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Порталус

Lenin's New Economic Policy

Дата публикации: 20 сентября 2007
Публикатор: Научная библиотека Порталус
Рубрика: RUSSIA (TOPICS) - Soviet Russia (1917-53) →
Источник: (c) http://russia.by
Номер публикации: №1190296614


One of the largest debates in the early history of the Soviet state focuses on Vladimir Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) and its prospects for continuity. Since Lenin died in 1924, it is impossible to know whether it would have gone forward. Within a few years of his death, his successor Josef Stalin ended it, eliminated the limited private economy for which it allowed, and brought all important management decisions into state hands.
Many believe that this transition was not predetermined, that Lenin would never have countenanced the ending of his policy so soon and so brutally. Lenin himself said NEP should be "serious and for a long time." Changing course so quickly, at a time when the Soviet leadership admitted that it needed additional economic development, was inconsistent with Lenin's goal of creating a solid economic basis for socialism and, eventually, communism.
Yet, to others, NEP was always doomed. Lenin also referred to NEP as "an economic Brest-Litovsk," a reference to the peace treaty that extricated Russia from World War I, the onerous terms of which were expected to be done away with promptly by world revolution. Employing market incentives, allowing private trade, and permitting private economic relations were abhorrent to orthodox Bolshevik ideology. Such a philosophical compromise could not have endured for long. By ending it, Stalin merely followed on what Lenin would have done in the same circumstances.



Viewpoint: Yes. Vladimir Lenin was firmly committed to NEP and would have pursued it over the long term.

In the crucial Tenth Congress of the Bolshevik Party that took place in Moscow during the second week of March 1921 Vladimir Lenin introduced a program of sweeping economic reforms that became known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). In his address to the party he did not hesitate to draw a sharp line between the policies of the first three postrevolutionary years and the future of the Soviet Union, stating that


There is no doubt that in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population consists of small agricultural producers, a socialist revolution can be carried out only through the implementation of a whole series of special transitional measures which would be superfluous in highly developed capitalist countries where wage-workers in industry and agriculture make up the vast majority. . . . We know that so long as there is no revolution in other countries, only agreement with the peasantry can save the socialist revolution in Russia. And that is how it must be I stated, frankly, at all meetings and in the entire press. We know that this agreement between the working class and the peasantry is not solid--to put it mildly, without entering the word "mildly" in the minutes--but, speaking plainly it is very much worse. . . . The state of affairs that has prevailed so far cannot be continued any longer.

Effectively, NEP entailed the introduction of market-like monetary measures, particularly in the crucial domain of grain production. Its historic significance lay in the way that it signified an abrupt abandonment of aggressive grain requisitioning strategies (prodrazvyorstka) that had been introduced during the Civil War and formed the backbone of the "war communism" strategy. While control of the economy would remain within the remit of central state planning, NEP marked a tactical shift toward the denationalization of small- and medium-scale industry and toward a degree of private ownership--both of which had been severely attacked during the preceding three years. From that point onward peasants would be taxed in kind at quotas that were set substantially lower than in the war communism period, allowing them to dispose of their excess produce in a mixed economic environment with some market functions (for example, competition and profit). This new system also necessitated the relaxation of investment rules in the country and the moderate encouragement of private economic activity both in the countryside and the urban centers.

In hindsight, the departure from war communism could not have been any more dramatic or fundamental. The historical context in which Lenin's decision to launch NEP took place sheds crucial light on the political and economic motives behind this dramatic change of course. By 1921 the revolution had succeeded in annihilating domestic opposition after the painful Civil War and thus stabilized the Bolshevik regime's political grip over the country. This victory, however, had been achieved at a huge cost: domestic production had collapsed; the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk that the new Bolshevik government signed with Germany in 1918 had deprived the country of one-quarter of its agricultural land and, even when it was largely recovered, dislocated economic production for years to come; harvest yield had shrunk to about 60 percent of the pre-war figure; and cultivated land had contracted to below 70 percent of the 1913 levels. Production of key industrial commodities, such as steel and iron, virtually collapsed, as did the currency's exchange rate with the dollar and other hard currencies. Finally, famine, epidemics, material destruction, and the loss of millions of lives as a result of the infighting had reduced not just the economy but also society to a state of a breakdown. Against this backdrop a series of revolts against Bolshevik rule broke out and continued to cast a shadow upon Lenin's regime: first the Tambov rebellion (1919) and, from 1920 onward, a wave of strikes and revolts, culminating in the general strike of Petrograd in late February and the Kronstadt rebellion in March 1921 (that is, during the session of the Tenth Party Congress).

