The period from 1917 to 1921 is a truly difficult time for Russia. The revolution and civil war hit hard on economic well-being. After the end of the disturbing events, the country needed to be reformed, since military innovations were helpless in peacetime.

Historical background of the proclamation

NEP, or the new one, was the need of the time. The crisis "war communism", adopted during the civil war, was unacceptable for the development of the country in a peaceful period. The surplus appraisal was an unbearable burden for ordinary people, and the nationalization of enterprises and the complete centralization of management did not allow development. The introduction of the NEP is a response to the general dissatisfaction with "war communism".

The situation in the country before the introduction of the NEP

By the end of the civil war, the country was destroyed in every way. The former Russian Empire lost Poland, Latvia, Estonia, part of Ukraine and Belarus, Finland. Mineral development areas suffered - Donbass, oil regions, Siberia. Industrial production has declined, and signs of a serious crisis have been outlined in agriculture. In addition, the peasants, outraged by the surplus appropriation, refused to hand over their bread, and the situation escalated. The uprisings swept the Don, Ukraine, Kuban, Siberia. The wave of discontent passed to the army. In 1920, the question of the abolition of the surplus appraisal was raised. These were the first attempts to introduce the NEP. Reasons: the crisis state of the economy, the destroyed industrial and agricultural sectors, the hardships of surplus appropriation, which fell on the shoulders of ordinary people, foreign policy failures, currency instability.

Declaring a new path in the economy

The reforms began in 1921, when the Tenth Congress of the RCP(b) adopted a resolution on the transition to a tax in kind. Initially, the NEP was planned as a temporary measure. The reforms dragged on for several years. The essence of the NEP is to carry out changes in industry, agriculture, and the financial sector, which will make it possible to remove the tasks set by the authors of the project of economic transformations related to the political, economic, social, and foreign policy spheres.

It is believed that free trade was the first innovation, but it is not. Initially, it was considered dangerous for the authorities. The Bolsheviks did not immediately come to the idea of entrepreneurship. The NEP period is a time of innovation, which was an attempt to combine socialist power with elements of a market economy.

Industry reforms

The first innovation was the creation of trusts. They were associations of homogeneous enterprises that had a certain freedom of activity, financial independence. The introduction of the NEP is the beginning of a complete reform of industry. New associations - trusts - could decide for themselves what to produce, from what and to whom to sell it. The scope of activity was wide: both the purchase of resources and production by state order. Trusts created reserve capital, which was supposed to cover losses.

The NEP is a policy that provided for the formation of syndicates. These associations consisted of several trusts. The syndicates were engaged in foreign trade, providing loans, marketing finished products, and supplying raw materials. Until the end of the NEP period, most of the trusts were members of such associations.

Fairs operated for the organization of wholesale trade. A full-fledged market began to function, where raw materials and finished products were purchased. A kind of progenitor of market relations in the USSR was the NEP, the causes of which lay in the disorganization of the economy.

One of the main achievements of the period was the return of monetary wages. NEP - this is the time of the abolition of labor service, the unemployment rate has decreased. During the period of the new economic policy, the private sector in industry actively developed. The process of denationalization of some enterprises is typical. Individuals received the right to open industrial factories and factories.

Concession has become popular - a form of lease, when foreign individuals or legal entities act as tenants. The share of foreign investment was especially high in metallurgy and the textile industry.

Innovations in agriculture

The NEP is a policy that has affected all sectors of the economy, including the agricultural sector. The overall assessment of the consequences of innovations is positive. In 1922, the Land Code was approved. New law banned private ownership of land, it was only allowed to use on a leasehold basis.

The policy of the NEP in agriculture influenced the social and property structure of the villagers. It was unprofitable for wealthy peasants to develop their economy, besides, they paid an increased tax. The poor were able to improve their financial situation. Thus, there were fewer poor and rich - "middle peasants" appeared.

Many peasants have increased plots of land, increased motivation to work. In addition, the burden of taxes lay on the inhabitants of the village. And the state's spending was huge - for the army, for industry, for the restoration of the economy after the civil war. Taxes from wealthy peasants did not help raise the level of development, so new ways of filling the treasury had to be used. So, the practice of buying grain from peasants at low prices appeared - this led to a crisis and the emergence of the concept of "price scissors". The climax of the economic depression is 1923. In 1924-25, the crisis repeated itself again - its essence was in a significant drop in the indicators of the amount of harvested grain.

NEP is a time of change in the field of agriculture. Not all of them led to positive results, but features of a market economy appeared. By the end of the NEP period, the crisis only increased.

Financial sphere

To carry out reforms, changes in the sphere of monetary circulation were necessary. The main task of the NEP is to stabilize the financial sector and normalize foreign exchange relations with other countries.

The first step of the reformers was the denomination of the monetary unit. The currency was backed by gold reserves. The resulting emission was used to cover the financial changes in the state, mainly the peasants and the proletariat suffered. There was a widespread practice of government loans, increasing the tax on luxury and lowering the basic necessities.

At the beginning of the NEP, reforms in the financial sector were successful. This made it possible to carry out the second stage of transformations in 1924. It was decided to introduce a hard currency. Treasury notes were in circulation, and chervonets were used for international payments. Credit became popular, thanks to which most of the purchase and sale transactions took place. On the territory of the USSR, several large banking structures were opened that worked with industrial enterprises. Community banks provided financial support at the local level. Gradually, the financial system expanded. There were banks that worked with agricultural institutions, foreign economic structures.

Political development of the country during the NEP

Economic reforms were accompanied by political struggle within the state. Authoritarian tendencies were growing in the country. The period of Vladimir Lenin's rule can be called a "collective dictatorship". Power was concentrated in the hands of Lenin and Trotsky, but from the end of 1922 the situation changed. Trotsky's opponents created Lenin, and Leninism became a direction of philosophical thought.

The struggle within the Communist Party itself intensified. There was no homogeneity within the organization. An opposition formed that advocated giving full power to the workers' trade unions. Related to this was the appearance of a resolution that proclaimed the unity of the party and the obligation to comply with the decisions of the majority by all its members. Almost everywhere, party positions were occupied by the same persons as employees of state structures. Belonging to the ruling circles became a prestigious goal. The party was constantly expanding, so over time they began to carry out "purges" aimed against the "false" communists.

The period after the crisis intensified the conflict between old and young party members. The organization gradually stratified - more and more privileges were received by the top, which received the name "nomenklatura".

So, even in the last years of Lenin's life, his "heirs" began to share power. They tried to push the leaders of the old model away from management. Trotsky in the first place. He was fought in various ways, but most often they were simply accused of various “sins”. Among them - deviationism, Menshevism.

Completion of reforms

The positive features of the NEP, which appeared at the initial stage of the reforms, were gradually erased due to the unsuccessful and uncoordinated actions of the party leadership. The main problem is the conflict between the authoritarian communist system and attempts to introduce a market economy model. These were two poles that did not feed, but destroyed each other.

The New Economic Policy - NEP - has been gradually fading since 1924-1925. Market features were supplanted by a centralized control system. In the end, planning and state leadership took over.

In fact, the NEP ended in 1928, when the first five-year plan and the course towards collectivization were proclaimed. Since then, the New Economic Policy has ceased to exist. Officially, the NEP was curtailed only after 3 years - in 1931. Then a ban on private trade came out.

Results

The NEP is a policy that helped rebuild a shattered economy. The problem was the lack of qualified specialists - this lack did not allow to build an effective government of the country.

