that this measure corresponded to the interests of the state, such commercial activities of the OC were regarded by the OGPU as speculation, so in May 1926, arrests and executions of the leaders and employees of the OC began (L. Volin, A.M. Chepelevsky and others, who were only rehabilitated 1996).

The high nominal value of chervonets (10, 25, 50 and 100 rubles) created difficulties in exchanging them. In February 1924, a decision was made to issue state treasury notes in denominations of 1, 3, and 5 rubles. gold, as well as small silver and copper coins.

In 1923 and 1924 two devaluations of the sovznak (the former settlement banknote) were carried out. This gave the monetary reform a confiscatory character. On March 7, 1924, a decision was made to issue Sovznak by the State Bank. For every 500 million rubles handed over to the state. model 1923, their owner received 1 kopeck. Thus, the system of two parallel currencies was eliminated.

In general, the state has achieved some success in carrying out monetary reform. Exchanges began to produce chervonets in Constantinople, the Baltic countries (Riga, Revel), Rome, and some eastern countries. The chervonets exchange rate was 5 dollars. 14 US cents.

The strengthening of the country's financial system was facilitated by the revival of the credit and tax systems, the creation of exchanges and a network of joint-stock banks, the spread of commercial credit, and the development of foreign trade.

However, the financial system created on the basis of the NEP began to destabilize in the second half of the 20s. for several reasons. The state strengthened planning principles in the economy. The control figures for the 1925-26 financial year affirmed the idea of ​​maintaining monetary circulation through increasing emissions. By December 1925, the money supply increased 1.5 times compared to 1924. This led to an imbalance between the size of trade turnover and the money supply. Since the State Bank constantly introduced gold and foreign currency into circulation in order to withdraw cash surpluses and maintain the exchange rate of the chervonets, the state’s foreign exchange reserves were soon depleted. The fight against inflation was lost. Since July 1926, it was prohibited to export chervonets abroad and the purchase of chervonets on the foreign market was stopped. Chervonets turned from a convertible currency into the internal currency of the USSR.

Thus, the monetary reform of 1922-1924 was a comprehensive reform of the sphere of circulation. The monetary system was rebuilt simultaneously with the establishment of wholesale and retail trade, the elimination of the budget deficit, and the revision of prices. All these measures helped restore and streamline monetary circulation, overcome emissions, and ensure the formation of a solid budget. At the same time, financial and economic reform helped streamline taxation. Hard currency and a solid state budget were the most important achievements of the financial policy of the Soviet state in those years. In general, monetary reform and financial recovery contributed to the restructuring of the mechanism of operation of the entire national economy on the basis of the NEP.

The role of the private sector during the NEP

During the NEP period, the private sector played a major role in the restoration of the light and food industries - it produced up to 20% of all industrial products (1923) and predominated in wholesale (15%) and retail (83%) trade.

Private industry took the form of handicraft, rental, joint-stock and cooperative enterprises. Private entrepreneurship has become noticeably widespread in the food, clothing and leather industries, as well as the oil-pressing, flour-grinding and shag industries.

About 70% of private enterprises were located on the territory of the RSFSR. In total in 1924-1925 There were 325 thousand private enterprises in the USSR. They employed about 12% of the total workforce, with an average of 2-3 workers per enterprise. Private enterprises produced about 5% of all industrial output (1923). the state constantly limited the activities of private entrepreneurs through the use of tax pressure, depriving entrepreneurs of voting rights, etc.

At the end of the 20s. In connection with the collapse of the NEP, the policy of restricting the private sector was replaced by a course towards its elimination.

Consequences of the NEP

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 squeezed out, and a rigid centralized system of economic management was created (economic people's commissariats).

In October 1928, the implementation of the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy began, the country's leadership set a course for accelerated industrialization and collectivization. Although no one officially canceled the NEP, by that time it had already been effectively curtailed.

Legally, the NEP was terminated only on October 11, 1931, when a resolution was adopted to completely ban private trade in the USSR.

The undoubted success of the NEP was the restoration of the destroyed economy, and if we take into account that after the revolution Russia lost highly qualified personnel (economists, managers, production workers), then the success of the new government becomes a “victory over devastation.” At the same time, the lack of those highly qualified personnel became the cause of miscalculations and mistakes.