This wave of popular discontent reflected in the most categorical manner the growing disaffection of large sections of the population with the new regime--not just those that were commonly viewed as "enemies" but erstwhile solid supporters, such as the sailors in Kronstadt (previously considered a bastion of Bolshevism). Within the Bolshevik Party itself a doctrinal debate raged between those who supported a tactical adaptation of the Marxist doctrine to the historical and contemporary circumstances of Russia, on the one hand, and members of the so-called workers' opposition within the Bolshevik Party on the other. Lenin's preface to the introduction of NEP targeted those on the Left who remained convinced that war communism was the only ideologically orthodox, albeit harsh and painful, solution to Russia's underdevelopment. Among them, Evgenii Preobrazhensky championed the cause of a continuing aggressive policy against the independent peasants in favor of the interests of the industrial proletariat. Other prominent members of the party, such as Lev Kamenev and Grigorii Zinoviev, saw in Lenin's rationale behind NEP the irreversible abandonment of the project of "world revolution," as well as a painful concession to the forces of capitalism that the decisions of 1917-1920 were intended to lay to rest, at least in Russia.

Lenin was aware of ideological opposition to the logic of NEP. That is probably why he chose to wait until the final stages of the Party Congress (when many delegates had already departed--some of them to fight off the Kronstadt rebellion--and those remaining had been exhausted after days of long, drawn-out debates) to announce his decisions. In spite of widespread reservations shared by many, the speech caused little reaction among the delegates and thus paved the way for the introduction of the policy immediately afterward. In order to dispel any impression of ideological opportunism, Lenin expended considerable energy in his speech to stress that "NEP is for serious and [will be pursued] for a long time . . . possibly over a decade." Even this unequivocal statement, however, did not suffice to clarify the foundations of the ideological debate that had authorized, first, war communism and, after a spectacular U-turn, NEP, within the course of less than four years. This debate actually went back to the prerevolutionary period, when Lenin was still formulating his personal doctrine for socialism in an unlikely country such as Russia. Given Karl Marx's generally negative attitude to the peasantry as a revolutionary force and his historical prerequisite of a two-stage revolution (first a liberal, followed by the proletarian one), Georgii Plekhanov (known as the founder and father of Russian socialism) had insisted on the country's backwardness and lack of preparedness for a genuine socialist revolution. Lev Trotsky agreed with the fundamental notion that the peasantry was ill equipped and ill suited for a socialist revolution, but at the same time questioned Plekhanov's insistence on a long period of "bourgeois" domination as a necessary precondition for the production of those norms that would ensure an effective proletarian emancipation.

Lenin had shown his capacity for political flexibility since the early years of his career in the Russian revolutionary movement. Just after the turn of the century he was breaking new ground when he called for a "socialist democracy" that would unite proletariat and peasantry into a single alliance for the construction of a socialist state. Lenin drew a clear distinction between the advanced capitalist West and backward Russia but also extended this distinction to the nature and attitudes of the peasantry in each context. Drawing from Friedrich Engel's analysis of "small peasantry," Lenin suggested that the bulk of the Russian peasant class had already been transformed into a proletarian reservoir during the "revolutionary" period of 1905-1917. He also stressed that the incorporation of small peasants into the revolutionary front did not amount at that point to "the building of socialist society, but it is all that is necessary and sufficient for this building." Given the exceptional circumstances in Russia, Lenin advocated that the transition from the "bourgeois" to the "proletarian" revolution (a transition that, according to orthodox Marxism, would have to be long) had to be contracted to a period of a few months--namely, between the February and the October 1917 watersheds. Thus, he suggested a different formula of historical evolution for socialism in Russia that was based on the idea of an "uninterrupted revolution."

