Lenin and the Question of Private Trade in Soviet Russia

Slavic Review ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 399-412
Author(s):  
Alan Ball
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Private Sector ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
Economic Collapse ◽  
Soviet Russia

Few official changes of course in the Soviet Union have been as dramatic as the adoption of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. Supplanting what had come to be called War Communism (1918-1920)—a boiling mixture of revolutionary euphoria, bitter civil war, foreign intervention, economic collapse, and growing peasant unrest—NEP represented a new departure in many areas of Soviet life. First and foremost, eyewitnesses were struck by the legalization of a considerable amount of private economic activity, in contrast to the harsh measures adopted by the Bolsheviks against the private sector during War Communism.While this change seemed an improvement to most foreigners on the scene (and undoubtedly to most Russians), revolutionaries of diverse hues regarded the legalization of private trade in 1921 as a clear signal that the Bolsheviks had jettisoned the ideals of the Revolution.

A Postwar Perestroika? Toward a History of Private Enterprise in the USSR

Slavic Review ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 516-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Hessler
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Private Enterprise ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private Business ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
History Of ◽  
Prison Camp

One of the firmest popular conceptions of the Soviet Union in the United States is of a system diat categorically banned private enterprise. Embraced by specialists and the general public alike, this conception reflects the official Soviet stance diat the private sector was eradicated during losif Stalin's “great break” of 1929-30. Indeed, over the course of diose two years, individual peasants were compelled to collectivize, private stores forcibly shut, private manufactures socialized, and even doctors and dentists pressured to cooperate or to close shop. The concept of an interdiction against all private economic activity found support in the words of the dictator–Stalin's assertions that the Soviet Union was a society “without capitalists, small or big,” that socialist, not capitalist, property was the “foundation of revolutionary legality,” and many other statements of a similar ilk. Stalin proved his commitment to this model by his readiness to resort to coercion against its violators: at his instigation, repressive laws threatened entrepreneurs with five to ten years in prison camp for profitable private business. Such developments appeared as unequivocal as they proved lasting; when commentators discussed perestroika in the late 1980s, the only historical precedent they could identify was Lenin's New Economic Policy six decades before.

Russian Protectionism: Problems of Institutional Heritage

2012 ◽  
pp. 96-114
Author(s):  
L. Tsedilin
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Trade ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
The State ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State Monopoly ◽  
The Times ◽  
Soviet Experience

The article analyzes the pre-revolutionary and the Soviet experience of the protectionist policies. Special attention is paid to the external economic policy during the times of NEP (New Economic Policy), socialist industrialization and the years of 1970-1980s. The results of the state monopoly on foreign trade and currency transactions in the Soviet Union are summarized; the economic integration in the frames of Comecon is assessed.

Jews in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union, 1921–1941

2013 ◽  
pp. 274-307
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Jewish Question ◽  
Socialist State ◽  
Final Goal ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Single World

This chapter describes the situation of the Jews in Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union in the years between 1921 and 1941. Here, their victory in the civil war enabled the Bolsheviks to apply the ideological principles they had developed for dealing with the ‘Jewish question’. National issues were seen by all the Bolsheviks as instrumental. They were to be judged on how they advanced the interest of the world revolution and the Soviet state. Where national groups were supported, this was a tactical alliance, like the alliance with the peasantry. The ultimate goal was the creation of a new socialist man who would be above petty nationalist divisions, and a single world socialist state. All those responsible for Jewish policy within the Bolshevik party sought this final goal; the only difference between them was their view on how long Jewish separateness could be tolerated. The aim was assimilation—a new version of the view that the Jews were to be given everything as individuals and nothing as a community.

The Phantom of the Soviet Thermidor

2019 ◽  
pp. 234-273
Author(s):  
Jay Bergman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The French Revolution

Chapter 8 describes the origins of the debate over Thermidor—the phase in the French Revolution following the Jacobin Terror—in the New Economic Policy Lenin initiated in 1921. It also shows the role the concept played in the struggle for power to succeed Lenin. The debate over what its realization in the Soviet Union would entail reflected the very real fear among the Bolsheviks that their revolution might end before the construction of socialism had even begun. To them, Thermidor was virtually a synonym for counter-revolution. For mostly political purposes—but also because their fear of it was real—Stalin and Bukharin, in the mid-1920s, argued that to evoke the danger of a Soviet Thermidor was tantamount to advocating it. Trotsky, who always considered analogies with French revolutions instructive, in the 1920s defined Thermidor as a form of counter-revolution. But since, in his opinion, it had not yet occurred in the Soviet Union, there was reason to believe it could be avoided altogether.