Significant rates of economic growth, however, were achieved only through the return to operation of pre-war capacities, because Russia only reached the economic indicators of the pre-war years by 1926-1927. The potential for further economic growth turned out to be extremely low. The private sector was not allowed to the “commanding heights of the economy,” foreign investment was not welcomed, and investors themselves were in no particular hurry to come to Russia due to ongoing instability and the threat of nationalization of capital. The state was unable to make long-term capital-intensive investments using its own funds alone.

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

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY (NEP)(1921-1929)

NEP is a policy of the Soviet government, under which all enterprises of one industry were subordinate to a single central management body - the main committee (head office). Changed the policy of “war communism”. The transition from “war communism” to the NEP was proclaimed by the X Congress of the Russian Communist Party in March 1921. The initial idea of ​​the transition was formulated in the works of V.I. Lenin 1921-1923: the ultimate goal remains the same - socialism, but the situation in Russia after the civil war dictates the need resort to a “reformist” method of action in fundamental issues of economic construction. Instead of a direct and complete breakdown of the old system to replace it with a new socio-economic structure, carried out during the years of “war communism”, the Bolsheviks took a “reformist” approach: not to break the old socio-economic structure, trade, small farming, small business, capitalism, but carefully and gradually master them and gain the opportunity to subject them to government regulation. In Lenin's last works, the concept of NEP included ideas about the use of commodity-money relations, all forms of ownership - state, cooperative, private, mixed, self-financing. It was proposed to temporarily retreat from the achieved “military-communist” gains, to take a step back in order to gain strength for the leap to socialism.

Initially, the framework of the NEP reforms was determined by the party leadership by the extent to which the reforms strengthened its monopoly on power. The main measures taken within the framework of the NEP: surplus appropriation was replaced by a food tax, followed by new measures designed to interest broad social strata in the results of their economic activities. Free trade was legalized, private individuals received the right to engage in handicrafts and open industrial enterprises with up to a hundred workers. Small nationalized enterprises were returned to their former owners. In 1922 the right to lease land and use hired labor was recognized; The system of labor duties and labor mobilizations was abolished. Payment in kind was replaced by cash, a new state bank was established and the banking system was restored.

The ruling party carried out all these changes without abandoning its ideological views and command methods of managing socio-political and economic processes. “War communism” gradually lost ground.

For its development, the NEP needed the decentralization of economic management, and in August 1921 the Council of Labor and Defense (SLO) adopted a resolution to reorganize the central administration system, in which all enterprises of the same industry were subordinate to a single central management body - the main committee (main committee). The number of branch headquarters was reduced, and only large industry and basic sectors of the economy remained in the hands of the state.

Partial denationalization of property, privatization of many previously nationalized enterprises, a system of running the economy based on cost accounting, competition, and the introduction of leasing of joint ventures - all these are characteristic features of the NEP. At the same time, these “capitalist” economic elements were combined with coercive measures adopted during the years of “war communism.”

The NEP led to a rapid economic recovery. The economic interest that appeared among peasants in the production of agricultural products made it possible to quickly saturate the market with food and overcome the consequences of the hungry years of “war communism.”

However, already at the early stage of the NEP (1921-1923), recognition of the role of the market was combined with measures to abolish it. Most Communist Party leaders viewed the NEP as a “necessary evil,” fearing that it would lead to the restoration of capitalism. Many Bolsheviks retained “military-communist” illusions that the destruction of private property, trade, money, equality in the distribution of material goods lead to communism, and the NEP is a betrayal of communism. In essence, the NEP was designed to continue the course towards socialism, through maneuvering, social compromise with the majority of the population, to move the country towards the party’s goal - socialism, although more slowly and with less risk. It was believed that in market relations the role of the state was the same as under “war communism,” and that it should carry out economic reform within the framework of “socialism.” All this was taken into account in the laws adopted in 1922 and in subsequent legislative acts.

The admission of market mechanisms, which led to economic recovery, allowed the political regime to strengthen. However, its fundamental incompatibility with the essence of the NEP as a temporary economic compromise with the peasantry and bourgeois elements of the city inevitably led to the rejection of the idea of ​​the NEP. Even in the most favorable years for its development (until the mid-20s), progressive steps in pursuing this policy were made uncertainly, contradictorily, with an eye to the past stage of “war communism.”

Soviet and, for the most part, post-Soviet historiography, reducing the reasons for the collapse of the NEP to purely economic factors, deprived itself of the opportunity to fully reveal its contradictions - between the requirements for the normal functioning of the economy and the political priorities of the party leadership, aimed first at limiting and then completely crowding out private manufacturer.

