New Economic Policy

1: Aims
1. Meet urgent need for food
2. To have some capitalism to keep communism alive
3. Pacify the workers and sailors and peasants
4. Increase industrial output
2: Impact on industry
1. "The NEP turned Moscow into a vast market place" Emma Goldman 1924
2. Nepmen-a class of many classes that gained from NEP-hated.
  1. Had 75% share of retail trade, whilst the state had 15%, co-op has 10% by 1923
    1. Shows that they are much more efficient and effective- damning for state government
      1. Despite much smaller proportion of workforce....
3. Still held commanding heights of the economy
  1. Proportion of industrial workforce
    1. 12% private enterprise
      1. 2
    2. 85% state enterprises
      1. avg 155 workers in each factor
    3. Co-op 3%
      1. 15
4. High unemployment in urban areas
5. Factory output almost doubles from 2004m roubles in 1921 to 4005m in 1923
3: Impact on agriculture
1. "NEP as a necessary concession to the peasants to save the smychka- the worker-peasant alliance on which the revolution would depend"
2. Bumper harvests of 1922 and 1923
3. Trotsky, scissors crisis
  1. Widening gap between deflated agricultural prices and rising prices for consumer goods
    1. As price of manufactures rose, peasantry reduced grain sales to state depots
    2. Affects workers too
4. Grain harvest boosted from 37.6m 1921 to 56.6m in 1923
5. Half of peasants farms belonged to agricultural co-op by 1927
  1. or TOZes
6. 10% of grain tax in kind
  1. Allows grain surplus to be sold on market
4: Marxist features
1. The return of private trade was a betrayal of the revolution: the "slippery slope that led back to capitalism"
2. Communists clung to power and so preserved the revolution
3. Peasants were encouraged to join co-operatives or collective farms via agronomic aid
4. "First sign of the degeneration of Bolshevism" Trotsky
5. Bukharin and Zinoviev agree with NEP
6. Ban on factions 1921
  1. More central, less criticism
    1. Dictatorship
Key features
1. More local economic decisions
2. Public markets
3. Money
4. Peasant tax in kind

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New Economic Policy

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	Created by Declan Wiseman over 8 years ago