The New Economic Policy and the Rise of Stalin

Introduction of NEP

An economic crisis was looming. There was increasing administrative disorder. Transport and communication was breaking down. Factory output was only 14% of the 1913 level. The grain harvest of 1920 was 60% of the pre-war annual average. There was a rural revolt in the province of Tambov.

In response Lenin realised that there needed to be a change in economic policy, with grain requisitioning replaced by a tax in kind. He discussed this firstly with the Politburo only and gained their support on 8th February, 1921. The tax-in-kind would be set at lower level than the grain requisition, being just sufficient to secure the state's minimum requirement. These policies became known as the New Economic Policy (NEP). Lenin published the plan with a press campaign. At first he sought to distance himself from the policy, establishing a commission under Kamenev, but subsequently, supported by Kamenev and Trotsky, he openly campaigned for the policy. The Tenth Party Congress opened on 15th March, 1921. At the same time there was a mutiny by the naval garrison at Kronstadt. Strikes broke out at major factories. Congress members volunteered to join Red Army units to crush the Kronstadt rebellion. The Congress agreed to the end of grain requisitioning, but this was not enough. The peasants would not cooperate unless private trade in foodstuffs was legalised, but the Party Congress was not initially prepared to go this far. However, by May 1921 the Conference did agree to relegalize private small-scale manufacturing. This brought about the end of 'War Communism'. But many Bolsheviks believed that the revolution was being betrayed.

The Kronstadt mutiny was crushed, the organizers shot and ordinary sailors sent to the Ukhta labour camp. The rural revolts were crushed, as were rebellions in the Volga region, the Ukraine, Siberia and the North Caucasus. Individual strikes were crushed. Surviving members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party were arrested and put on show-trial in 1922, receiving long prison sentences.

On 16th March an Anglo-Soviet Trade Treaty was signed. Lenin still wished to sell 'concessions' in the oil industry of Baku and Grozny.

Economic recovery took time. It was not until the late 1920s that wage levels rose to have average of the pre-war period. There were frequent strikes, though the actions tended to be small in scale and short in duration. After a strike the OGPU, the secret political police, would arrange that strike leaders were sacked or arrested.

The standard of living of the peasants improved after the Civil War. Bolshevik control of the countryside was not effective. By 1927 there were still only 17,500 party groups in the whole country — one for every 1200 square kilometres. The country was still under-governed. However, there was a great deal of surveillance, and a successful job application would require completion of a detailed questionnaire.

The formation of the USSR and the Problem of Nationalities

There was general agreement that there should be a centralised government. None of the separate Republics had the right to depart from the central government dictates. However, Stalin, as People's Commissar for Nationalities, wanted to reincorporate all the republics within the RSFSR. Lenin opposed the plan on the grounds that it was imperialistic. He wanted a federation of all Soviet republics as a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The disagreements became acrimonious over the summer of 1922, but there was little real difference between their proposals. Both wanted a centralised state. The sensitivity of the nationalities issue was illustrated when a senior party official, a Tartar called Mirza Said Sultan-Galiev, was arrested in 1923 for advocating the formation of a pan-Turkic socialist state incorporating all Muslim peoples.

The central authorities sought to govern by dividing the nations. They also used the Cheka, which after 1923 became the United Main Political Administration (the OGPU) to arrest dissidents. Finally, the Red Army could be called upon to intervene.

The Soviet authorities encouraged native language instruction. One problem was that the vast majority of rank-and-file members of the Party were ethnic Russians. The Party tried to foster policies to induce non-ethnic Russians to join the party — the policy was known as korenizatsiya — 'the planting down of roots'.

Lenin was successful in his campaign to create a federation known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Russia, that is the RSFSR, was given its own boundaries within a larger state. The significance of this only emerged in the late 1980s when Boris Yeltsin became Russian president in advance of the collapse of the USSR. The constitution of the USSR was ratified by the First All-Union Congress of Soviets on 31st December, 1922. Georgia protested on the grounds that it wished to be federated as a separate Soviet republic and not as part of a Transcaucasian Federation, but their demands were rejected.

Other Social Developments

There was some relaxation of the State's attitude towards Christianity during this period. At least 55% of Russian peasants in the mid-1920s were practising Christians. Lenin was ideologically hostile to the Church, and in 1922 he ordered the execution of several bishops. In 1925 the Church was not allowed to elect another Patriarch following the death of Tikhon. Tikhon's successor, Sergei, was allowed only to call himself Acting Patriarch. However, a reform movement within the Church, called the 'Living Church' was hostile to ecclesiastical hierarchy and maintained that socialism was the true form of Christianity. The authorities also did not want to alienate the Old Believers whose economic activities were beneficial. As a result there were fewer and fewer overt clashes over religion.

The authorities maintained censorship and even strengthened it, by requiring pre-publication censorship from June 1922. Very few talented writers were Bolsheviks, but there were some exceptions including the Futurist poet Vladimir Maykovski and the novelist Maksim Gorki, who began to soften his criticism of Bolshevism, whilst still living in Italy. The state publishers, Gosizdat, had a monopoly over all printing. Generally, this period was a sterile one for Russian arts.

The extent to which Bolshevik ideology permeated down to the rank and file was limited. Bukharin sought to stimulate educational progress and he created an Institute of Red Professors, and co-authored a textbook with Preobrazhenski, The ABC of Communism. In 1902 Lenin had written a work entitled What Is To Be Done? in which he argued that the working class would require indoctrination.