The country’s leadership’s interpretation of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the suppression of all those who disagree with it, as well as the continued adherence of the majority of the party’s cadres to the “military-communist” views adopted during the civil war, reflected the communists’ inherent desire to achieve their ideological principles. At the same time, the strategic goal of the party (socialism) remained the same, and the NEP was seen as a temporary retreat from the “war communism” achieved over the years. Therefore, everything was done to prevent the NEP from going beyond limits dangerous for this purpose.

Market methods of regulating the economy in NEP Russia were combined with non-economic methods, with administrative intervention. The predominance of state ownership of the means of production and large-scale industry was the objective basis for such intervention.

During the NEP years, the party and state leaders did not want reforms, but were concerned that the private sector would gain an advantage over the public sector. Fearful of the NEP, they took measures to discredit it. Official propaganda treated the private trader in every possible way, and the image of the “NEPman” as an exploiter, a class enemy, was formed in the public consciousness. Since the mid-20s, measures to curb the development of the NEP gave way to a course towards its curtailment. The dismantling of NEPA began behind the scenes, first with measures to tax the private sector, then depriving it of legal guarantees. At the same time, loyalty to the new economic policy was proclaimed at all party forums. On December 27, 1929, in a speech at a conference of Marxist historians, Stalin stated: “If we adhere to the NEP, it is because it serves the cause of socialism. And when it ceases to serve the cause of socialism, we will throw the new economic policy to hell.”

At the end of the 20s, considering that the new economic policy had ceased to serve socialism, the Stalinist leadership discarded it. The methods by which it curtailed the NEP indicate the difference in the approaches of Stalin and Lenin to the new economic policy. According to Lenin, with the transition to socialism, the NEP will become obsolete in the course of the evolutionary process. But by the end of the 20s there was no socialism in Russia yet, although it had been proclaimed, the NEP had not outlived its usefulness, but Stalin, contrary to Lenin, made the “transition to socialism” by violent, revolutionary means.

One of the negative aspects of this “transition” was the policy of the Stalinist leadership to eliminate the so-called “exploiting classes”. During its implementation, the village “bourgeoisie” (kulaks) were “dekulakized”, all their property was confiscated, exiled to Siberia, and the “remnants of the urban bourgeoisie” - entrepreneurs engaged in private trade, crafts and the sale of their products (“NEPmen”), as well as their family members were deprived of political rights (“disenfranchised”); many were prosecuted.

NEP (details)

In the extreme conditions of the civil war, the internal policy pursued by the Soviet government was called “war communism.” The prerequisites for its implementation were laid by the widespread nationalization of industry and the creation of a state apparatus to manage it (primarily the All-Russian Council of the National Economy - VSNKh), the experience of military-political solutions to food problems through committees of the poor in the countryside. On the one hand, the policy of “war communism” was perceived by part of the country’s leadership as a natural step towards the rapid construction of market-free socialism, which supposedly corresponded to the principles of Marxist theory. In this they hoped to rely on the collectivist ideas of millions of workers and poor peasants who were ready to divide all property in the country equally. On the other hand, it was a forced policy, caused by the violation of traditional economic ties between city and countryside, and the need to mobilize all resources to win the civil war.

The internal situation in the Soviet country was extremely difficult. The country is in crisis:

Political- in the summer of 1920, peasant uprisings broke out in the Tambov and Voronezh provinces (as they were called - “kulak rebellions”) - Antonovism. Peasants' dissatisfaction with surplus appropriation grew into a real peasant war: Makhno's detachments in Ukraine and Antov's “peasant army” in the Tambov region numbered 50 thousand people at the beginning of 1921, the total number of detachments formed in the Urals, Western Siberia, Pomerania , in the Kuban and Don, reached 200 thousand people. On March 1, 1921, the sailors of Kronstadt rebelled. They put forward the slogans “Power to the Soviets, not parties!”, “Soviets without communists!” The rebellion in Kronstadt was eliminated, but peasant uprisings continued. These uprisings were not an accident." In each of them, to a greater or lesser extent, there was an element of organization. It was contributed by a wide range of political forces: from monarchists to socialists. These disparate forces were united by the desire to take control of the emerging popular movement and, relying on it, to eliminate the power of the Bolsheviks;