Yet, Lenin's decision to launch war communism and NEP within the course of less than half a decade raises complex questions about his overall ideological consistency and makes the process of deciphering his long-term intentions extremely difficult. Clearly, the introduction of war communism came first; what is more, it was more concurrent with the overall Marxist doctrine than the mixed economic system envisaged by NEP. In so many ways the two political platforms espoused diametrical views about the future of the Soviet state and the relations between the proletariat and the peasantry. Therefore, a logical interpretation would consider one of the two as a temporary, opportunistic diversion from an otherwise intended path represented by the other policy. War communism, however, was a radical step that was launched without necessary preparations in order to address the complications resulting from the debilitating Civil War that followed the October Revolution. It was abandoned in early 1921 primarily because it was considered a costly failure for the Bolshevik project, although it was also widely believed that it did help in consolidating the new regime's initially precarious power base.

The justification for NEP was equally aligned to specific historical (long-term) and situational (short-term) circumstances in an admission that the situation created by the 1918-1921 period was no longer sustainable. Despite Lenin's declaration that the change of course represented by NEP was much more than a temporary diversion, its partly capitalist nature was something that many party members--steeped in the ideological self-congratulation derived from war communism--could hardly stomach. The timing and method of Lenin's announcement of the new policy indicated that he was aware of opposition and of the extent of revision that his novel strategy involved. Yet, he remained obstinate in his determination to proceed with a radical shakeup of socio-economic relations in the Soviet Union--a trademark of his personality that had seen him through multiple adaptations of and additions to the Marxist doctrine (such as "imperialism," his views on the role of the peasantry and of the state, and so on). The background to the introduction of NEP demonstrated Lenin's unequivocal alertness to contextual forces, as well as his ability to maintain an open dialogue between ideological consistency and shrewd political pragmatism. When it came to both war communism and NEP he prioritized the future of the revolutionary regime over any other ideological or political consideration. As conditions continued to change rapidly in the course of the first postrevolutionary years, so did his prescriptions about the future course of the Bolshevik state in its transition to a genuine socialist system.

In this respect, NEP was indeed a compromise and a highly pragmatic strategic decision, but not necessarily more so than the timing and manner of the introduction of war communism. It was indeed a temporary measure, but not more so than any other political strategy when it came to the advancement of a much more significant long-term case--the consolidation of Bolshevik power and the transformation of Russia/Soviet Union into a successful socialist state. Lenin was as convinced at the time of the necessity for the extraordinary measures involved in war communism as he was, a few years later, of the inexorable benefits of the mixed system envisaged by NEP. It is conceivable that a different set of circumstances would have led him into a different path had his health not let him down--for example, abandoning NEP a few years after its introduction and launching a new system of socio-economic management. Yet, there is little evidence to suggest that NEP was a temporary diversion from the kind of strategy that was tried (and proved wanting) with war communism. His commitment to the new course was steadfast within the context of a particular set of conditions, some of which had been the unsolicited consequences of the manner in which the regime had ruled in 1918-1921. With the improvements in all economic indices that followed the implementation of NEP within a short period of time it is plausible to assume that the basic guidelines of the policy would have remained in place in the longer term, even if it did not mean in any way a permanent, unbending alignment of the Bolshevik regime with it. Much continued to depend on external developments (such as the future of the "world revolution" and the relations of the Soviet Union with the rest of the world), and Lenin--had he stayed at the helm of the Soviet Union--was the sort of leader who could combine ideological substance with tactical flexibility, grasping historic opportunities and steering the course of his country into the uncharted waters of socialist revolution with unquestionable authority and political pragmatism.