In the industry, it was possible to achieve high rates, but at the same time, problems remained in the agricultural sector. She was given insufficient attention and finances. The system was ill-conceived, so there was a strong imbalance in the economy. A positive feature is the stabilization of the currency.

When did the NEP end?

One of the problems in the history of the NEP, which is invariably in the field of view of domestic and foreign authors, is the question of its chronological boundaries. The conclusions reached by economists and historians on this issue are far from unambiguous.

Almost all domestic and foreign experts associate the beginning of the NEP with the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b), held in March 1921. Recently, however, attempts can be found to clarify the initial boundary of the NEP. In particular, it is proposed to consider that “Lenin's speech in March 1921 was a tactical step in order to get bread and bring down the heat of the insurgent war. This policy will become new only with the beginning of the introduction of cost accounting in industry, and especially after the full legalization of trade. Therefore, “the frontier of the NEP was not the 10th Party Congress, as traditionally stated in historiography, but reforms in the commercial and industrial sector. In the village, previously unrealized ... ideas were implemented, only refined in March 1921.

During the Soviet period, Russian historiography and economic literature postulated that the New Economic Policy continued until the complete victory of socialism. This point of view was formulated by I.V. Stalin. The "History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks)" stated that "the new economic policy was designed for the complete victory of the socialist forms of economy", and "the USSR entered a new period of development, the period of completion of the construction of a socialist society and a gradual transition to a communist society" with adoption of the Constitution of the USSR in 1936. Such an interpretation of the chronological boundaries of the NEP was also reflected in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, which, in full accordance with the "Short Course" stated that the new economic policy "ended in the 2nd half of the 30s. victory of socialism in the USSR. This problem was treated similarly by Soviet political economists.

In the second half of the 1980s. conditions have arisen in our country for a comprehensive discussion of this problem and clarification of the chronological boundaries of the NEP. Some Russian researchers drew attention to the fact that the NEP was not a frozen economic policy, that it evolved and went through a number of stages in its development, characterized by important features and at the same time retaining common essential features.

So, V.P. Dmitrenko identifies the following as stages of the NEP:

1) spring of 1921 - spring of 1922 (transition to the NEP); 2) 1922-1923 (“ensuring close interaction of NEP methods of management” as a result of the monetary reform to overcome the “price scissors”); 3) 1924-1925 (expansion and streamlining of market relations while strengthening the planning principle in the management of state enterprises); 4) 1926-1928 (“ensuring the intensive expansion of the socialist sector and its complete victory over capitalism within the country”); 5) 1929-1932 (the final stage of the NEP, when the tasks of building the economic foundation of socialism were solved in the historically shortest possible time). M.P. Kim also adheres to the point of view according to which "the NEP exhausts itself ... in the early 30s - 1932-1933" . G.G. Bogomazov and V.M. Shav-shukov believe that the attack on the capitalist elements in the late 1920s. "did not cancel the new economic policy, on the contrary, it was carried out within the framework of the latter." From their point of view, 1928-1936. - “the second stage of the NEP”, “the stage of the expanded construction of socialism”.

This point of view has certain grounds, especially since J. V. Stalin at the 16th Congress of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks (1930) said: still remain, “free” trade circulation still remains, but we will certainly cancel the initial stage of the NEP, deploying its subsequent stage, the current stage of the NEP, which is the last stage of the NEP.

Many Western, and now a number of Russian researchers adhere to the point of view, originally formed in foreign historiography, according to which the NEP lasted only until the first five-year plan, and was canceled with the onset of industrialization and collectivization.

So, in the early 1960s. the American Sovietologist N. Yasny, referring to the opinion of the Polish economist O. Lange, connected the end of the NEP with the XV Congress of the CPSU (b) (December 1927).

N. Werth states that the grain procurement crisis of 1927/28 prompted I.V. Stalin "to shift the emphasis from cooperation ... to the creation of "pillars of socialism" in the countryside - giant collective farms and machine and tractor stations (MTS)". According to this historian, "in the summer of 1928, Stalin no longer believed in the NEP, but he had not yet finally arrived at the idea of general collectivization." However, the November (1929) plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which supported the postulate of I.V. Stalin about a radical change in the attitude of the peasantry to the collective farms and approved the course for the accelerated development of industry, meant, according to N. Werth, "the end of the NEP".

R. Manting also writes that “in April 1929 the party formally approved the first five-year plan, which ... was carried out from October 1928. The plan meant the real end of the NEP; the market has been replaced. J. Boffa refers the process of "convulsive extinction" of the NEP to 1928-1929. The same conclusion is made in the works of A. Ball (USA), R.V. Davis (Great Britain), M. Mirsky, M. Harrison (Great Britain) and other authors.

Russian historians tend to a similar point of view in the works of recent decades. So, according to V.P. Danilov, the "breakdown" of the NEP took place in 1928-1929. E.G. Gimpelson states that "By the end of 1929, the NEP was over." V.A. Shestakov, one of the authors of a course on the history of Russia recently published by the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, also states that “a departure from the NEP began already in the mid-1920s,” and “the choice of forced industrialization meant the end of the NEP ...” .

Russian economists also agree with this position. So, O.R. Latsis believes that the economic policy towards the peasantry, which was based on Leninist principles, was pursued "until the end of 1927". V.E. Manevich also comes to the conclusion that “the credit reform of 1930 (together with the reorganization of industry management, tax reform) meant the final elimination of the NEP, including its credit system, which was the core of economic regulation in the 1920s. Of course, the NEP was not liquidated overnight, it was dismantled gradually in 1926-1929.” . According to G.G. Bogomazov and I.A. Blagikh, “curtailment and abandonment of the new economic policy” refers to the late 1920s - early 1930s, when a set of economic reforms was carried out that ensured the formation of an administrative-command system of management.

Obviously, the problem of periodization of the NEP continues to be debatable. But it is already clear that the conclusion of Western researchers about the "abolition" of the NEP in the late 1920s. with the transition to five-year planning and the collectivization of the peasantry is not without foundation.

At the same time, it should be borne in mind that planning itself is not the antithesis of NEP. The State Planning Commission, as you know, was created in 1921. In the "classic" period of the NEP, our country carried out the first long-term plan - the GOELRO plan, and since 1925 unified national economic plans (control figures) were developed.

It should not be forgotten that even in 1932 the collective farms covered only 61.5% of the peasant farms. This means that the problem of the economic bond between the working class and the non-cooperative peasantry, ensured through the market, has still retained its relevance. However, in the relations between the city and the countryside, as, indeed, in other spheres of economic life, in the early 1930s. more and more influenced by the administrative-command system.

URL: htpp: www.sgu.ru/files/nodes/9B19/03.pdf
Cm.: Stalin I.V. Works. T. 12. S. 306-307; He is. Questions of Leninism. M., 1953. S. 547.
History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) ... S. 306.
There. S. 331.
Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Article "New Economic Policy".
For example, the authors of the "Course of Political Economy" state that the transition period from capitalism to socialism, which corresponded to an economic policy such as the NEP, "ends ... with the complete victory of socialism" (Course of Political Economy / Edited by N.A. Tsagolov ... S. 8).
Economic policy Soviet state... S. 25-26.
The main stages in the development of Soviet society // Kommunist. 1987. No. 12. S. 70.
Bogomazov G.G., Shavshukov V.M. The anti-scientific nature of Sovietological interpretations of the new economic policy // Bulletin of the Leningrad University. Series 5. Economy. 1988. Issue. 2 (No. 12). S. 99, 100.

