NEP in the USSR. Socio-economic development of the country during the NEP period

NEP 1921-1928- one of the important stages in the development of the USSR. After the end, the situation in the country became catastrophic. A significant part of production was stopped, there was no coordination, as well as the distribution of labor. Major changes were needed to rebuild the country.

The previously existing surplus appropriation system did not justify itself. It caused people's discontent and riots; a country without governance still could not provide itself with food. During the transition, the tax was reduced by half, creating a favorable situation for further development.

NEP period.

During the founding of the NEP, the party began to restore production, and began to build some factories that were necessary for the new state. Workers began to be recruited. The main task is to provide everyone with opportunities for full-fledged work for the benefit of the USSR.

Elements of a market economy were introduced. This was inevitable, because its complete destruction at the founding of the Soviet Union dealt a serious blow to the country.

During this period, a command economy was built. From now on, the state managed production, sent norms and orders to factories. The party could connect several enterprises into a single system and establish contacts between them. All this was necessary for the consistent production of products, because some complex products require the involvement of several factories.

During the NEP period, enterprises and other participants in economic processes received significant funding. Factories could issue their own bonds to attract funds from people and invest them in upgrading production.

Basic goals:

• establishing economic ties;
• the gradual introduction of a command economy and the adaptation of enterprises to the new system of relationships between industries;
• stimulating the development and renovation of factories;
• providing maximum opportunities for enterprise growth;
• rational use of labor and financial resources;
• carrying out monetary reform and introducing a new payment unit.

Results of the NEP.

Results conditioned by victory over devastation and chaos, which was poorly controlled by the state. The economy was restored, relationships between participants in economic processes were established, and equipment renewal at enterprises began. But the problem was the lack of management personnel and the qualifications of these people, the minimum amount of foreign investment, and the inhibition of the development of the private sector.

From the October Revolution until the end of the 1920s, two models of economic development were tested in Soviet Russia. The first was called War Communism, the second - NEP (New Economic Policy). In the first years of the development of the socialist state, two directly opposite phenomena collided. How is this possible, and what was the NEP during the USSR? Let's try to understand this issue.

From War Communism to New Economic Policy

November 1920 marked the end of the Russian Civil War. The transition to the peaceful construction of statehood began. This was not easy to implement: during the years of turmoil, the country's population decreased by 20 million people, and the total damage amounted to about 39 billion gold rubles. Productive forces were undermined. Industry in 1920 was only 14% of the pre-war level. Agricultural production decreased by a third, and most transport routes were destroyed. Peasant uprisings raged everywhere, and in some places the white interventionists did not calm down.

The cause of discontent was the system of war communism introduced by the Soviet government in 1918. This policy was to prepare the country for a new, communist society. Industry and agriculture were nationalized. Labor acquired a militarized character: the focus was mainly on military products. The people were dissatisfied with the total equalization manifested in the introduction of food allocation. Bread was simply confiscated from the starving population.

The Soviet government was tired of fighting the growing number of riots. The last straw was the Kronstadt rebellion. Its members had previously helped the Bolsheviks seize power. Lenin was one of the first to realize that fighting one’s own people is not good. In 1920, he spoke at the 10th Party Congress and proposed new economic principles.

The country was completely transformed during the NEP years. Extremely liberal principles and norms were introduced, which caused concern among seasoned revolutionaries and educated Marxists. A Bolshevik opposition emerged, dissatisfied with the bourgeois bias of the leadership. What were the Marxists afraid of? We need to figure it out.

The essence of the NEP

The main goal of the NEP policy during the years of the USSR was the revival of the country's economic sector. A system of measures aimed at eliminating the food crisis was developed. The goals could be achieved by boosting agriculture. It was necessary to liberate the manufacturer and provide him with incentives to develop production.

The years of the NEP were marked, in fact, by the strongest liberalization of the economic sphere. Of course, there was no question of a market, but in comparison with war communism, the new system was a significant step forward.

So, the reasons for the transition to the NEP policy in the years after the revolution were the following phenomena:

• the decline of the revolutionary wave in the West (in Mexico, Germany and a number of other countries);
• the desire to retain power at any cost;
• the deepest political and socio-economic crisis of power, caused, among other things, by the policy of war communism;
• mass uprisings in villages, as well as protests in the army and navy;
• the collapse of the idea of ​​​​forming socialism and communism by bypassing market relations.

