Full Description
An economic policy introduced by Lenin in 1921, replacing War Communism’s forced requisitioning with a tax in kind, allowing peasants to sell surplus grain on the market. NEP restored limited market activity in agriculture and small-scale retail, while the state retained control of heavy industry, banking, and foreign trade. It produced rapid economic recovery but was attacked by the left as a retreat from socialism and abandoned by Stalin, who used the grain procurement crisis of 1927–28 as justification for collectivisation.
Critical Perspective
NEP represents the road not taken in Soviet history. Under NEP, the Soviet economy grew rapidly and living standards improved; the Bolsheviks had demonstrated they could pragmatically abandon ideological purity when survival demanded it. Many historians argue that NEP, given time, could have evolved into a form of social democracy with a mixed economy. Stalin’s decision to abandon it was not economically inevitable — it was a political choice, driven by the desire to eliminate the peasantry as an independent social force.
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