New economic policy- the economic policy pursued in Soviet Russia since 1921. It was adopted on March 21, 1921 by the X Congress of the RCP (b), replacing the policy of "war communism", which was carried out during the Civil War. The New Economic Policy was aimed at restoring the national economy and the subsequent transition to socialism. The main content of the NEP is the replacement of the surplus appropriation tax in the countryside (up to 70% of grain was confiscated during the surplus appropriation tax, about 30% with the food tax), the use of the market and various forms of ownership, the attraction of foreign capital in the form of concessions, the implementation of the monetary reform (1922-1924), in as a result of which the ruble became a convertible currency.

The Soviet state faced the problem of stabilizing money, and, therefore, deflation and achieving a balanced state budget. The strategy of the state, aimed at surviving in the conditions of a credit blockade, determined the primacy of the USSR in compiling production balances and distributing products. The new economic policy assumed state regulation of a mixed economy using planned and market mechanisms. The state, which retained commanding heights in the economy, used directive and indirect methods of state regulation, based on the need to implement the priorities of the forerunner of the strategic plan - GOELRO. The NEP was based on the ideas of the works of V. I. Lenin, discussions about the theory of reproduction and money, the principles of pricing, finance and credit. The NEP made it possible to quickly restore the national economy, destroyed by the First World War and the Civil War.

In the second half of the 1920s, the first attempts to curtail the NEP began. Syndicates were liquidated in industry, from which private capital was administratively ousted, a rigid centralized system economic management (economic people's commissariats). Stalin and his entourage headed for the collectivization of the countryside. Repressions were carried out against managerial personnel (the Shakhty case, the process of the Industrial Party, etc.). By the beginning of the 1930s, the NEP was effectively curtailed.

Prerequisites for the NEP

By 1921, Russia was literally in ruins. From the former Russian Empire the territories of Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, the Kars region of Armenia and Bessarabia departed. According to experts, the population in the remaining territories barely reached 135 million. Losses in these territories as a result of wars, epidemics, emigration, and a reduction in the birth rate amounted to at least 25 million people since 1914.

During the hostilities, the Donbass, the Baku oil region, the Urals and Siberia were especially affected, many mines and mines were destroyed. Factories stopped due to lack of fuel and raw materials. The workers were forced to leave the cities and go to the countryside. The total volume of industrial production decreased by 5 times. The equipment has not been updated for a long time. Metallurgy produced as much metal as it was smelted under Peter I.

The volume of agricultural production decreased by 40% due to the depreciation of money and the shortage of manufactured goods.

Society has degraded, its intellectual potential has significantly weakened. Most of the Russian intelligentsia was destroyed or left the country.

Thus, the main task domestic policy The RCP(b) and the Soviet state consisted in restoring the destroyed economy, creating a material, technical and socio-cultural basis for building socialism, which the Bolsheviks promised to the people.

The peasants, outraged by the actions of the food detachments, not only refused to hand over their bread, but also rose up in armed struggle. The uprisings swept the Tambov region, Ukraine, Don, Kuban, the Volga region and Siberia. The peasants demanded a change in agrarian policy, the elimination of the dictates of the RCP (b), the convening of the Constituent Assembly on the basis of universal equal suffrage. Units of the Red Army were thrown into the suppression of these speeches.

Discontent spread to the army. On March 1, 1921, the sailors and Red Army soldiers of the Kronstadt garrison under the slogan "For Soviets without Communists!" demanded the release from prison of all representatives of the socialist parties, the holding of re-elections of the Soviets and, as follows from the slogan, the exclusion of all communists from them, the granting of freedom of speech, meetings and unions to all parties, ensuring freedom of trade, allowing peasants to freely use their land and dispose of the products of their economy , that is, the elimination of the surplus. Convinced of the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the rebels, the authorities stormed Kronstadt. By alternating artillery shelling and infantry actions, Kronstadt was taken by March 18; some of the rebels died, the rest went to Finland or surrendered.

From the appeal of the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of the city of Kronstadt:

Comrades and citizens! Our country is going through a difficult moment. Hunger, cold, economic ruin have been holding us in an iron grip for three years now. The Communist Party, ruling the country, broke away from the masses and proved unable to lead it out of the state of general ruin. It did not take into account the unrest that had recently taken place in Petrograd and Moscow, and which showed quite clearly that the Party had lost the confidence of the working masses. Nor did they take into account the demands made by the workers. She considers them the intrigues of the counter-revolution. She is deeply mistaken. These unrest, these demands are the voice of the entire people, of all working people. All the workers, sailors and Red Army men clearly see at the present moment that only by joint efforts, by the common will of the working people, can bread, firewood, coal be provided to the country, to clothe the barefooted and undressed, and lead the republic out of the impasse...

Already in 1920, calls were made to abandon the surplus appropriation: for example, in February 1920, Trotsky submitted a corresponding proposal to the Central Committee, but received only 4 votes out of 15; at about the same time, independently of Trotsky, Rykov raised the same question in the Supreme Council of National Economy.

The course of development of the NEP

Proclamation of the NEP

By a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of March 23, 1921, adopted on the basis of decisions of the X Congress of the RCP (b), the surplus appraisal was canceled and replaced by a tax in kind, which was about half as much. Such a significant indulgence gave a certain incentive to the development of production to the war-weary peasantry.

Lenin himself pointed out that the concessions to the peasantry were subordinated to only one goal - the struggle for power: “We openly, honestly, without any deceit, declare to the peasants: in order to hold the path to socialism, we, comrade peasants, will make a number of concessions to you, but only within such and such limits and to such and such a measure, and, of course, we ourselves will judge - what is the measure and what are the limits ”(Complete Collected Works, vol. 42 p. 192).

The introduction of the tax in kind did not become a single measure. The 10th Congress proclaimed the New Economic Policy. Its essence is the assumption of market relations. The NEP was seen as a temporary policy aimed at creating the conditions for socialism - temporary, but not short-lived: Lenin himself emphasized that "NEP is serious and for a long time!". Thus, he agreed with the Mensheviks that Russia at that time was not ready for socialism, but in order to create the prerequisites for socialism, he did not at all consider it necessary to give power to the bourgeoisie.

The main political goal of the NEP is to relieve social tension, to strengthen the social base of Soviet power in the form of an alliance of workers and peasants. The economic goal is to prevent further aggravation of the devastation, to get out of the crisis and restore the economy. The social goal is to provide favorable conditions for building a socialist society without waiting for the world revolution. In addition, the NEP was aimed at restoring normal foreign policy ties, at overcoming international isolation.

NEP in the financial sector

The task of the first stage of the monetary reform, implemented within the framework of one of the directions of the economic policy of the state, was the stabilization of the monetary and credit relations of the USSR with other countries. After two denominations, as a result of which 1 million rubles. former banknotes was equated to 1 p. new state marks, a parallel circulation of depreciating state marks was introduced to serve small trade and hard gold pieces backed by precious metals, stable foreign currency and easily sold goods. Chervonets was equated to the old 10-ruble gold coin containing 7.74 g of pure gold.

The issue of depreciating Sovznaks was used to finance the state budget deficit caused by economic difficulties. Their share in the money supply was steadily declining from 94% in February 1923 to 20% in February 1924. From the depreciation of the Soviet signs, the peasantry, which sought to delay the sale of their products, and the working class, who received wages in the Soviet signs, suffered great losses. To compensate for the losses of the working class, a budgetary policy was used to increase the taxation of the private sector and reduce the taxation of the public sector. Excises were increased on luxury goods and reduced or completely canceled on essentials. Government loans played an important role in supporting the stability of the national currency during the entire period of the NEP. However, the threat to the trade link between the city and the countryside required the elimination of parallel money circulation and the stabilization of the ruble in the domestic market.