The years of the NEP were marked by the gradual elimination of the military-mobilization economic model and the restoration of the national economy destroyed during the war.

The main political goal during the NEP years was to relieve social tension. It was necessary to strengthen the social base in the form of an alliance of workers and peasants. The economic goal was to prevent further deterioration, overcome the crisis and restore the economy. The social task was to provide favorable conditions for the formation of a socialist society without a world revolution.

There were also foreign policy goals during the NEP years. The relatively liberal elite of the Soviet government insisted on overcoming international isolation. One of the reasons for this decision lay in economic changes. For example, concessions, a procedure used during the NEP, became widespread. The commissioning of various enterprises or land to foreign entrepreneurs has gained remarkable popularity. This procedure helped to quickly “pull out” many enterprises and lands, although the conservative part of the Bolsheviks was still suspicious of the concession.

Were the goals achieved? There are individual indicators, for example, the growth of national income, improvement in the financial situation of workers, etc. The years of NEP really led to the optimization of the state situation. But was the new policy a real economic revolution, or did the Soviet government overestimate its own plans? To answer this question, you need to turn to the basic techniques and mechanisms used during the NEP.

Changes in the economy

The first and main measure of the new economic policy was the elimination of food appropriation. From now on, bread was not confiscated in unlimited quantities. A clear limit for the food tax was established - 20% of the net peasant product. The surplus appropriation system demanded almost twice as much. The peasants could use the remaining products after paying the tax for their own needs. You could use it yourself, transfer it to the state, or even sell it on the free market.

Radical changes also affected the industrial sector. The main committees - the so-called central boards - were abolished. Instead, trusts appear - associations of interconnected or homogeneous enterprises. They receive complete financial and economic independence, including the right to produce long-term bonds.

By the end of 1922, about 90% of enterprises were united into 421 trusts. 60% of them were local and only 40% were centralized. The trusts resolved issues of production and state sales of products. The enterprises themselves did not receive government support and were guided only by the purchase of resources on the market.

Syndicates - voluntary associations of several trusts - have become equally popular. They were involved in supply, sales, lending and various foreign trade functions. A wide network of fairs, trading enterprises and exchanges arose.

The aggressive policy of war communism implied the complete abolition of finance and payment. But the years of NEP in Russia revived commodity-money relations. Wage tariffs were introduced, restrictions on increasing earnings and changing jobs were lifted, and universal labor conscription was abolished. The principle of material incentives was taken as the basis. It replaced the non-economic coercion of war communism.

In-kind tax and trade

We should talk in a little more detail about each economic sector that underwent changes during the NEP years. The state and its entire population breathed a sigh of relief when it became known that the food allocation had been cancelled. At the X Congress of the RSDLP, held from March 8 to 16, 1921, it was decided to introduce a special tax that would replace the forcible seizure of property. By the way, the question of in what year the transition to the NEP was officially confirmed by the authorities should be considered within the framework of the Tenth Congress. At it, Lenin proposed a program of new socio-economic principles, which was supported by 732 thousand party members.

The essence of the tax in kind is simple: from now on, peasants annually hand over to the state a firmly established norm of grain. The forced seizure of almost half of total production is a thing of the past. The tax was halved. The authorities believed that such a step would create an incentive to increase grain production. By 1922, measures to help peasants were completely strengthened: the tax in kind was reduced by 10%. Farmers were freed from choosing forms of agricultural use. Even hiring labor and renting land were allowed.

All measures taken were the most liberal. The commercial and financial side of the NEP concerned the free sale of rural products. At the X Congress, the beginning of the exchange of products between the village and the city was announced. The advantage was given not to the market, but to cooperatives. Initially, the Bolsheviks planned to be based on barter - free exchange without money. For example, 1 pood of rye could be exchanged for 1 box of nails. Naturally, nothing came of this venture. The pseudo-socialist exchange of products was quickly replaced by the usual purchase and sale with money.

