Causes of NEP folding. NEP: essence, contradictions, results

It is believed that on March 21, 1921, our country passed to a new form of commodity-economic relations: on that day a decree was signed, ordering to abandon the surplus-appropriation and move to collection of the food tax. This is how the NEP began.

The Bolsheviks realized the need for economic interaction, since the tactics of war communism and terror gave more and more negative effects, expressed in the intensification of separatist phenomena on the outskirts of the young republic, and not only there.

With the introduction of a new economic policy, the Bolsheviks pursued a number of economic and political goals:

• Remove tension in society, strengthen the authority of the young Soviet power.
• To restore the economy of the country, completely destroyed as a result of the First World War and civil wars.
• To lay the foundation for the creation of an effective planned economy.
• Finally, it was very important to prove to the "civilized" world the adequacy and legitimacy of the new government, since at that time the USSR found itself in solid international isolation.

Today we will talk about the essence of the new policy of the government of the USSR, and we will discuss the main reasons for the curtailment of the NEP. This topic is extremely interesting, as several years of the new economic course largely determine the features of the country's political and economic structure for decades to come. However, it is far not as creators and founders of this phenomenon would like.

The essence of the phenomenon

As it usually happens in our country, the NEP was introduced in a hurry, the rush with the adoption of decrees was terrible, no one had a clear plan of action. The definition of the most optimal and adequate methods for implementing the new policy was pursued practically throughout its entire length. And therefore it is not surprising that it did not do without a lot of trial and error. Similarly, with economic "liberties" for the private sector: their list then expanded, then almost immediately narrowed.

The essence of the policy of the NEP was that while retaining its powers in the policy and management of the Bolsheviks, the economic sector received more freedom, which allowed for the formation of market relations. In fact, the new policy can be viewed as a form of authoritarian rule. As we already mentioned, this policy included a whole complex of measures, many of which openly contradicted each other (the reasons for this have already been mentioned above).

Political aspects

As for the political side of the issue, the NEP of the Bolsheviks was a classical autocracy, in which any dissent in this sphere was severely suppressed. In any case, deviations from the "central line" of the Party were not exactly welcomed. However, in the economic sector, there was a rather bizarre fusion of elements of administrative and purely market-based methods of farming:

• The state retained complete control over all transport flows, large and medium-sized industry.
• There was some freedom in the private sector. So, citizens could lease land, hire workers.
• It allowed the development of private capitalism in some sectors of the economy. At the same time, many initiatives of this very capitalism were legislatively hampered, which in many senses made the whole thing senseless.
• Rent of enterprises owned by the state was allowed.
• Trade has become relatively free. This explains the relatively positive results of NEP.
• At the same time, contradictions between the city and the country were expanding, the consequences of which are still felt: industrial centers provided tools and equipment for which people had to pay "live" money, while food was free of charge to cities, requisitioned as a tax on goods. Over time, this led to the actual enslavement of the peasants.
• In industry there was limited cost accounting.
• A financial reform was carried out, which in many ways improved the economy.
• The management of the national economy was partially decentralized, withdrawn from the authority of the central government.
• There is a piece-rate wage.
• Despite this, the state did not give international trade to private traders, which made the situation in this sphere not very drastic.

Despite all of the above, you should clearly imagine that the reasons for the curtailment of the NEP were largely covered in its origins. About them, we now talk.

Separate attempts to reform

Most of the concessions the Bolsheviks made to agrarians, cooperatives (at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, it was the small producers that ensured the fulfillment of state orders), as well as to small industrialists. But here it should be clearly understood that the features of the NEP, which was conceived and which turned out as a result, are very different from each other.

So, in the spring of 1920, the authorities came to the conclusion that it is easiest to organize direct commodity exchange between the city and the village, simply exchanging equipment and other products of industrial production for food and other goods received in the countryside. Simply put, the NEP in Russia was originally conceived as another form of a tax in kind, in which peasants would be allowed to sell surpluses that remained with them.

So the authorities hoped to encourage the peasants to increase crops. However, if you study these dates on the history of Russia, then the complete failure of such a policy will become clear. People by that time preferred to sow as little as possible, not wanting to feed the horde of city residents, without receiving anything in return. To convince the angry peasants it was not possible: by the end of the year it became extremely clear that no increase in the gross grain harvest was expected. In order for the NEP times to continue, we needed some decisive steps.

The food crisis

As a result, a terrible famine began in the winter, covering regions in which at least 30 million people lived. About 5.5 million died of starvation. In the country there were more than two million orphans. To provide industrial centers with bread, it needed at least 400 million poods, but there simply was not.

Using cruel methods, with already "ripped" peasants managed to collect only 280 million. As you can see, two completely opposite at first sight strategies: NEP and military communism possessed very similar features. A comparison of them shows that in both cases peasants in the village were often forced to give all the crops in zadarma.

Even the most ardent supporters of military communism recognized that further attempts at robbing villagers would not lead to anything good. Social tension has greatly increased. By the summer of 1921 it became extremely clear that a real expansion of the economic freedoms of the population was necessary. Thus, the policy of military communism and the NEP (at the initial stage) is much more closely related than many imagined.