A skillful combination of planned and market instruments for regulating the economy, which ensured the growth of the national economy, a sharp reduction in the budget deficit, an increase in gold and foreign currency reserves, as well as an active foreign trade balance, made it possible during 1924 to carry out the second stage of the monetary reform in the transition to one stable currency. Canceled Soviet signs were subject to redemption with treasury notes at a fixed ratio within a month and a half. A fixed ratio was established between the treasury ruble and bank chervonets, equating 1 chervonets to 10 rubles. Bank and treasury notes were in circulation, and gold chervonets were used, as a rule, in international settlements. Their rate in 1924 became higher than the official gold parity against the pound sterling and the dollar.

In the 20s. commercial credit was widely used, serving approximately 85% of the volume of transactions for the sale of goods. Banks exercised control over mutual lending to economic organizations and, with the help of accounting and collateral operations, regulated the size of a commercial loan, its direction, terms and interest rate. However, its use created an opportunity for an unscheduled redistribution of funds in the national economy and hampered banking control.

Financing of capital investments and long-term lending developed. After the Civil War, capital investments were financed irrevocably or in the form of long-term loans. In order to invest in industry, in 1922, the Electrocredit joint-stock company and the Industrial Bank were created, which were then transformed into the Electrobank and the Commercial and Industrial Bank of the USSR. Long-term lending to the local economy was carried out by local communal banks, transformed since 1926 into the Central Communal Bank (Tsekombank). Agriculture was provided with long-term loans by state credit institutions, credit cooperation, formed in 1924 by the Central Agricultural Bank, cooperative banks - Vsekobank and Ukrainbank. At the same time, Vneshtorgbank was established, which carried out credit and settlement services for foreign trade, and the purchase and sale of foreign currency.

NEP in agriculture

... By the decision of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, the apportionment is canceled, and instead a tax on agricultural products is introduced. This tax should be less than the grain allocation. It should be appointed even before the spring sowing, so that each peasant can take into account in advance what share of the crop he must give to the state and how much will remain at his full disposal. The tax should be levied without mutual responsibility, that is, it should fall on an individual householder, so that a diligent and industrious owner does not have to pay for a sloppy fellow villager. When the tax is paid, the remaining surplus of the peasant is placed at his full disposal. He has the right to exchange them for food and implements, which the state will deliver to the countryside from abroad and from its own factories and plants; he can use them to exchange for the products he needs through cooperatives and in local markets and bazaars ...

The tax in kind was initially set at about 20% of the net product of peasant labor (that is, to pay it, it was necessary to turn in almost half as much bread as with food appropriation), and subsequently it was planned to be reduced to 10% of the crop and converted into cash.

On October 30, 1922, the Land Code of the RSFSR was issued, which repealed the law on the socialization of land and declared its nationalization. At the same time, the peasants were free to choose the form of land use - communal, individual or collective. The ban on the use of hired workers was also lifted.

It is necessary, however, to note the fact that wealthy peasants were taxed at higher rates. Thus, on the one hand, an opportunity was given to improve well-being, but on the other, there was no point in expanding the economy too much. All this taken together led to the "average" of the village. The well-being of the peasants as a whole has increased in comparison with the pre-war level, the number of poor and rich has decreased, and the proportion of middle peasants has increased.

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

In general, the NEP had a beneficial effect on the state of the countryside. First, the peasants had an incentive to work. Secondly (compared to pre-revolutionary times), many have increased land allotment - the main means of production.

The country needed money - to maintain the army, to restore industry, to support the world revolutionary movement. In a country where 80% of the population was peasantry, the main burden of the tax burden fell on him. But the peasantry was not rich enough to provide all the needs of the state, the necessary tax revenues. Increased taxation on particularly wealthy peasants also did not help, so from the mid-1920s other, non-tax methods of replenishing the treasury began to be actively used, such as forced loans and underpriced grain and overpriced industrial goods. As a result, industrial goods, if we calculate their value in poods of wheat, turned out to be several times more expensive than before the war, despite their lower quality. A phenomenon was formed, which, with the light hand of Trotsky, began to be called "price scissors." The peasants reacted simply - they stopped selling grain in excess of what they needed to pay taxes. The first crisis in the sale of manufactured goods arose in the autumn of 1923. Peasants needed plows and other industrial products, but refused to buy them at inflated prices. The next crisis arose in the financial year 1924-25 (that is, in the autumn of 1924 - in the spring of 1925). The crisis was called "procurement" because the procurement amounted to only two-thirds of the expected level. Finally, in the financial year 1927-28, there was a new crisis: it was not possible to collect even the most necessary things.

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

So, in 1925, Bukharin called on the peasants: “Get rich, accumulate, develop your economy!”, but after a few weeks he actually retracted his words. Others, led by E.A. Preobrazhensky, demanded an intensification of the struggle against the "kulak" (which, as they claimed, took into their own hands not only economic, but also political power in the countryside), - without thinking, however, either about "liquidating the kulaks as a class" or about violent " complete collectivization”, nor about the curtailment of the NEP (unlike Bukharin, who from 1930 engaged in the theoretical justification of the new Stalinist policy, and in 1937, in his letter to the future leaders of the party, he swore that for 8 years he had no disagreements with Stalin , E. A. Preobrazhensky condemned the Stalinist policy in the Lubyanka in 1936). However, the contradictions of the NEP strengthened the anti-NEP sentiments of the lower and middle part of the party leadership.

NEP in industry

From the resolution of the XII Congress of the RCP (b), April 1923:

The revival of state industry, given the general economic structure of our country, will necessarily depend most closely on the development of agriculture; the necessary circulating assets must be formed in agriculture as a surplus of agricultural products over the consumption of the countryside, before industry can take a decisive step forward. But it is just as important for state industry not to lag behind agriculture, otherwise a private industry would be created on the basis of the latter, which, in the end, would absorb or dissolve the state industry. Only an industry that gives more than it absorbs can be victorious. An industry living off the budget, that is, on agriculture, could not create a stable and lasting support for the proletarian dictatorship. The question of creating surplus value in state industry is the question of the fate of Soviet power, that is, the fate of the proletariat.

Radical transformations also took place in industry. Glavki were abolished, and trusts were created instead - associations of homogeneous or interconnected enterprises that received complete economic and financial independence, up to the right to issue long-term bonded loans. By the end of 1922, about 90% of industrial enterprises were united in 421 trusts, 40% of which were centralized, and 60% were local subordination. The trusts themselves decided what to produce and where to sell their products. The enterprises that were part of the trust were removed from the state supply and switched to purchasing resources on the market. The law provided that "the state treasury is not responsible for the debts of trusts."

The Supreme Council of National Economy, having lost the right to interfere in the current activities of enterprises and trusts, turned into a coordinating center. His apparatus was drastically reduced. It was at that time that economic accounting appeared, in which the enterprise (after mandatory fixed contributions to the state budget) has the right to manage the income from the sale of products, is itself responsible for the results of its economic activity, independently uses profits and covers losses. Under the NEP, Lenin wrote, "state enterprises are transferred to the so-called economic accounting, that is, in fact, to a large extent on commercial and capitalist principles."