Industry during the NEP years

The transition to the use of market mechanisms was completed in the fall of 1921. This prompted the leadership of the RCP(b) to urgently implement reforms in the industrial field. Most state enterprises had to switch to the principles of economic accounting. State finances equally needed to be reformed - by replacing natural taxes with cash taxes, forming a new budget, establishing control over money emissions, etc.

The question of creating state capitalism in the form of concessions and rental relations was raised. The power-capitalist form of economic management included industrial, rural and consumer cooperation.

The main task of the Bolshevik leadership was to strengthen the socialist sector through the creation of large state industry. It was necessary to ensure its interaction with other structures. Did such a step contradict the basic principles of the NEP? It is necessary to understand the issue.

The public sector included the largest and most efficient enterprises, which were provided with fuel, raw materials and other products. All large enterprises were subordinate to the Supreme Council of the National Economy (VSNKh). The rest of the enterprises were immediately rented out. The industrial management system was reformed. Of the fifty former branch centers and central administrations of the Supreme Economic Council, only 16 remained. Accordingly, the number of employees was reduced from 300 thousand to 91 thousand people.

The surrender of domestic industry to foreign entrepreneurs, which was used during the NEP years, was called a concession. In essence, production attracted foreign capital. This saved many unprofitable enterprises during the NEP years.

Despite the development of market mechanisms, the Soviet authorities still despised the bourgeois development of society. “Capitalism must be well-trained in our country,” Lenin once said. What could he mean? Most likely, Vladimir Ilyich was going to improve the country in a matter of months with the help of the market and liberal reforms, and then return to the path of socialist development. Capitalism in Russia will not develop fully, but only at the “school” level. After that, he will be liquidated and “schooled out.”

Trade and private capital

A significant step forward was the revival of private capital in the trade sector. Merchants, like small producers, were forced to buy up patents and pay a progressive tax. Merchants were divided into five categories depending on the nature of the trade relations being carried out. These are sellers from hand, in stores, in kiosks and stalls, retail and wholesale, as well as hired workers.

Closer to 1925, the state implemented a shift towards stationary trade. Used by the authorities and widely used during the NEP years, private traders were placed in shops that formed a wide retail network. At the same time, the wholesale market still remained in the hands of the authorities. Cooperative and large state-owned enterprises predominated here.

Since 1921, exchanges began to revive - points of circulation of mass products. Such authorities were abolished during the years of war communism, but the new economic policy changed everything.

During the NEP years, the number of different exchanges reached the pre-war number. By the end of 1925, about 90 joint-stock companies were registered. All of them were a collection of predominantly cooperative, state or mixed capital. The turnover of trading companies exceeded 1.5 billion rubles. Various forms of cooperation have developed rapidly. This especially affected consumer cooperative institutions, which were closely connected with rural areas.

As already mentioned, a foreign element appeared in trade - concessions. This is the rental of various firms and organizations to foreign tenants and small entrepreneurs, which was used during the NEP years. Already in 1926, there were 117 existing concession agreements. They covered enterprises that employed about 20 thousand people. This is 1% of the total number of products produced in Russia.

Concessions were not the only form of interaction with foreign enterprises. A stream of emigrant workers from all over the world headed to the Soviet Union. The newly formed country with an unusual way of life, a utopian ideology and a complex form of governance attracted foreigners. Thus, in 1922, the Russian-American Industrial Corporation (RAIK) was created, which included six garment factories in Petrograd and four in Moscow. The credit system has been revived. Before 1925, a number of specialized banks, joint-stock companies, syndicates, cooperatives, etc. appeared.

The situation, I must say, was amazing. The socialists who came to power were simply carried away by bourgeois governance, which is why they were criticized by the conservative part of the revolutionaries. However, the policy being pursued was simply necessary. The devastation in the country required rapid changes, and they could only be achieved through proven, capitalist methods. But can we say that a real market has been formed in the country? Let's try to figure it out further.

Market mechanisms

There was no pure market economy in the form in which we know it in the USSR during the NEP years. This is an obvious fact, despite all the mechanisms and tricks that the Bolshevik government so often resorted to. A market cannot be built in a matter of days from scratch. And the country's economy was truly “empty”. The authorities achieved this phenomenon by aggressively imposing war communism. No matter how actively and effectively all the methods that marked the new years of the NEP were applied, a normal market was still not possible in the country.

