Could Lenin's NEP have worked long term?

GlobalHumanism

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NEP economic reforms aimed to take a step back from central planning and allow the economy to become more independent. NEP labor reforms tied labor to productivity, incentivizing the reduction of costs and the redoubled efforts of labor. Labor unions became independent civic organizations.[citation needed] NEP reforms also opened up government positions to the most qualified workers. The NEP gave opportunities for the government to use engineers, specialists, and intelligentsia for cost accounting, equipment purchasing, efficiency procedures, railway construction, and industrial administration. A new class of "NEPmen" thrived. These private traders opened up urban firms hiring up to 20 workers. NEPmen also included rural artisan craftsmen selling their wares on the private market.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy

It seems to me that at least from the start, Lenin's NEP had shown some promise as a viable economic policy for the Soviet Union.
Possibly one better than Stalin's centrally planned command economy of the later years.

That being said, if the NEP had lasted past OTL's kill date, could it have realistically worked long term?
 

eliphas8

The NEP was never meant as a permanent policy. Like war communism it was a crisis policy meant to build the conditions for its own abolition. Unlike war communism it could probably more permanently sustain itself. But it was always going to be deeply changed. One solid thing would be to nationalize the NEP Men and have their role as agents of exchange taken over by the state which sets rates. From there the state will likely push collectivization by economic means. So farms which don't collectivize don't get new equipment, they will receive less favorable rates. Until they go to either communal or Kibbutz styles of organization.
 

eliphas8

NoMommsen said:
How do you define "long term" ?

Lenin seems to have thought about at least a couple of decades, after wich another, regulated, carefull transition would move again into the direction of "true sozialism".

If lasting 2 or 3 decades, IMHO many, including party members, would have become very cosy with this system, not really wanting to change it.;)
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It's worth noting that within five years everyone but Bukharin hated it. Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Stalin agree that it must end (Stalin later than the others). The three competitors to soviet leadership who otherwise hated each other could all agree that it was a bad policy.
 
Dornish Red

Dornish Red

NoMommsen said:
... cause it would mean lesser control by themself, something - in opposite to Lenin - they never dared as politicians and therefore rejected it.

I think by its results - even for the short time givin - the people was quite happy with it.

And if it would have lasted the party functionaries in the periphery - not the "central bigwigs" would have found ways to get their share (bribes, small scale taxes, ... just too human :D).
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Actually I wouldn't characterize the NEP as something that the entire common Soviet populace was happy with.

Some people did, quite notably, benefit from the NEP, so much so that a new term was created to describe them: the NEPmen, people who were either clever or fortunate enough to make it big because of the business opportunities provided by the New Economic Policy. The problem for the Soviet government in addition to the obvious ideological issue of effectively organizing a system of limited capitalism was that this started to replicate a lot of the pre-revolutionary divisions that had existed prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, so it was deeply and fundamentally threatening to the Soviet elites.
 

eliphas8

NoMommsen said:
... cause it would mean lesser control by themself, something - in opposite to Lenin - they never dared as politicians and therefore rejected it.

I think by its results - even for the short time givin - the people was quite happy with it.

And if it would have lasted the party functionaries in the periphery - not the "central bigwigs" would have found ways to get their share (bribes, small scale taxes, ... just too human :D).
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My point is that it would never last. I have no idea, and you have no idea, how popular the NEP was. Polling was non-existent and would have been worthless (the only polling agencies would be state run), and the most major newspaper in Russia was run by the one guy in the CP who actually supported the NEP. So that leaves it pretty difficult to argue that anyone actually represented public opinion on it. Or even what that opinion was. People were likely happy with good times and the peasants didn't mind it. But there's also a significant point to be made there that the system was very unequal and almost certainly had its fair number of discontents even among the peasants. The kulaks benefitted in particular from the fact it was easy to exploit the rules so as to effectively restore landlordism in the countryside. The go between and various middle men who exchanged between the cities and the countryside benefitted. But their existence also served to increase the cost of food in the cities because the NEPmen had to get rich somehow.

Elements of its semi-marketization will likely remain in any scenario. But those two major elements (landlordism and the NEPmen) were so hated by the leadership that it was a matter of when not if they changed it significantly.