At least 20% of the profits of the trusts had to be directed to the formation of reserve capital until it reached a value equal to half of the authorized capital (soon this standard was reduced to 10% of the profit until it reached a third of the initial capital). And the reserve capital was used to finance the expansion of production and compensate for losses in economic activity. The bonuses received by members of the board and workers of the trust depended on the amount of profit.

In the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of 1923, the following was written:

Syndicates began to emerge - voluntary associations of trusts on the basis of cooperation, engaged in marketing, supply, lending, and foreign trade operations. By the end of 1922, 80% of the trusted industry was syndicated, and by the beginning of 1928 there were 23 syndicates operating in almost all branches of industry, concentrating the bulk of the wholesale trade in their hands. The board of syndicates was elected at a meeting of representatives of the trusts, and each trust could, at its own discretion, transfer a greater or lesser part of its supply and sales to the syndicate.

The sale of finished products, the purchase of raw materials, materials, equipment was carried out on a full-fledged market, through wholesale trade channels. There was a wide network of commodity exchanges, fairs, trade enterprises.

In industry and other sectors, wages in cash were restored, tariffs and wages were introduced that excluded equalization, and restrictions were lifted to increase wages with an increase in output. Labor armies were liquidated, compulsory labor service and basic restrictions on changing jobs were abolished. The organization of labor was based on the principles of material incentives, which replaced the non-economic coercion of "war communism". The absolute number of unemployed registered by labor exchanges during the NEP increased (from 1.2 million people at the beginning of 1924 to 1.7 million people at the beginning of 1929), but the expansion of the labor market was even more significant (the number of workers and employees in all sectors of the national economy increased from 5.8 million in 1924 to 12.4 million in 1929), so that in fact the unemployment rate fell.

A private sector emerged in industry and commerce: some state-owned enterprises were denationalized, others were leased out; private individuals with no more than 20 employees were allowed to create their own industrial enterprises (later this “ceiling” was raised). Among the factories rented by "private traders" there were those that numbered 200-300 people, and in general, the share of the private sector during the NEP period accounted for about a fifth of industrial production, 40-80% of retail trade and a small part of wholesale trade.

A number of enterprises have been leased to foreign firms in the form of concessions. In 1926-27. there were 117 existing agreements of this kind. They covered enterprises that employed 18,000 people and produced just over 1% of industrial output. In some industries, however, the proportion of concession enterprises and mixed joint-stock companies in which foreigners owned part of the share was significant: in the extraction of lead and silver - 60%; manganese ore - 85%; gold - 30%; in the production of clothing and toilet articles - 22%.

In addition to capital, a stream of immigrant workers from all over the world was sent to the USSR. In 1922, the American trade union of garment workers and the Soviet government created the Russian-American Industrial Corporation (RAIK), which received six textile and clothing factories in Petrograd and four in Moscow.

Cooperation of all forms and types developed rapidly. The role of production cooperatives in agriculture was insignificant (in 1927 they provided only 2% of all agricultural products and 7% of marketable products), but the simplest primary forms - marketing, supply and credit cooperation - by the end of the 1920s covered more than half of all peasant farms. By the end of 1928, non-production cooperation various kinds, primarily peasant, 28 million people were covered (13 times more than in 1913). In the socialized retail trade, 60-80% accounted for the cooperative and only 20-40% - for the state itself, in industry in 1928, 13% of all products were produced by cooperatives. There was cooperative legislation, lending, insurance.

Instead of depreciated and actually already rejected by the turnover of the Soviet signs, in 1922, the issue of a new monetary unit was launched - chervonets, which had a gold content and a gold exchange rate (1 chervonets \u003d 10 pre-revolutionary gold rubles \u003d 7.74 g of pure gold). In 1924, the Soviet signs, which were quickly supplanted by the chervonets, ceased to be printed altogether and were withdrawn from circulation; in the same year, the budget was balanced and the use of money emission to cover state expenses was prohibited; new treasury notes were issued - rubles (10 rubles = 1 gold piece). On the foreign exchange market, both within the country and abroad, chervonets were freely exchanged for gold and major foreign currencies at the pre-war rate of the tsarist ruble (1 US dollar = 1.94 rubles).

The credit system has revived. In 1921, the State Bank of the USSR was recreated, which began lending to industry and trade on a commercial basis. In 1922-1925. a number of specialized banks were created: joint-stock, in which the State Bank, syndicates, cooperatives, private and even at one time foreign, were shareholders, for lending to certain sectors of the economy and regions of the country; cooperative - for lending to consumer cooperation; organized on the shares of the agricultural credit society, closed on the republican and central agricultural banks; mutual credit societies - for lending to private industry and trade; savings banks - to mobilize the savings of the population. As of October 1, 1923, there were 17 independent banks operating in the country, and the share of the State Bank in the total credit investments of the entire banking system was 2/3. By October 1, 1926, the number of banks increased to 61, and the share of the State Bank in lending to the national economy decreased to 48%.

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

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

The most important result of the NEP was that impressive economic successes were achieved on the basis of fundamentally new, hitherto unknown history. public relations. In industry, key positions were occupied by state trusts, in the credit and financial sphere - by state and cooperative banks, in agriculture - by small peasant farms covered by the simplest types of cooperation. In the conditions of NEP, the economic functions of the state turned out to be completely new; the goals, principles and methods of government economic policy have changed radically. If earlier the center directly established natural, technological proportions of reproduction by order, now it has switched to price regulation, trying to ensure balanced growth by indirect, economic methods.

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

A broad campaign to reduce prices was launched by the government as early as the end of 1923, but a truly comprehensive regulation of price proportions began in 1924, when circulation completely switched to a stable red currency, and the functions of the Internal Trade Commission were transferred to the People's Commissariat of Internal Trade with broad rights in the area of price regulation. The measures taken then were successful: wholesale prices for manufactured goods fell by 26% from October 1923 to May 1, 1924 and continued to decline further.

For the entire subsequent period until the end of the NEP, the question of prices continued to be the core of state economic policy: raising them by trusts and syndicates threatened to repeat the sales crisis, while lowering them beyond measure when existing along with the state-owned private sector inevitably led to the enrichment of the private owner at the expense of state industry, to the transfer of resources from state enterprises to private industry and trade. The private market, where prices were not standardized, but were set as a result of the free play of supply and demand, served as a sensitive “barometer”, the “arrow” of which, as soon as the state made miscalculations in pricing policy, immediately “pointed to bad weather”.

But the regulation of prices was carried out by the bureaucracy, which was not controlled sufficiently by the direct producers. The lack of democracy in the decision-making process regarding pricing became the "Achilles' heel" of the market socialist economy and played a fatal role in the fate of the NEP.

Brilliant as the economic advances were, their recovery was limited by hard limits. It was not easy to reach the pre-war level, but even this meant a new clash with the backwardness of yesterday's Russia, now already isolated and surrounded by a hostile world. Moreover, the most powerful and wealthy capitalist powers began to strengthen again. American economists calculated that the per capita national income in the late 1920s in the USSR was less than 19% of the American one.

The political struggle of the NEP

Economic processes during the period of the NEP were superimposed on political development and were largely determined by the latter. These processes throughout the entire period of Soviet power were characterized by an inclination towards dictatorship and authoritarianism. As long as Lenin was at the helm, one could speak of a "collective dictatorship"; he was a leader solely due to authority, but since 1917 he had to share this role with L. Trotsky: the supreme ruler at that time was called "Lenin and Trotsky", both portraits were decorated not only government agencies, but sometimes peasant huts. However, with the beginning of the internal party struggle at the end of 1922, Trotsky's rivals - Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin - not having his authority, opposed Lenin's authority to him and in a short time inflated him to a real cult - in order to gain the opportunity to proudly be called "faithful Leninists" and "defenders of Leninism".