Corrective course

By the autumn of that year, when a third of the country was on the verge of a terrible famine, the Bolsheviks made their first serious concessions: at last, the medieval turnover that passed the market was abolished. In August 1921, the decree was issued, on the basis of which the economy of the NEP was supposed to function:

• As we said, a course was taken towards decentralized management of the industrial sector. Thus, the number of glavks was reduced from fifty to 16.
• The enterprises were given some freedom in the field of independent sales of products.
• The non-leased enterprises were to be closed.
• At all state enterprises, at last, real material stimulation of workers was introduced.
• The leaders of the Bolshevik government were compelled to admit that the NEP in the USSR must become truly capitalistic, allowing the country's economic system to be improved by effective commodity-money, and not at all, natural turnover of funds.

To ensure the normal provision of commodity-money relations, in 1921 the State Bank was established, cash offices were opened for issuing loans and receiving savings, and compulsory payment for travel on public transport, utilities and telegraph was introduced. The tax system was completely restored. To strengthen and fill the state budget, many costly articles were deleted from it.

All further financial reform was aimed strictly at strengthening the national currency. So, since 1922 the issue of a special currency, the Soviet chervonets was started. In fact, it was an equivalent (including the content of gold) replacement of the imperial ten. This measure had a very positive effect on the confidence in the ruble, which soon gained recognition abroad.

At ¼ new currency was provided by precious metals, some foreign currencies. The remaining ¾ were provided at the expense of bills of exchange, as well as some goods of increased demand. It should be noted that the government strictly forbade extinguishing the budget deficit with chervontsi . They were intended solely for the provision of operations of the State Bank, for certain currency transactions.

Contradictions NEP

It is necessary to clearly understand one simple thing: the new government has never (!) Set itself the goal of building a market state with full-fledged private property. This is confirmed by the well-known words of Lenin: "We do not acknowledge anything often ...". He constantly demanded that his comrades closely control economic processes, so that the NEP in the USSR was never really an independent economic phenomenon. It is because of the absurd administrative and party pressure that the new policy did not give half of those positive results that could be expected otherwise.

In general, the NEP and military communism, which are often compared by some authors in the purely romantic aspect of the new policy, were extremely similar, no matter how strange it seemed. Of course, they were particularly similar in the initial period of the deployment of economic reforms, but later common traits could be traced without special effort.

Crisis phenomena

Already by 1922, Lenin declared that further concessions to the capitalists should be completely stopped, that the NEP times were over. Reality corrected these aspirations. Already in 1925 the maximum authorized number of hired workers in peasant farms was increased to one hundred people (previously no more than 20). The kulak cooperation was legalized, the landowners could lease their allotments for a period of up to 12 years. Bans on the establishment of credit partnerships were abolished, and the way out of community farms (cuts) was completely resolved.

But already in 1926 the Bolsheviks took a course on politics, the goal of which was the curtailment of the NEP. Many of the permits that the people received a year ago were completely abolished. The fists once again fell under attack, so that small-scale production was almost completely buried. The pressure on private business executives inexorably increased both in the city and in the countryside. Many of the results of the NEP were practically nulled due to the fact that the leadership of the country did not have enough experience and unanimity in the issues of carrying out political and economic reforms.

Closing the NEP

Despite all the measures taken, the contradictions in the social and economic spheres became more serious. It was necessary to decide what to do next: continue to operate purely economic methods, or to curtail the NEP and return to the methods of war communism.

As we already know, the supporters of the second method, led by JV Stalin, won. In order to neutralize the consequences of the grain harvest crisis in 1927, a number of administrative measures were taken: the role of the administrative center in the management of the economic sector was again significantly strengthened, the independence of all enterprises was virtually abolished, and the prices for manufactured goods were significantly increased. In addition, the government resorted to an increase in taxes, all the peasants who did not want to surrender their bread, were tried. When the arrests were complete confiscation of property and livestock.

Dispossession of property owners

So, only in the Volga region more than 33 thousand peasants were arrested. The archives show that about half of them lost all their property. Virtually all agricultural machinery, which was by then acquired by some large farms, was forcibly seized in favor of the collective farms.

Studying these dates on the history of Russia, you can see that it was in those years that lending to small industries was completely stopped, which led to very negative consequences in the economic sector. These events were held throughout the country, sometimes reaching the point of absurdity. In the years 1928-1929. Large farms began to curtail production, the sale of livestock, equipment and machinery. The blow inflicted on large farms for political purposes, to demonstrate the supposedly futile conduct of individual farming, undermined the foundations of the productive forces in the country's agrarian sector.

conclusions

So, what are the reasons for the curtailment of the NEP? This was facilitated by the deepest internal contradictions in the leadership of the young country, which were only exacerbated by attempts to stimulate the economic development of the USSR by familiar but ineffective methods. In the end, even the cardinal increase in administrative pressure on private traders did not help, which by that time no longer saw any particular prospects for the development of their own production.

It should be understood that the NEP was not rolled up in a couple of months: in the agrarian sector, this happened already in the late 1920s, industry was out of business around the same period, and trade lasted until the early 1930s. Finally, in 1929, a resolution was passed to accelerate the socialist development of the country, which predetermined the decline of the NEP era.

The main reasons for the curtailment of the NEP are that the Soviet leadership, wishing to quickly build a new model of the social system under the condition of the encirclement of the country by capitalist states, found itself forced to resort to unnecessarily harsh and extremely unpopular methods.