-- Aristotle Kallis, Lancaster University


Viewpoint: No. Vladimir Lenin never saw NEP as more than a compromise to remain in power, and he would have eliminated it as soon as circumstances permitted.

Sometimes revolutions have to grasp at straws, or so Vladimir Lenin must have thought in 1921. Having led the Soviet state out of a bloody civil war, Lenin was forced to grapple with an economic crisis that once again threatened his regime with extinction. Devastated by seven years of warfare, agricultural and industrial production had reached a virtual standstill. The peasantry had risen in arms against the Red Army's forceful requisitions, and Moscow and Petrograd were often on the brink of starvation. Lenin and the party leadership understood that they needed to rebuild the economy, and at least one leader, Nikolai Bukharin, believed that the answer was to liberalize the economy, freeing up grain prices and allowing peasants and smaller merchants to sell their produce without fear of expropriation. Lenin at first embraced this New Economic Policy (NEP) as a necessary evil, but after a short while understood that the experiment would ultimately lead to failure. Lenin and the leadership grew leery of NEP's future. Had he not died in January 1924, he would have eliminated the policy and changed course. Only Lenin's death and his successors' needs for political expediency extended NEP until 1928.

In 1921 Lenin understood Soviet Russia's economic crisis as he had understood its military crisis in 1918. The solution to Russia's ill-fated war against Germany was his acceptance of the punitive peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which surrendered a vast amount of Russian territory to independent states under German protection and vast economic concessions to the Germans directly. Expecting that European or world revolution would quickly reverse these losses, Lenin justified what was in no way a good diplomatic solution. Three years later he looked the same way at concessions to the market economy and groups that would benefit from its reintroduction. Like the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, it was expected to buy the Bolsheviks the precious time they needed to consolidate power. Indeed, Lenin even talked about NEP as "an economic Brest- Litovsk," while he and other leaders referred to the new economic order as a "breathing space." Soon, Lenin reckoned, he would be able to change course and fulfill his ultimate and overwhelming commitment to building a socialist society. In Bolshevik ideology that meant nothing less than complete state control of the economy.

Even in his concessions to the market, neither Lenin nor any other committed Bolshevik would concede control over heavy industry, utilities, transportation, and the state's ultimate right to reclaim the land and shops of the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie when (and not if ) it became necessary. In every important sense those were the "commanding heights" from which the new offensive would be launched.

Many have mistakenly argued that Lenin fundamentally changed his ideology to one embracing economic liberalism when he stated that NEP was intended to be "serious and for a long time." One needs to remember, first of all, that Lenin was arguing with those Bolsheviks who were hesitant to take up even limited liberalization, wishing instead to remain committed to the earlier policies of strict state control. His position was thus overstated in this sound bite and bore little relation to the realities of his leadership.

Lenin indeed had a keen sense of contingency as part of his economic policy. He made the following comment on NEP as a new stage in Russia's revolutionary development: "state capitalism is a completely unexpected and unforeseen type of capitalism." Yet, he also made clear that the dictatorship of the proletariat's reassertion of full economic control was only a matter of time. Lenin did not commit himself to an exact time line for this process but may not have had a fixed idea. As an extremely pragmatic political leader, he was accustomed to acting tactically when the situation demanded it and to reversing his positions on short notice. Discussing the future of NEP, he once said that it might last anywhere from five weeks to ten years.

Lenin came to realize that NEP had to end sooner than he had originally thought. "The state," he admitted, "has not operated the way we wanted . . . it is directed where some lawless, God knows whence-derived speculator or private capitalist directs it." It is clear from this statement that Lenin believed that continuing NEP would be injudicious. By 1922, the peasants and small merchants, having achieved limited freedom from the state, sought even more as they clamored for the lifting of tax burdens. Farmers sought to hire more day laborers, signaling in Lenin's eyes the renewal of economic exploitation in the countryside. Equally alarming to Lenin was the emergence in cities of "NEPmen," successful businessmen who used their wealth in an ostentatious manner. The increases in gambling, prostitution, luxury markets, and general conspicuous consumption were thought to be corrupting influences on Bolshevik morality and the ruling party's radical commitment to social justice.