This was especially dangerous when combined with the dictatorship of the Communist Party. As Mikhail Tomsky, one of the top Soviet leaders, said in April 1922, “We have several parties. But, unlike abroad, we have one party in power, and the rest are in prison.” As if to confirm his words, in the summer of that year an open trial of the Right SRs took place. All more or less major representatives of this party who remained in the country were tried - and more than a dozen sentences were handed down to capital punishment (later the convicts were pardoned). In the same 1922, more than two hundred of the largest representatives of Russian philosophical thought were sent abroad just because they did not hide their disagreement with the Soviet system - this measure went down in history under the name "Philosophical steamboat".

Discipline within the Communist Party itself was also tightened. At the end of 1920, an opposition group appeared in the party - the "workers' opposition", which demanded the transfer of all power in production to the trade unions. In order to stop such attempts, the X Congress of the RCP (b) in 1921 adopted a resolution on the unity of the party. According to this resolution, the decisions taken by the majority must be carried out by all members of the party, including those who do not agree with them.

The consequence of the one-party system was the merging of the party and the government. The same people occupied the main positions both in the party (Politburo) and in state bodies (SNK, All-Russian Central Executive Committee, etc.). At the same time, the personal authority of the people's commissars and the need to make urgent, urgent decisions in the conditions of the Civil War led to the fact that the center of power was concentrated not in the legislative body (VTsIK), but in the government - the Council of People's Commissars.

All these processes led to the fact that the actual position of a person, his authority played a greater role in the 20s than his place in the formal structure of state power. That is why, speaking about the figures of the 20s, we first of all name not positions, but surnames.

In parallel with the change in the position of the party in the country, the rebirth of the party itself took place. It is obvious that there will always be many more people wishing to join the ruling party than an underground party, membership in which cannot give other privileges than iron bunks or a noose around the neck. At the same time, the party, having become the ruling one, began to need to increase its membership in order to fill government posts at all levels. This led to rapid growth size of the communist party after the revolution. On the one hand, periodic "purges" were carried out, designed to free the party from a huge number of "adhering" pseudo-communists, on the other hand, the growth of the party was from time to time spurred on by mass recruitments, the most significant of which was the "Lenin appeal" in 1924, after the death of Lenin. The inevitable consequence of this process was the dissolution of the old, ideological, Bolsheviks among the young party members and not at all young neophytes. In 1927, out of 1,300,000 people who were members of the party, only 8,000 had pre-revolutionary experience; most of the rest did not know the communist theory at all.

Not only the intellectual and educational, but also the moral level of the party went down. Indicative in this regard are the results of the party purge carried out in the second half of 1921 with the aim of removing "kulak-proprietary and petty-bourgeois elements" from the party. Of the 732,000 members, only 410,000 members remained in the party (slightly more than half!). At the same time, a third of those expelled were expelled for passivity, another quarter - for "discrediting the Soviet government", "selfishness", "careerism", "bourgeois lifestyle", "decomposition in everyday life".

In connection with the growth of the party, the initially inconspicuous post of secretary began to acquire more and more importance. Any secretary is a secondary position by definition. This is a person who, during official events, monitors compliance with the necessary formalities. Since April 1922, the Bolshevik Party had the post of general secretary. He connected the leadership of the secretariat of the Central Committee and the accounting and distribution department, which distributed lower-level party members to various positions. This position was given to Stalin.

Soon the expansion of the privileges of the upper stratum of party members began. Since 1926, this layer has received a special name - "nomenclature". So they began to call the party and state posts included in the list of posts, the appointment to which was subject to approval in the Accounting and Distribution Department of the Central Committee.

The processes of bureaucratization of the party and the centralization of power took place against the backdrop of a sharp deterioration in Lenin's health. Actually, the year of the introduction of the NEP was for him the last year of a full life. In May 1922, he was struck by the first blow - his brain was damaged, so that the almost helpless Lenin was given a very sparing work schedule. In March 1923, there was a second attack, after which Lenin fell out of life for half a year, almost learning to pronounce words again. As soon as he began to recover from the second attack, in January 1924 the third and last happened. As the autopsy showed, for the last almost two years of his life, only one hemisphere of the brain was active in Lenin.

But between the first and second attacks, he still tried to participate in political life. Realizing that his days were numbered, he tried to draw the attention of the congress delegates to the most dangerous trend - the degeneration of the party. In his letters to the congress, known as his "political testament" (December 1922 - January 1923), Lenin proposes to expand the Central Committee at the expense of the workers, to elect a new Central Control Commission (Central Control Commission) from among the proletarians, to cut the excessively swollen and therefore incapacitated RCI (Workers - peasant inspection).

In the note "Letter to the Congress" (known as "Lenin's Testament") there was another component - the personal characteristics of the largest party leaders (Trotsky, Stalin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Pyatakov). Often this part of the Letter is interpreted as a search for a successor (heir), but Lenin, unlike Stalin, was never a sole dictator, he could not take a single fundamental decision without the Central Committee, and not so fundamental - without the Politburo, despite the fact that in The Central Committee, and even more so the Politburo, at that time was occupied by independent people who often disagreed with Lenin in their views. Therefore, there could be no question of any "heir" (and it was not Lenin who called the Letter to the Congress a "testament"). Assuming that after him the party would continue to have a collective leadership, Lenin characterized the alleged members of this leadership, for the most part ambiguous. Only one definite indication was in his Letter: the post of general secretary gives Stalin too much power, dangerous in his rudeness (this was dangerous, according to Lenin, only in the relationship between Stalin and Trotsky, and not in general). Some modern researchers believe, however, that "Lenin's testament" was based more on the psychological state of the patient than on political motives.

But the letters to the congress reached its rank-and-file participants only in fragments, and the letter, in which comrades-in-arms were given personal characteristics, was not shown to the party at all by the inner circle. We agreed among ourselves that Stalin promised to improve, and that was the end of the matter.

Even before the physical death of Lenin, at the end of 1922, a struggle began between his "heirs", more precisely, the pushing of Trotsky from the helm. In the autumn of 1923, the struggle took on an open character. In October, Trotsky addressed a letter to the Central Committee, in which he pointed out the formation of a bureaucratic intra-party regime. A week later, an open letter in support of Trotsky was written by a group of 46 old Bolsheviks ("Statement 46"). The Central Committee, of course, responded with a decisive refutation. The leading role in this was played by Stalin, Zinoviev and Kamenev. It was not for the first time that sharp disputes arose in the Bolshevik Party. But unlike previous discussions, this time the ruling faction actively used labeling. Trotsky was not refuted by reasonable arguments - he was simply accused of Menshevism, deviationism and other mortal sins. Labeling a real argument is a new phenomenon: it hasn't happened before, but it will become more common as it develops. political process in the 20s.

Trotsky was defeated quite easily. The next party conference, held in January 1924, promulgated a resolution on the unity of the party (previously kept secret), and Trotsky was forced to silence. Until autumn. In the autumn of 1924, however, he published the book Lessons of October, in which he unequivocally stated that he made the revolution with Lenin. Then Zinoviev and Kamenev "suddenly" remembered that before the VI Congress of the RSDLP (b) in July 1917, Trotsky had been a Menshevik. In December 1924, Trotsky was removed from the post of People's Commissar of the Navy, but left in the Politburo.