“Changing Landmarks” in Russian Berlin, 1922-1924

Slavic Review ◽  
1968 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
Trained Personnel ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Russian Soil

One of the most pressing problems facing the Soviet government in the 1920s was how to recruit the technical intelligentsia and professional classes behind the new regime. Just as the officer corps of the Imperial government was a necessary adjunct to the Red Army during the Civil War, so the businessman, the doctor, and the bureaucrat were essential to the functioning of orderly social and political institutions under the New Economic Policy. The story of the economic concessions made to revive the dormant links between city and countryside is well known. But the recruitment of trained personnel involved not only economic concession but also ideological conversion. Beginning in 1921 the Soviet leaders took great pains to legitimize their rule by portraying themselves as heirs to Russian national traditions and defenders of Russian soil against foreign intervention.

China's “New Economic Policy”—Transition or Beginning

1964 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 65-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Schurmann
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Economic Relationships ◽  
Great Leap ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Voluntary Response ◽  
Great Leap Forward ◽  
Traditional Patterns ◽  
The Great Leap Forward

Until a short time ago, it appeared that much of what was going on in China could be characterised by the cynical aphorism plus ça change plus c'est la même chose. Many things became manifest in the country that were reminiscent of themes centuries old. China had gone through two radical phases, one during the First Five-Year Plan period when the Chinese Communists tried to repeat the Soviet experience of industrialisation, and the second during the Great Leap Forward when they used their own mobilisational means to try to achieve economic break-through. The ninth Plenum in January 1961 called a dramatic halt to the extreme policies of the Great Leap Forward, and launched a period that bears strong similarities to the N.E.P. (New Economic Policy) period of the early 1920s in the Soviet Union. Many traditional patterns that were effaced during the years of radicalism began to reappear. There was talk of the need “to study very well traditional economic relationships.” It seemed that for a while the leadership had decided that only a truly voluntary response from below, and not coercion of any sort, could rescue China from the morass in which it found itself. But as of the time of the writing of this article, there are ominous signs that China may be approaching another “1928.” The Party drums are rolling once again, and the themes are not those of the N.E.P., but more like those which preceded the great Soviet collectivisation drive of 1928. During the last few years, the leadership made no attempt to hide the facts of China's poverty and isolation. But now a new note of defiance, of toughness has crept out. Where it will lead is hard to say.

Respite

2021 ◽  
pp. 56-62
Author(s):  
George W. Breslauer
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Peaceful Coexistence ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
Peasant Society ◽  
Foreign Intervention ◽  
Political Realm

After winning the Civil War, the Bolsheviks had to decide how and when to proceed to the stage of building socialism, given that they had come to power in a peasant society. The New Economic Policy, and the policy of “peaceful coexistence” toward foreign powers, were efforts to buy time to get the economy back on its feet, to prevent another foreign intervention, and to allow the regime to consolidate its monopoly further over the political realm. This period was also marked by debates over how to make the transition to socialism after this respite, debates that took place during a power struggle over the succession to Lenin.

scholarly journals The Anarchist Movement in Ukraine at the Height of the New Economic Policy (1924-25)

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Viktor Savchenko
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
New Economic Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Police Agencies ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
Southern Ukraine ◽  
Unknown Period

This paper examines a virtually unknown period of the development of the anarchist movement in Ukraine, ignored by both Soviet and post-Soviet historians, for whom the history of anarchism in the Soviet Union ended in 1921. The author,basing his information on archival materials,including the archives of the Soviet secret police agencies (ChK, GPU, OGPU), extends the life of the anarchist movement through the mid-1920s. This was a period of revitalization of the movement, especially among students, young workers, and the unemployed in the cities of Eastern and Southern Ukraine (Kharkiv, Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, and Poltava). Despite repression by the government, the anarchist movement in the USSR in the 1920s was able to sustain itself by going underground.

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