At the end of the 1910s, monetary relations were abolished in the USSR. Most goods and services began to be provided free of charge. The Soviet government considered this decision painful, but correct. Radical measures will supposedly bring a happier future closer, and socialism will flourish. However, there was still no happiness. Confusion with accumulated money and unsecured exchange only caused a wave of discontent. The state made concessions, and to improve the economy, a monetary reform was carried out - the first market mechanism.

In the early 1920s, the country introduced the golden chervonets. It was equal to 5 US dollars and was backed by Russia's gold reserves. A little later, the State Bank appeared, created on the principles of economic accounting and interested in receiving income from lending to industry, trade and agriculture.

The transition to the NEP meant the abandonment of revolutionary, radical methods of economic management. The Soviet authorities realized the ineffectiveness of reactionary policies and did not torture their fellow citizens. However, there is no need to talk about the market. The surrender of revolutionary powers, which was used during the NEP years, does not mean an active and desired transition to capitalism. On the contrary, the authorities were reluctant to introduce new liberal elements. The same concession could not do without strict supervision by the Soviet authorities.

Social contradictions of politics

Most historians argue that the introduction of new economic principles significantly changed the social structure and lifestyle of Soviet citizens. Colorful figures of the Soviet bourgeoisie appeared - the so-called Sovburs, Nepmen. These are individuals who define the specifics of that era. They were, as it were, outside society. Deprived of voting rights and membership in trade unions, while far from being poor, the Nepmen became a real reflection of the times of the 1920s.

Entrepreneurs felt the fragility and temporary nature of their position. It was difficult and pointless to leave the country. Managing the enterprise from a distance simply wouldn’t work. The Soviet Union itself was a state with an unusual ideology: every person here should be equal, all rich people are despised. Just recently, landowners and merchants were killed or expelled from the country. The Nepmen knew this, and therefore feared for their lives.

Fashion during the NEP years differed little from American fashion during Prohibition. The photo below clearly demonstrates this.

How long can you still hit the jackpot and make money on adventures? Where to put the spent savings and is it worth doing it at all? These questions were asked by every Soviet entrepreneur who made at least small forecasts in his head.

However, the emergence of entrepreneurs in a country most unadapted to this was not the only contradiction during the NEP years. The support used for small lands, as well as the reduction of wealthy farms and the “middle-classization” of the countryside, presented another interesting problem.

It all started with the tax policy - a kind of deterrent. Prosperous industries stopped growing. Support for small farms has received particular development. The so-called averaging has begun - when each owner gets not a little and not a lot, but an average. It was the middle peasants who became staunch adherents of power and traditional culture.

Lenin carried out the policy. He hoped for universal peasant cooperation, and was not too lazy to once again mention the voluntary nature of land divisions. What is the contradiction here? On the one hand, the state had a socialist orientation. It was supposed to forcefully equalize everyone. But the NEP policy, marked by bourgeois principles, did not allow this to be done. The result was a very strange picture: a supposedly voluntary “averageization” with unclear goals, which did not lead to anything at all. A little later, the Soviet authorities will abandon private property and announce the creation of collective farms.

The last contradiction of the NEP is the creation of an exorbitant bureaucracy. The bureaucracy has grown to incredible proportions due to the active interference of the authorities in the industrial and production spheres. Already in 1921, about 2.5 million officials worked in government agencies. For comparison: in tsarist Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, the number of civil servants barely reached 180 thousand people. There is only one question: why does a state whose ideology is aimed at the absence of any power need such an extensive and cumbersome state apparatus? It is difficult to answer this question.

Policy results

The question of in what year the NEP was officially abolished remains relevant to this day. Some talk about 1927, when there was a disruption in state grain procurement. Then a huge amount of food supplies were confiscated from the kulaks. Other historians put forward a point of view about 1928, when the policy of five-year development of the national economy was launched. The country's leadership then set a course for collectivization and accelerated industrialization.

The NEP was not officially cancelled. It should be remembered that the principles of the New Economic Policy were formed by Vladimir Lenin, who died in 1924. His rules worked even after death. Only on October 11, 1931, an official decree was adopted on a complete ban on private trade on the territory of the USSR.