Curtailment of the NEP

In October 1928, the implementation of the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy began. At the same time, not a project developed by the USSR State Planning Committee was adopted as a plan for the first five years, but an overestimated version, drawn up by the Supreme Council of National Economy not so much taking into account objective possibilities, but under pressure from party slogans. In June 1929, mass collectivization began (contradicting even the plan of the Supreme Council of National Economy) - it was carried out with the widespread use of coercive measures. In autumn, it was supplemented by forced grain procurements.

As a result of these measures, the unification into collective farms really acquired a mass character, which gave Stalin reason in November of the same 1929 to make a statement that the middle peasant went to the collective farms. Stalin's article was called "The Great Break". Immediately after this article, the next plenum of the Central Committee approved new, increased and accelerated plans for collectivization and industrialization.

Findings and Conclusions

The undoubted success of the NEP was the restoration of the destroyed economy, and, given that after the revolution, Russia lost highly qualified personnel (economists, managers, production workers), the success of the new government becomes a "victory over devastation." At the same time, the lack of those same highly qualified personnel has become the cause of miscalculations and errors.

Significant economic growth rates, however, were achieved only due to the return to operation of pre-war capacities, because Russia reached the economic indicators of the pre-war years only by 1926/1927. The potential for further economic growth turned out to be extremely low. The private sector was not allowed to "command heights in the economy", foreign investment was not welcomed, and investors themselves were not particularly in a hurry to Russia because of the ongoing instability and the threat of nationalization of capital. The state, on the other hand, was unable to make long-term capital-intensive investments only from its own funds.

The situation in the village was also contradictory, where the "fists" - the most decisive and effective owners - were clearly oppressed. They had no incentive to work better.

NEP and culture

It is impossible not to mention the very important influence of the NEP, the impact on culture. The wealthy Nepmen - private merchants, shopkeepers and artisans, not preoccupied with the romantic revolutionary spirit of universal happiness or opportunistic considerations about the successful service of the new government, turned out to be in the first roles during this period.

The new rich had little interest in classical art - they did not have enough education to understand it. They remembered their hungry childhood and there was no force that could stop the satisfaction of that childhood hunger. They set their fashion.

The main entertainment was cabarets and restaurants - a pan-European trend of that time. The Berlin cabarets were especially famous in the 1920s. One of the most famous couplet artists of the time was Mikhail Savoyarov.

In the cabaret, couplet artists performed simple song plots and simple rhymes and rhythms, performers of funny feuilletons, sketches, and entreprise. The artistic value of those works is very controversial, and many of them have long been forgotten. Nevertheless, simple unpretentious words and light musical motives of some songs entered the history of the country's culture. And they not only entered, but began to be passed on from generation to generation, acquiring new rhymes, changing some words, merging with folk art. It was then that such popular songs as "Bablis", "Lemons", "Murka", "Lanterns", "The blue ball is spinning and spinning" ...

These songs were repeatedly criticized and ridiculed for being apolitical, lack of ideas, petty-bourgeois taste, even outright vulgarity. But the longevity of these verses proved their originality and talent. The author of the texts for the songs "Babliki" and "Lemons" was the disgraced poet Yakov Yadov. Yes, and many other of these songs carry the same style: at the same time ironic, lyrical, poignant, with simple rhymes and rhythms - they are similar in style to Bagels and Lemons. But the exact authorship has not yet been established. And all that is known about Yadov is that he composed a huge number of uncomplicated and very talented couplet songs of that period.

Light genres also reigned in drama theatres. And here not everything was kept within the required boundaries. Moscow Vakhtangov Studio, the future theater named after. Vakhtangov, in 1922 turned to the production of Carlo Gozzi's fairy tale "Princess Turandot". It would seem that a fairy tale is such a simple and unpretentious material. The actors laughed and joked while rehearsing. So, with jokes, sometimes very sharp, a performance appeared that was destined to become a symbol of the theater, a pamphlet performance, concealing wisdom and a smile at the same time behind the lightness of the genre. Since then, there have been three different productions of this performance. A somewhat similar story happened with another performance of the same theater - in 1926, Mikhail Bulgakov's play "Zoyka's Apartment" was staged there. The theater itself turned to the writer with a request to write a light vaudeville on a modern NEP theme. The vaudeville merry, seemingly unprincipled play hid serious social satire behind its outward lightness, and the performance was banned by decision of the People's Commissariat of Education on March 17, 1929, with the wording: "For distorting Soviet reality."

In the 1920s, a real magazine boom began in Moscow. In 1922, several satirical humorous magazines began to be published at once: Krokodil, Satyricon, Smekhach, Splinter, a little later, in 1923, Searchlight (with the newspaper Pravda); in the 1921/22 season, the magazine "Ekran" appeared, among the authors of which are A. Sidorov, P. Kogan, G. Yakulov, J. Tugendhold, M. Koltsov, N. Foregger, V. Mass, E. Zozulya and many others . In 1925, the famous publisher V. A. Reginin and the poet V. I. Narbut founded the monthly "30 days". All this press, in addition to news from working life, constantly publishes humoresques, funny unpretentious stories, parody poems, caricatures. But with the end of the NEP, their publication ends. Since 1930, Krokodil has remained the only all-Union satirical magazine. The era of the New Economic Policy ended tragically, but the trace of this rampant time has been preserved forever.

New economic policy- economic policy pursued in Soviet Russia and the USSR in the 1920s. It was adopted on March 15, 1921 by the X Congress of the RCP (b), replacing the policy of "war communism", which was carried out during the Civil War. The New Economic Policy was aimed at restoring the national economy and the subsequent transition to socialism. The main content of the NEP is the replacement of the surplus appropriation tax in the countryside (up to 70% of grain was confiscated during the surplus appraisal, and about 30% with the food tax), the use of the market and various forms of ownership, the attraction of foreign capital in the form of concessions, the implementation of the monetary reform (1922-1924), in as a result of which the ruble became a convertible currency.

Prerequisites for the transition to the NEP

After the end of the civil war, the country found itself in a difficult situation, faced a deep economic and political crisis. As a result of almost seven years of war, Russia has lost more than a quarter of its national wealth. The industry has been especially hard hit. The volume of its gross output decreased by 7 times. Stocks of raw materials and materials by 1920 were basically exhausted. Compared with 1913, the gross output of large-scale industry has decreased by almost 13%, and that of small-scale industry by more than 44%.

Huge destruction was inflicted on transport. In 1920, traffic railways amounted to 20% in relation to the pre-war. The situation in agriculture worsened. The area under crops, productivity, gross harvest of grain, production of livestock products have decreased. Agriculture has become more and more consumerist, its marketability has fallen by 2.5 times. There was a sharp drop in the standard of living and labor of workers. As a result of the closure of many enterprises, the process of declassing the proletariat continued. Huge hardships led to the fact that from the autumn of 1920, discontent began to increase among the working class. The situation was complicated by the beginning of the demobilization of the Red Army. As the fronts of the civil war retreated to the borders of the country, the peasantry began to more and more actively oppose the surplus appropriation, which was implemented by violent methods with the help of food detachments.