Economic- the national economy was fragmented. The country produced 3 percent of pig iron; oil was produced 2.5 times less than in 1913. Industrial production fell to 4-2 percent of 1913 levels. The country lagged behind the United States in iron production by 72 times, in steel by 52 times, and in oil production by 19 times. If in 1913 Russia smelted 4.2 million tons of pig iron, then in 1920 it was only 115 thousand tons. This is approximately the same amount as was received in 1718 under Peter I;

Social- Hunger, poverty, unemployment were rampant in the country, crime was rampant, and child homelessness was rampant. The declassification of the working class intensified, people left the cities and went to the countryside so as not to die of hunger. This led to a reduction in the number of industrial workers by almost half (1 million 270 thousand people in 1920 versus 2 million 400 thousand people in 1913). In 1921, about 40 provinces with a population of 90 million were starving, of which 40 million were on the verge of death. 5 million people died from hunger. Child crime, compared to 1913, has increased 7.4 times. Epidemics of typhoid, cholera, and smallpox raged in the country.

Immediate, most decisive and energetic measures were needed to improve the situation of the working people and increase the productive forces.

In March 1921, at the X Congress of the RCP (b), a course towards a new economic policy (NEP) was adopted. This policy was introduced seriously and for a long time.

The purpose of adopting the NEP was aimed at:

To overcome the devastation in the country, restore the economy;

Creating the foundation of socialism;

Development of large industry;

Displacement and liquidation of capitalist elements;

Strengthening the alliance of the working class and peasantry.

“The essence of the new economic policy,” said Lenin, “is the union of the proletariat and the peasantry, the essence lies in the union of the avant-garde, the proletariat, with the broad peasant field.”

The ways to accomplish these tasks were:

All-round development of cooperation;

Widespread encouragement of trade;

The use of material incentives and economic calculations.

Replacing the surplus appropriation system with a tax in kind (the peasant could sell the remaining products after paying the tax in kind at his own discretion - either to the state or on the free market);

Introduction of free trade and circulation;

Allowance of private small commercial and industrial enterprises, while maintaining the leading industries (banks, transport, large industry, foreign trade) in the hands of the state;

Permission to rent concessions, mixed companies;

Providing freedom of action to state-owned enterprises (introducing self-financing, self-financing, product sales, self-sufficiency);

Introduction of material incentives for workers;

Elimination of rigid sectoral formations of an administrative nature - headquarters and centers;

Introduction of territorial - sectoral management of industry;

Carrying out monetary reform;

Transition from in-kind to cash wages;

Streamlining the income tax (income tax was divided into basic, which was paid by all citizens except pensioners, and progressive - paid by NEPmen, privately practicing doctors, and all those who received additional income). The greater the profit, the greater the tax. A profit limit was introduced;

Permission to hire labor, rent land, enterprises;

Revival of the credit system - the State Bank was recreated, a number of specialized banks were formed;

The introduction of the NEP caused a change in the social structure and way of life of people. The NEP provided organizational economic freedom to people and gave them the opportunity to show initiative and entrepreneurship. Private enterprises were created everywhere in the country, self-financing was introduced at state enterprises, a struggle arose against bureaucracy and administrative-command habits, and culture improved in all spheres of human activity. The introduction of a tax in kind in the countryside made it possible for the broad development of agriculture, including strong owners, who were later called “kulaks.”

The most colorful figure of that time was the new Soviet bourgeoisie - the “NEPmen”. These people largely defined the face of their era, but they were, as it were, outside of Soviet society: they were deprived of voting rights and could not be members of trade unions. Among the Nepmen, the old bourgeoisie had a large share (from 30 to 50 percent, depending on their occupation). The rest of the Nepmen came from among Soviet employees, peasants and artisans. Due to the rapid turnover of capital, the main area of ​​activity of the Nepmen was trade. Store shelves began to quickly fill with goods and products.

At the same time, criticism of Lenin and the NEP as a “disastrous petty-bourgeois policy” was heard throughout the country.

Many communists left the RCP (b), believing that the introduction of the NEP meant the restoration of capitalism and a betrayal of socialist principles. At the same time, it should be noted that, despite partial denationalization and concession, the state retained at its disposal the most powerful sector of the national economy. Basic industries remained completely outside the market - energy, metallurgy, oil production and refining, coal mining, defense industry, foreign trade, railways, communications.

Important points of the new economic policy:

The peasant was given the opportunity to truly become a master;

Small and medium-sized entrepreneurs were given freedom of development;

Monetary reform, the introduction of convertible currency - the chervonets - stabilized the financial situation in the country.