What was the main success of the policy? Firstly, this is a partial restoration of the economy, destroyed during two revolutions and a civil war. War communism failed to “cure” the country, but it did so in part through the application of capitalist methods. Economic indicators doubled from 1913 to 1926. The country received capital-intensive, long-term investments. The situation remained contradictory only in the countryside, where pressure was exerted on the kulaks - wealthy peasants.

Finding new ways

The undoubted successes of the new economic policy did not, however, solve all state problems. The sales crisis remained in force, price scissors increased (inconsistency in the cost of goods), and finally, the shortage of goods did not go away.

The authorities had different views on solving the problem. The left, led by Trotsky, insisted on the dictatorship of industry. Problems can be solved only through the efforts of the proletariat with minimal government intervention. There were also rightists, led by Bukharin. They advocated the creation of cooperatives, support for the peasantry and the development of a market economy. Bukharin's famous quote:

Get rich, accumulate, develop your farm! Poor people's socialism is lousy socialism.

Trotsky was defeated quite easily - at the January 1924 party conference, his project was removed from discussion. Bukharin, in turn, became friends with Stalin. At the end of the 20s, he found himself in disgrace due to contradictions with the current government - his arguments against collectivization and industrialization were simply not accepted.

NEP- a new economic policy carried out in Soviet Russia and the USSR in the 1920s. It was adopted on March 14, 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.

Reasons for the new economic policy.

The extremely difficult situation in the country pushed the Bolsheviks towards a more flexible economic policy. Anti-government peasant uprisings break out in different parts of the country (in the Tambov province, the Middle Volga region, the Don, Kuban, and Western Siberia). By the spring of 1921, there were already about 200 thousand people in the ranks of their participants. Discontent also spread to the Armed Forces. In March, sailors and Red Army soldiers of Kronstadt, the largest naval base of the Baltic Fleet, took up arms against the communists. A wave of mass strikes and demonstrations by workers was growing in the cities.

At their core, these were spontaneous outbursts of popular indignation against the policies of the Soviet government. But in each of them there was also an element of organization to a greater or lesser extent. It was contributed by a wide range of political forces: from monarchists to socialists. These diverse 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.

It was necessary to admit that it was not only the war that led to the economic and political crisis, but also the policy of “war communism.” “Ruin, need, impoverishment” - this is how V. I. Lenin characterized the situation that developed after the end of the civil war. By 1921, the population of Russia, compared with the fall of 1917, had decreased by more than 10 million people; industrial production decreased by 7 times; transport was in complete disrepair; coal and oil production was at the level of the end of the 19th century; the area under cultivation has sharply decreased; gross agricultural output was 67% of the pre-war level. The people were exhausted. For a number of years people lived from hand to mouth. There were not enough clothes, shoes, and medicines.

In the spring and summer of 1921, a terrible famine broke out in the Volga region. It was provoked not so much by a severe drought, but by the fact that after the confiscation of surplus production in the fall, the peasants had neither grain left for sowing, nor the desire to sow and cultivate the land. More than 5 million people died from hunger. The consequences of the civil war also affected the city. Due to a lack of raw materials and fuel, many enterprises closed. In February 1921, 64 of the largest factories in Petrograd stopped working, including Putilovsky. The workers found themselves on the street. Many of them went to the village in search of food. In 1921, Moscow lost half of its workers, Petrograd two-thirds. Labor productivity fell sharply. In some industries it reached only 20% of the pre-war level.

One of the most tragic consequences of the war years was child homelessness. It increased sharply during the famine of 1921. According to official data, in 1922 there were 7 million street children in the Soviet Republic. This phenomenon acquired such alarming proportions that the Chairman of the Cheka, F. E. Dzerzhinsky, was appointed head of the Commission for Improving the Lives of Children, designed to combat homelessness.

As a result, Soviet Russia entered a period of peaceful construction with two diverging lines of internal policy. On the one hand, a rethinking of the fundamentals of economic policy began, accompanied by the emancipation of the country's economic life from total state regulation. On the other hand, the ossification of the Soviet system and the Bolshevik dictatorship remained, and any attempts to democratize society and expand the civil rights of the population were resolutely suppressed.