The policy of "war communism" led to the destruction of commodity-money relations. The sale of food and industrial goods was limited, they were distributed by the state in the form of wages in kind. An equalizing system of wages among workers was introduced. This gave them the illusion of social equality. The failure of this policy was manifested in the formation of a "black market" and the flourishing of speculation. In the social sphere, the policy of “war communism” was based on the principle of “ Who does not work shall not eat". In 1918, labor service was introduced for representatives of the former exploiting classes, and in 1920 - universal labor service. Forced mobilization of labor resources was carried out with the help of labor armies sent to restore transport, construction work, etc. The naturalization of wages led to the free provision of housing, utilities, transport, postal and telegraph services. During the period of “war communism”, the undivided dictatorship of the RCP (b) was established in the political sphere, which also later was one of the reasons for the transition to the NEP. The Bolshevik Party ceased to be a purely political organization; its apparatus gradually merged with state structures. It determined the political, ideological, economic and cultural situation in the country, even the personal life of citizens. In essence, it was about the crisis of the policy of "war communism".

Devastation and famine, strikes of workers, uprisings of peasants and sailors - all testified to the fact that a deep economic and social crisis. In addition, by the spring of 1921, the hope for an early world revolution and the material and technical assistance of the European proletariat had been exhausted. Therefore, V. I. Lenin revised his internal political course and recognized that only the satisfaction of the demands of the peasantry could save the power of the Bolsheviks.

The essence of the NEP

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

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

From the point of view of V. I. Lenin, the essence of the NEP maneuver consisted in laying an economic foundation for the “alliance of the working class and the working peasantry”, in other words, granting a certain freedom of economic management that prevailed in the country among small commodity producers in order to remove their acute dissatisfaction with the authorities and ensure political stability in society. As the Bolshevik leader emphasized more than once, the NEP was a roundabout, indirect way to socialism, the only possible one after the failure of the attempt to directly and quickly break down all market structures. However, he did not reject the direct path to socialism in principle: Lenin recognized it as quite suitable for the developed capitalist states after the victory of the proletarian revolution there.

NEP in agriculture

The resolution of the 10th Congress of the RCP(b) on replacing the apportionment with the tax in kind, which marked the beginning of the new economic policy, was legally formalized by a decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in March 1921. The size of the tax was almost halved compared to the surplus, and its main burden fell on wealthy rural peasants. The decree limited the freedom of trade in the products remaining with the peasants after paying the tax "within the limits of local economic turnover." Already by 1922, there was a noticeable growth in agriculture. The country was fed. In 1925 the sown area reached the pre-war level. The peasants sowed almost the same area as in pre-war 1913. The gross grain harvest amounted to 82% compared with 1913. The number of livestock exceeded the pre-war level. 13 million peasant farms were members of agricultural cooperatives. There were about 22,000 collective farms in the country. The implementation of grandiose industrialization required a radical restructuring of the agricultural sector. In Western countries, the agrarian revolution, i.e. the system of improving agricultural production preceded revolutionary industry, and therefore, on the whole, it was easier to supply the urban population with food. In the USSR, both of these processes had to be carried out simultaneously. At the same time, the village was considered not only as a source of food, but also as the most important channel for replenishing financial resources for the needs of industrialization.

NEP in industry

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

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

with a predominance of the trading function (Textile, Wheat, Tobacco);
with a predominance of the regulatory function (Council of Congresses of the main chemical industry);
syndicates created by the state on a forced basis (Solesyndicat, Oil, Coal, etc.) to maintain control over the most important resources.

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

Financial reform of the NEP

The transition to the NEP required the development of a new financial policy. Experienced pre-revolutionary financiers took part in the reform of the financial and monetary system: N. Kutler, V. Tarnovsky, professors L. Yurovsky, P. Genzel, A. Sokolov, Z. Katsenelenbaum, S. Volkner, N. Shaposhnikov, N. Nekrasov, A. Manuilov, former assistant minister A. Khrushchev. Great organizational work was carried out by People's Commissar for Finance G. Sokolnikov, member of the board of the People's Commissariat of Finance V. Vladimirov, Chairman of the Board of the State Bank A. Sheiman. The main directions of the reform were identified: the cessation of money emission, the establishment of a deficit-free budget, the restoration of the banking system and savings banks, the introduction of a single monetary system, the creation of a stable currency, and the development of an appropriate tax system.

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

In accordance with the decree of the Council of People's Commissars, from November 1922, the issuance of a parallel Soviet currency, the "Chervonets", began. It was equated to 1 spool - 78.24 shares or 7.74234 g of pure gold, i.e. the amount that was contained in the pre-revolutionary golden ten. It was forbidden to pay off the budget deficit with chervonets. They were intended to serve the credit operations of the State Bank, industry, and wholesale trade.

To maintain the stability of the chervonets, the special part (SP) of the currency department of the Narkomfin bought up or sold gold, foreign currency and chervonets. Despite the fact that this measure was in the interests of the state, such commercial activities of the OCH were regarded by the OGPU as speculation, therefore, in May 1926, arrests and executions of the leaders and employees of the OCH began (L. Volin, A.M. Chepelevsky and others, who were only rehabilitated 1996).

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

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

In general, the state has achieved some success in carrying out monetary reform. Chervonets began to be produced by stock exchanges in Constantinople, the Baltic countries (Riga, Revel), Rome, and some eastern countries. The course of the chervonets was equal to 5 dollars. 14 US cents.

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

However, the financial system created on the basis of the NEP began to destabilize in the second half of the 1920s. due to several reasons. The state strengthened the planning principles in the economy. The control figures for the financial year 1925-26 affirmed the idea of maintaining money circulation by increasing emission. By December 1925, the money supply had increased by 1.5 times compared to 1924. This led to an imbalance between the volume of trade and the money supply. Since the State Bank constantly introduced gold and foreign currency into circulation in order to withdraw cash surpluses and maintain the exchange rate of the gold coin, the state's foreign exchange reserves were soon depleted. The fight against inflation was lost. From July 1926, it was forbidden to export chervonets abroad and the purchase of chervonets on the foreign market was stopped. Chervonets from a convertible currency turned into the internal currency of the USSR.

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

The role of the private sector during the NEP

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

Private industry took the form of handicraft, rental, joint-stock and cooperative enterprises. Private entrepreneurship has become noticeably widespread in the food, clothing, and leather industries, as well as in the oil-pressing, flour-grinding, and shag industries. About 70% of private enterprises were located on the territory of the RSFSR. In total in 1924-1925. in the USSR there were 325 thousand private enterprises. They employed about 12% of the entire workforce, with an average of 2-3 employees per enterprise. Private enterprises produced about 5% of all industrial output (1923). the state constantly restricted the activities of private entrepreneurs by using the tax press, depriving entrepreneurs of voting rights, etc.

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

Consequences of the NEP

In the second half of the 1920s, the first attempts to curtail the NEP began. Syndicates in industry were liquidated, from which private capital was administratively ousted, and a rigid centralized system of economic management (economic people's commissariats) was created.

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

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

The undoubted success of the NEP was the restoration of the destroyed economy, and, given that after the revolution, Russia lost highly qualified personnel ( economists, managers, production workers), then the success of the new government becomes a "victory over devastation." At the same time, the lack of those same highly qualified personnel has become the cause of miscalculations and errors.

Significant economic growth rates, however, were achieved only due to the return to operation of pre-war capacities, because Russia reached the economic indicators of the pre-war years only by 1926-1927. The potential for further economic growth turned out to be extremely low. The private sector was not allowed to "command heights in the economy", foreign investment was not welcomed, and investors themselves were not particularly in a hurry to Russia because of the ongoing instability and the threat of nationalization of capital. The state, on the other hand, was unable to make long-term capital-intensive investments only from its own funds.

The situation in the countryside was also contradictory, where the "kulaks" were clearly oppressed.

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