In 1923, all types of natural taxation in the countryside were replaced by a single agricultural tax in cash, which, of course, was beneficial to the peasant, because allowed you to maneuver crop rotation at your own discretion and determine the direction of development of your farm in terms of growing certain crops, raising livestock, producing handicrafts, etc.

On the basis of the NEP, rapid economic growth began in the city and countryside and a rise in the living standards of the working people. The market mechanism made it possible to quickly restore industry, the size of the working class and, most importantly, increase labor productivity. Already by the end of 1923 year it more than doubled. By 1925, the country had restored the destroyed national economy.

The New Economic Policy made it possible:

Economic relations between city and countryside;

Development of industry based on electrification;

Cooperation based on the country's population;

The widespread introduction of cost accounting and personal interest in the results of labor;

Improving government planning and management;

The fight against bureaucracy, administrative and command habits;

Improving culture in all spheres of human activity.

Showing a certain flexibility in economic policy, the Bolsheviks had no doubts or hesitations in strengthening the control of the ruling party over the political and spiritual life of society.

The most important instrument in the hands of the Bolsheviks here were the bodies of the Cheka (from the 1922 congress - the GPU). This apparatus was not only preserved in the form in which it existed during the era of the civil war, but also developed rapidly, surrounded by the special care of those in power, and more and more fully embraced state, party, economic and other public institutions. There is a widespread opinion that the initiator of these repressive and fiscal measures and their implementer was F.E. Dzerzhinsky, in fact, this is not so. Archival sources and research by historians allow us to note that at the head of the terror was L.D. Trotsky (Bronstein), who, as chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, and then the People's Commissar of the Military and Naval Affairs, had punitive bodies unaccountable to the party that administered their justice and reprisals, were in his hands a valid means of usurping power and establishing a personal military-political dictatorship in the country.

During the NEP years, many legally published newspapers and magazines, party associations, and other parties were closed, and the last underground groups of right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were liquidated.

Through an extensive system of secret employees of the Cheka-GPU, control was established over the political sentiments of civil servants, workers and peasants. Particular attention was paid to kulaks and urban private entrepreneurs, as well as the intelligentsia. At the same time, it should be noted that the Soviet government sought to involve the old intelligentsia in active labor activity. Specialists in various fields of knowledge were provided with more tolerable living and working conditions compared to the general population.

This was especially true for those who were in one way or another connected with strengthening the scientific, economic and defense potential of the state.

The transition to the NEP contributed to the return of emigrants to their homeland. For 1921-1931 181,432 emigrants returned to Russia, of which 121,843 (two thirds) - in 1921,

However, the class approach remained the main principle of building government policy towards the intelligentsia. If opposition was suspected, the authorities resorted to repression. In 1921, many representatives of the intelligentsia were arrested in connection with the Petrograd Combat Organization case. Among them there were few scientific and creative intellectuals. By decision of the Petrograd Cheka, 61 of those arrested, including the prominent Russian poet N.S. Gumilyov, were shot. At the same time, remaining in the position of historicism, it should be noted that many of them opposed the Soviet regime, involving in public and other organizations, including military and combat organizations, all those who did not accept the new system.

The Bolshevik Party is heading towards the formation of its own socialist intelligentsia, devoted to the regime and serving it faithfully. New universities and institutes are opening. The first workers' faculties (workers' faculties) were created at higher educational institutions. The school education system also underwent radical reform. It ensured continuity of education, from preschool institutions to universities. A program to eliminate illiteracy was proclaimed.

In 1923, the voluntary society “Down with Illiteracy” was established, headed by the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee M.I. Kalinin. By the end of the 1920s, about 40 percent of the population could read and write (versus 27 percent in 1913), and a decade later the figure was 80 percent.

During the years of the NEP, the literary and artistic life of Soviet Russia was distinguished by its diversity and abundance of various creative groups and movements. In Moscow alone there were over 30 of them.

The NEP made it much easier for the USSR to break through the economic blockade, enter international markets, and gain diplomatic recognition.

In just 5 years - from 1921 to 1926. the index of industrial production increased more than 3 times, agricultural production increased 2 times and exceeded the level of 1913 by 18 percent. But even after the end of the recovery period, economic growth continued at a rapid pace: in 1927, 1928. the increase in industrial production was 13 and 19 percent, respectively. In general, for the period 1921-1928. the average annual growth rate of national income was 18 percent.