My suggestion of a nationalized singular logistics network would be an easy solution, that doesn't go quite as insane as the crash collectivization Stalin engaged in. Which was just irresponsible crisis making in order to aggregate personal power.
 

fasquardon

Short answer: no. The NEP had no political legs.

Long answer: The NEP was hated by the party and by a significant number of people (the NEP created a significant population of "losers" who resented those who had profited from it). The one Bolshevik who might have extended the NEP was Bukharin who had no ambition to take power for himself and no real road to power either. And even Bukharin was unlikely to continue the NEP indefinitely (I'd say he'd back the NEP for 20 years max).

On the economic front, well. It would have sorta worked. Likely the Scissors Crisis would have resolved itself in a few years. Russia would likely have grown and developed economically (though there is a higher risk of stagnation under the NEP - much higher). But certainly at a slower rate than it did OTL. If Germany still picks a fight with Russia (under Hitler or under another regime) then the Soviets face a much larger risk of losing the fight.

Even if the Great Patriotic war is avoided, political and economic power would have increasingly accumulated in the hands of the rising Kulak class or the hands of the increasingly marginalized rural poor. That probably isn't a good thing for most Russians, as what was needed at the time was policies that focused on getting the rural poor into the cities and employed in the factories. Picking sides between the factions scrabbling for control of the agricultural land of the country is a side-show which could cost the country more than even Stalinist Collectivization over the long run.

fasquardon
 

Falk

Banned
GlobalHumanism said:
7666416_orig.jpg



https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy

It seems to me that at least from the start, Lenin's NEP had shown some promise as a viable economic policy for the Soviet Union.
Possibly one better than Stalin's centrally planned command economy of the later years.

That being said, if the NEP had lasted past OTL's kill date, could it have realistically worked long term?
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I don't know if you can read Russian, but the image at the top has been clearly altered from the original.
 

Mackus

Continuation of NEP means no collectivisation. No collectivisation, no Holodomor.
NEP means that over time, USSR develops into what PRC is today: Capitalism wrapped in red flag.
 

History_Pintobean

Changundramon said:
˝Comrades, please get fucked/go to hell!˝ Tricky to translate into English. It's a Slavic thing, sending someone to the c*ck/d*ck instead of Hell.
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Uh ... no ...

With my New Penguin Russian Course language book, I was able to put the Cyrillic into English letters but unfortunately I still don't know for the life of me what the poster says:

Tovareeshshee! Eedeetye Na Hooy Pozhalooysta!

I'm trying to translate a Russian language history book, Pravda i Vymysly o Kremlevsk into English so wish me luck.:)


NEP means that over time, USSR develops into what PRC is today: Capitalism wrapped in red flag.
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Nyet, nyet, nyet, nyet, nyet! (bangs fist on table dramatically while shouting "no" repeatedly in Russian - think Inglorious Bastards only with Stalin in it instead)

I would strongly point you towards Stephen F. Cohen's revisionist history book Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.

Basically China in the 1970s saw the mass production of Bukharin's works, long repressed in the socialist camp.

Modern China is essentially what the USSR could have been as early as 1928 - a socialist state marked by internal party democracy, highly flexible central planning, a vibrant, competitive electoral system, a much more open press, powerful external and internal trade, the rule of law, etc.

It wasn't until under Khrushchev (and by that point it was too late) that anti-Stalinism was implemented albeit only partially and for a fairly limited time at the behest of former zeks or released GULAG camp inmates.

Said anti-Stalinism would end abruptly in the mid-1960s after the Party Central Committee ousted Khrushchev and in doing so brought the long-overshadowed conservatives back into the limelight.

The conservative faction of the Party, personified most starkly by Brezhnev, would reign supreme until Gorbachev and the radical reformers in the Party took over and picked up where Khrushchev left off.

As brave and noble as Gorbachev and his followers were, it was doubly too late for reforms to save the Soviet Union.

To answer the OP, I honestly think that the New Economic Policy if not only preserved but also greatly expanded from 1928 onward could have saved the USSR and also brought about an economic, political, and cultural renaissance.
 
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