The essence of the new economic policy:

1) The main political task is to relieve social tension in society, strengthen the social base of Soviet power, in the form of an alliance of workers and peasants.

2) The economic task is to prevent further devastation in the national economy, get out of the crisis and restore the country’s economy.

3) The social task is to provide favorable conditions for building socialism in the USSR, ultimately. A minimum program could include such goals as eliminating hunger, unemployment, raising material standards, and saturating the market with necessary goods and services.

4) And finally, the NEP pursued another, no less important task - the restoration of normal foreign economic and foreign policy relations, to overcome international isolation.

Let's consider the main changes that occurred in the life of Russia with the country's transition to the NEP.

Agriculture

Starting from the 1923-1924 business year, a single agricultural tax was introduced, replacing various in-kind taxes. This tax was levied partly on products and partly on money. Later, after the currency reform, the single tax took exclusively monetary form. On average, the size of the tax in kind was half the size of the surplus appropriation system, and the bulk of it was assigned to the wealthy peasantry. Great assistance in restoring agricultural production was provided by government measures to improve agriculture, the massive dissemination of agricultural knowledge and improved farming techniques among peasants. Among the measures aimed at restoring and developing agriculture in 1921-1925, financial assistance to the countryside occupied an important place. A network of district and provincial agricultural credit societies was created in the country. Loans were provided to low-power horseless, one-horse peasant farms and middle peasants for the purchase of draft animals, machinery, tools, fertilizers, to increase the breed of livestock, improve soil cultivation, etc.

In the provinces that fulfilled the procurement plan, the state grain monopoly was abolished and free trade in bread and all other agricultural products was allowed. Products remaining in excess of the tax could be sold to the state or on the market at free prices, and this, in turn, significantly stimulated the expansion of production on peasant farms. It was allowed to lease land and hire workers, but there were, however, great restrictions.

The state encouraged the development of various forms of simple cooperation: consumer, supply, credit, and fishing. Thus, in agriculture, by the end of the 1920s, these forms of cooperation covered more than half of peasant households.

Industry

With the transition to the NEP, impetus was given to the development of private capitalist entrepreneurship. The main position of the state on this issue was that freedom of trade and the development of capitalism were allowed only to a certain extent and only under the condition of state regulation. In industry, the sphere of activity of a private owner was mainly limited to the production of consumer goods, the extraction and processing of certain types of raw materials, and the manufacture of simple tools.

Developing the idea of ​​state capitalism, the government allowed private enterprise to lease small and medium-sized industrial and commercial enterprises. In fact, these enterprises belonged to the state, their work program was approved by local government institutions, but production activities were carried out by private entrepreneurs.

A small number of state-owned enterprises were denationalized. It was allowed to open their own enterprises with no more than 20 employees. By the mid-1920s, the private sector accounted for 20-25% of industrial production.

One of the features of the NEP was the development of concessions, a special form of lease, i.e. granting foreign entrepreneurs the right to operate and build enterprises on the territory of the Soviet state, as well as to develop the earth’s subsoil, extract minerals, etc. The concession policy pursued the goal of attracting foreign capital to the country's economy.

Of all the industries during the recovery period, mechanical engineering achieved the greatest success. The country began to implement Lenin's electrification plan. Electricity production in 1925 was 6 times higher than in 1921 and significantly higher than the level of 1913. The metallurgical industry was far behind pre-war levels and much work remained to be done in this area. Railway transport, which was badly damaged during the civil war, was gradually restored. The light and food industries were quickly restored.

Thus, in 1921-1925. The Soviet people successfully solved the problems of restoring industry, and production output increased.

Manufacturing control

Major changes took place in the economic management system. This concerned primarily the weakening of centralization characteristic of the period of “war communism”. The central boards in the Supreme Economic Council were abolished, and their local functions were transferred to large district departments and provincial economic councils.

Trusts, that is, associations of homogeneous or interconnected enterprises, have become the main form of production management in the public sector.

Trusts were given broad powers; they independently decided what to produce, where to sell products, and bore financial responsibility for the organization of production, the quality of products, and the safety of state property. Enterprises included in the trust were withdrawn from state supplies and began purchasing resources on the market. All this was called “economic accounting” (khozraschet), according to which enterprises received complete financial independence, up to the issue of long-term bond issues.