Monetary reform played an important role in the restoration of the national economy and its further development. At the beginning of 1924, the Soviet government stopped issuing unstable banknotes. Instead, a gold-backed chervonets was introduced into circulation. This contributed to the stabilization of the Soviet ruble and the strengthening of the country's financial system.

An important point during the years of the new economic policy was that impressive economic successes were achieved on the basis of fundamentally new social relations, hitherto unknown to history. The private sector emerged in industry and commerce; some state-owned enterprises were denationalized, others were leased out: private individuals were allowed to create their own industrial enterprises with no more than 20 employees (later this “ceiling” was raised). Among the factories rented by private owners there were those that employed 200-300 people, and in general the private sector during the NEP period accounted for from 1/5 to 1/4 of industrial output and 40-80 percent of retail trade. A number of enterprises were leased to foreign firms in the form of concessions. In 1926-1927, there were 117 existing agreements of this kind. They covered enterprises that employed 18 thousand people and produced just over one percent of industrial output.

In industry, key positions were occupied by state trusts, in the credit and financial sphere - by state and cooperative banks. The state put pressure on producers, forced them to find internal reserves for increasing production, to mobilize efforts to increase production efficiency, which alone could now ensure an increase in profits.

NEP Russia, whether it wanted it or not, created the basis of socialism. NEP is both a strategy and tactics of the Bolsheviks. “From NEP Russia,” said V.I. Lenin, “Russia will be socialist.” At the same time, V.I. Lenin demanded that we reconsider our entire point of view on socialism. The driving force of the NEP should be the working people, the alliance of the working class and the peasantry. The taxes paid by the Nepmen made it possible to expand the socialist sector. New plants, factories, and enterprises were built. In 1928, industrial production surpassed the pre-war level in a number of important indicators. Since 1929, the country has become a huge construction site.

NEP meant the economic competition of socialism with capitalism. But this was an unusual competition. It took place in the form of a fierce struggle of capitalist elements against socialist forms of economy. The struggle was not for life, but for death, according to the principle of “who will win.” The Soviet state had everything it needed to win the fight against capitalism: political power, commanding heights in the economy, natural resources. There was only one thing missing - the ability to run a household and trade culturally. Even in the first days of Soviet power, V.I. Lenin said: “We, the Bolshevik Party, convinced Russia. We won Russia - from the rich for the poor, from the exploiters for the working people. We must now govern Russia.” The matter of management turned out to be extremely difficult. This was also evident during the years of the New Economic Policy.

The priority of politics over economics, proclaimed by the Bolsheviks in the process of social development, introduced disruptions into the mechanisms of the NEP. During the NEP period, many crisis situations arose in the country. They were caused by both objective and subjective reasons.

First crisis in economics arose in 1923. It went down in history as a sales crisis. 100 million peasants who received economic freedom filled the city market with cheap agricultural products. To stimulate labor productivity in industry (5 million workers), the state artificially inflates prices for industrial goods. By the fall of 1923, the price difference was more than 30 percent. This phenomenon, at the instigation of L. Trotsky, began to be called “scissors” of prices.

The crisis threatened the “link” between city and countryside and was aggravated by social conflicts. Workers' strikes began in a number of industrial centers. The fact is that the loans that enterprises previously received from the state were closed. There was no way to pay the workers. The problem was complicated by rising unemployment. From January 1922 to September 1923, the number of unemployed increased from 680 thousand to 1 million 60 thousand.

At the end of 1923 - beginning of 1924, prices for industrial goods were reduced by an average of more than 25 percent, and in light industry serving the mass consumer - by 30-45 percent. At the same time, prices for agricultural goods were increased almost 2 times. Much work has been done to improve state and cooperative trade. In May 1924, the People's Commissariat of Domestic and Foreign Trade was created. 30-year-old A.I. Mikoyan, the youngest People's Commissar of the USSR, was appointed to this post.

The economic crisis at this time is closely intertwined with the intensification of the struggle for power within the party due to the illness of the leader, V.I. Lenin. The fate of the country was influenced by internal party discussions that covered a wide range of issues: about worker and party democracy, bureaucracy and the apparatus, about the style and methods of leadership.