Shortly before his death, Lenin strongly signaled that he favored NEP's definitive end: "We can now see clearly the situation that has developed in our country and can say with complete firmness that we can now stop the retreat that we began and are already stopping it. Enough." He did not live long enough to act on this conviction, but his successors encountered a new series of crises, caused in part by NEP's failures. NEP helped the rural economy to recover, but the industrial economy had failed to keep up and suffered from a lack of basic capital and infrastructure. Those rare commodities that industry produced fetched so high a price on the market that few peasants could afford them. Increasingly, Soviet leaders such as Lev Trotsky, Evgenii Preobrazhenskii, and, ultimately, Josef Stalin would argue that only state intervention could resolve such a crisis.

Stalin, however, temporarily remained committed to NEP, as he needed the support of Bukharin and other "rightists" in the party to defeat his more serious rivals at the time: Trotsky and others who shared his private reservations about the limited private economy. Stalin's persecution of his enemies, who also happened to be among NEP's critics, led him to form a temporary alliance with Bukharin to defeat them. That meant that the NEP experiment could continue for the short term even though Stalin did not necessarily favor it. By 1927, growing concerns about NEP's problems and the reluctance of wealthy peasants to sell their goods to urban markets became nearly intolerable. Once Stalin had secured solid leadership he could call upon the party to end economic liberalization. In the years that followed, it was his temporary "rightist" allies who suffered demotions and purges.

The bottom line was that Stalin and his supporters believed state regulation necessary to ensure all economic resources would be directed toward developing heavy industry, the focal point of Lenin's plan for the development and communization of the Soviet Union. NEP might have been seen as necessary to recoup wartime losses, but over time its economic costs became too high and its ideological compromises too untenable. The one success of NEP, increased grain production, enabled the rural economy to undergo a fundamental transformation as early as 1925. By 1928, Stalin finally committed himself to a major new economic offensive that would transform the fundamental divide between Russia's rural and urban economies. The results were the collectivization of agriculture, a measure that definitively established state control in the countryside, and the use of its productivity to finance ambitious industrialization. It is likely that had Lenin lived he would have lauded the pursuit of these goals.

-- York Norman, Georgetown University


INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION IN RUSSIA FOR 1913 AND 1921

1913 1921
Gross output of all industry (index) 100 31
Large-scale industry (index) 100 21
Coal (million tons) 29 9
Oil (million tons) 9.2 3.8
Electricity (milliard kwhs) 2039 520
Pig iron (million tons) 4.2 0.1
Steel (million tons) 4.3 0.2
Bricks (millions) 2.1 0.01
Sugar (million tons) 1.3 0.05
Railway tonnage carried (millions) 132.4 39.4
Agricultural production (index) 100 60
Imports (1913 rubles) 1374 208
Exports (1913 rubles) 520 20


Source: Alec Nove, An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. (London: Allen Lane, 1969), p. 68.

FURTHER READINGS


References


A. M. Ball, Russia's Last Capitalists: The Nepmen, 1921-1929 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).

Vladimir Brovkin, Russia After Lenin (New York: Routledge, 1998).

R. W. Davies, Soviet Economic Development from Lenin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Sheila Fitzpatrick and others, eds., Russia in the Era of NEP: Explorations in Soviet Society and Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).

Silvana Malle, The Economic Organisation of War Communism, 1918-1921 (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917-1991 (London & New York: Penguin, 1992).

Roger W. Pethybridge, One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward: Soviet Society and Politics in the New Economic Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).

Richard Sakwa, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991 (London & New York: Routledge, 1999).

Robert Service, The Bolshevik Party in Revolution: A Study in Organisational Change, 1917-1923 (London & New York: Macmillan, 1979).

R. G. Suny, The Soviet Experiment: Russia, the USSR, and the Successor States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Опубликовано на Порталусе 20 сентября 2007 года

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