Simultaneously with the formation of the trust system, syndicates began to emerge, that is, voluntary associations of several trusts for the wholesale sale of their products, purchases of raw materials, lending, and regulation of trade operations on the domestic and foreign markets.

Trade

The development of trade was one of the elements of state capitalism. With the help of trade, it was necessary to ensure economic exchange between industry and agriculture, between city and countryside, without which normal economic life of society is impossible.

It was supposed to carry out a wide exchange of goods within the local economic turnover. To achieve this, it was envisaged to oblige state enterprises to hand over their products to a special commodity exchange fund of the republic. But unexpectedly for the country's leaders, local trade exchange turned out to be difficult for economic development, and already in October 1921 it turned into free trade.

Private capital was allowed into the trade sphere in accordance with the permission received from government agencies to carry out trade operations. The presence of private capital in retail trade was especially noticeable, but it was completely excluded from foreign trade, which was carried out exclusively on the basis of a state monopoly. International trade relations were concluded only with the bodies of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade.

D currency reform

Of no small importance for the implementation of the NEP was the creation of a stable system and stabilization of the ruble.

As a result of heated discussions, by the end of 1922 it was decided to carry out monetary reform based on the gold standard. To stabilize the ruble, denomination of banknotes was carried out, that is, a change in their nominal value according to a certain ratio of old and new notes. First, in 1922, Sovznaki were issued.

Simultaneously with the release of Sovznak, at the end of November 1922, a new Soviet currency was released into circulation - the “chervonets”, equal to 7.74 grams of pure gold, or to the pre-revolutionary ten-ruble coin. Chervonets were primarily intended for lending to industry and commercial operations in wholesale trade; it was strictly forbidden to use them to cover the budget deficit.

In the fall of 1922, stock exchanges were created, where the purchase and sale of currency, gold, and government loans were allowed at a free exchange rate. Already in 1925, the chervonets became a convertible currency; it was officially listed on various currency exchanges around the world. The final stage of the reform was the procedure for repurchasing Sovznak.

Tax reform

Simultaneously with the monetary reform, tax reform was carried out. Already at the end of 1923, the main source of state budget revenues became deductions from the profits of enterprises, rather than taxes from the population. The logical consequence of the return to a market economy was the transition from natural to monetary taxation of peasant farms. During this period, new sources of cash tax are actively being developed. In 1921-1922 taxes were established on tobacco, alcoholic beverages, beer, matches, honey, mineral waters and other goods.

Banking system

The credit system was gradually revived. In 1921, the State Bank, which was abolished in 1918, restored its work. Lending to industry and trade on a commercial basis began. Specialized banks arose in the country: the Commercial and Industrial Bank (Prombank) for financing industry, the Electric Bank for lending to electrification, the Russian Commercial Bank (from 1924 - Vneshtorgbank) for financing foreign trade, etc. These banks provided short-term and long-term lending, distributed loans, assigned loan, discount and deposit interest.

Confirmation of the market nature of the economy can be seen in the competition that arose between banks in the struggle for clients by providing them with especially favorable lending conditions. Commercial credit, that is, lending to each other by various enterprises and organizations, has become widespread. All this suggests that a single money market with all its attributes was already functioning in the country.

International trade

The monopoly of foreign trade did not make it possible to more fully use the country's export potential, since peasants and artisans received only devalued Soviet banknotes, and not foreign currency, for their products. IN AND. Lenin opposed the weakening of the monopoly of foreign trade, fearing the alleged growth of smuggling. In fact, the government feared that producers, having received the right to enter the world market, would feel independent from the state and again begin to fight against the authorities. Based on this, the country’s leadership tried to prevent the demonopolization of foreign trade

These are the most important measures of the new economic policy carried out by the Soviet state. Despite all the diversity of assessments, the NEP can be called a successful and successful policy that was of great and invaluable importance. And, of course, like any economic policy, the NEP has vast experience and important lessons.

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.

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 disruption 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.

Contents of the new economic policy:

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 turnover;

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 the living standards of the working people rose. 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, 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.