Second crisis arose in 1925. It brought new economic problems and difficulties. If during the recovery period the country immediately received a return in the form of agricultural and industrial goods, then during the construction of new and expansion of old enterprises, the return came after 3-5 years, and the construction paid off even longer. The country still received few goods, and wages had to be paid to workers regularly. Where can I get money backed by goods? They can be “pumped out of the village by raising prices for manufactured goods, or they can be printed further. But raising prices for manufactured goods did not mean getting more food from the village. The peasantry simply did not buy these goods, leading a subsistence economy; His incentive to sell bread became less and less. This threatened to reduce the export of bread and the import of equipment, which, in turn, in turn, hampered the construction of new and expansion of old industries.

In 1925-1926 got out of difficulties due to foreign currency reserves and allowing state sales of alcohol. However, there was little prospect of the situation improving. In addition, in just one year, unemployment in the country, due to agrarian overpopulation, increased by a thousand people and amounted to . 1 million 300 thousand.

Third crisis NEP was associated with industrialization and collectivization. This policy required the expansion of planning principles in the economy, an active attack on the capitalist elements of the city and countryside. Practical steps to implement this party line led to the completion of the reconstruction of the administrative-command system.

Collapsing NEP

Until recently, scientists disagreed regarding the end of the NEP. Some believed that by the mid-1930s the tasks set for the new economic policy had been solved. The New Economic Policy “ended in the second half of the 1930s. victory of socialism. Nowadays, the beginning of the NEP restrictions dates back to 1924 (after the death of V.I. Lenin). V.P. Danilov, one of the most authoritative researchers of the agrarian history of Russia, believes that 1928 was the time of transition to the frontal scrapping of the NEP, and in 1929 it was finished. Modern historians A.S. Barsenkov and A.I. Vdovin, the authors of the textbook “History of Russia 1917-2004,” connect the end of the NEP with the beginning of the first five-year plan.

History shows that the assumption of multi-structure and the determination of the place of each of these structures in the socio-economic development of the country occurred in an atmosphere of intense struggle for power between several party groups. In the end, the struggle ended in victory for the Stalinist group. By 1928-1929 she mastered all the heights of the party and state leadership and pursued an openly anti-NEP line.

The NEP was never officially cancelled, but in 1928 it began to wind down. What did this mean?

In the public sector, planned principles of economic management were introduced, the private sector was closed, and in agriculture, a course was taken to eliminate the kulaks as a class. The collapse of the NEP was facilitated by internal and external factors.

Domestic:

Private entrepreneurs have strengthened economically, both in the city and in the countryside; The restrictions on profits introduced by the Soviet government reached their maximum. The experience of socio-political development shows: whoever has a lot of money wants power. Private owners needed power to remove restrictions on making profits and to increase them;

The party's policy of collectivization in the countryside aroused resistance from the kulaks;

Industrialization required an influx of labor, which only the countryside could provide;

The peasantry demanded the abolition of the foreign trade monopoly, claiming access to the world market, and refused to feed the city under conditions of low purchase prices for agricultural products, primarily grain;

In the country, dissatisfaction with the everyday behavior of the “Nepmen” was becoming more and more acute among the general population, who staged carousings and various entertainments in full view.

External:

The aggressiveness of capitalist states against the USSR increased. The very fact of the existence of the Soviet state and its successes aroused the furious hatred of the imperialists. International reaction aimed to disrupt the industrialization that had begun in the USSR at any cost and to create a united front of capitalist powers for anti-Soviet military intervention. An active role in anti-Soviet politics during this period belonged to the British imperialists. It is enough to note that W. Churchill, an outstanding politician of that time, repeatedly noted that we did not leave Soviet Russia out of our attention for a single day, and constantly directed efforts to destroy, at any cost, the communist regime. In February 1927, an attack was organized on the Soviet plenipotentiary mission in London and Beijing, and the plenipotentiary representative in Poland P.L. was killed. Voikova;

The Kuomintang government of China in 1927 suspended diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and closed all Soviet diplomatic missions.

In 1929, emergency measures to limit the free sale of bread were legalized. Priority sale of grain under government obligations is established. Already in the second half of 1929, partial expropriation of the kulaks began. The year 1929 was essentially decisive in the rejection of the NEP. The year 1929 went down in the history of the USSR as the “Year of the Great Turning Point.”

In the early 30s, there was an almost complete displacement of private capital from various sectors of the economy. The share of private enterprises in industry in 1928 was 18%, in agriculture - 97%, in retail trade - 24%, and by 1933 - 0.5%, 20% and zero, respectively.