Central party leaders rejected the bourgeois tastes of the pre-revolutionary rich. Divorce and abortion were made available on demand. A rudimentary provision for health care and unemployment benefit was created.

There was more respect for legal forms. If the private market was to function properly legal procedures would have to be respected. In 1922 a Procuracy was established in order to supervise commercial transaction. People were encouraged to use the courts to rectify grievances. Nonetheless, this policy was not wholly successful, and commercial conditions encouraged traders to be furtive and even criminal. The bureaucracy became even grubbier and ineffective.

A system of nomenklatura was introduced in 1923, when a list of about 5,500 designated party and government posts was created, to which appointments could only be made by the central party. The Secretariat complied a list of all possible candidates for these posts.

The system encouraged the development of deceit and a sort of quasi feudalism. Appointments were made on the basis of political loyalty and class origins rather than expertise; and party bosses formed groups of political clients who owed their allegiance to him personally.

The Death of Lenin

Lenin did not regard the NEP as a permanent solution, and it was disliked by most Bolshevik leaders. Lenin's main opponent was Trotsky. Lenin arranged for Stalin to oppose Trotsky at the Eleventh Party Congress in March 1922. By this time Lenin was already ill, and during the winter of 1921-22 he stayed at the sanatorium in Gorki. He had severe headaches and insomnia. In May 1922 he suffered a major stroke and his influence over government diminished as a consequence. Stalin visited him frequently, and he had a direct telephone line to the Kremlin. Stalin was appointed Party General Secretary at the Eleventh Congress with Lenin's approval. However, Lenin and Stalin were opposed over the constitution of the RSFSR during the summer of 1922, and Lenin turned to Trotsky to support him against Stalin, Kamenev and Zinoviev.

In December 1922 Lenin realised that he would not recover and dictated his confidential documents known as his political testament. In it he made character studies of each of the six leading Bolsheviks, Trotsky, Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Pyatakov and Bukharin. Each was criticised in turn, and the implication was that not one of them was fit to become supreme leader. He wanted collective leadership to follow his demise. In January 1923 he made an addendum to his testament, stating that Stalin should be removed as Party General Secretary. This followed a quarrel between Stalin and Lenin's wife, Zadezhda Krupskaya. On March 5th Lenin wrote to Stalin demanding an apology for the insult to Krupskaya, but on March 6th he suffered another major stroke and could neither speak nor read. He died on 21st January, 1924.

Trotsky was also ill at this time, so it was Stalin who lead the funeral commission. The Politburo decided that Lenin should be embalmed and displayed in a mausoleum. An Institute of the Brain was created. 30,000 slices of Lenin's brain were made with a view to discovering the origin of Lenin's genius. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. There was a mass enrolment of workers into the Bolshevik party in his honour.

Defeat of Trotsky

During 1924 the principal rivals for Lenin's position as supreme leader all debated the question, what was essential to Lenin's thought, and the term Marxism-Leninism was coined. Each vied with the others to affirm their commitment to every policy Lenin inaugurated.

Zinoviev and Kamenev joined forces with the aim of reducing Stalin's powers. However, at the same time Trotsky decided to challenge the Politburo's economic policy. Zinoviev and Bukharin joined with Stalin in order to repulse Trotsky's attack.

The NEP appeared to be a success. By 1922 agricultural output was sufficient for grain to be exported once again. By 1923 cereal production was 23% above the record level recorded for 1920. Factory output rose 184%. However, a 'scissors crisis' (as Trotsky termed it) developed as the urban and rural economies were divided. The NEP had turned the terms of trade against the peasantry who were consequently demotivated from selling agricultural products in the towns. This placed the NEP at risk. Because of this Trotsky gained the support of Preobrazhenski and others, who lead a Platform of Forty-Six calling for an increase in central state planning. Trotsky supported these arguments in his The New Course published in December.

Zinoviev, Stalin, Kamenev and Bukharin counter-attacked by accusing Trotsky of being anti-Leninism from 1903, and at the Thirteenth Party Congress in January 1924 they accused him of attempting to destroy Lenin's NEP. Bukharin was particularly delighted with the NEP. Stalin advocated the policy of 'socialism in one country'.

Stalin successfully persuaded Kamenev and Zinoviev at the Twelfth Party Conference in April 1923 to limit the number of people who should be allowed to read Lenin's testament. In a series of lectures in 1924 on The Foundations of Leninism Stalin maintained that the party was the cornerstone of the October Revolution. He sought to maintain the power of the Party General Secretary.

Formation and Defeat of the 'United Opposition'

During 1925 Zinoviev and Kamenev moved into opposition against Stalin. They argued that the NEP had made too many concessions to the peasants. They were opposed by Bukharin. Zinoviev in particular thought he had a secure power base as party secretary for Leningrad, but Stalin was able to have him challenged in that position by his associate, Sergei Kirov. As a result Zinoviev and Kamenev joined with Trotsky to oppose Stalin and Bukharin in a form of United Opposition. However, Stalin was able to undermine the power bases of the opposition leadership by replacing their supporters with his supporters in key party position. He limited their access to the media. In January 1925 Trotsky was removed as People's Commissar for Military Affairs and he was removed from the Politburo in December. In January 1926 Zinoviev was sacked as Leningrad Soviet chairman, and in July both he and Kamenev were ejected from the Politburo. In October 1926 Zinoviev was replaced as chief executive of the Comintern by Dmitri Manuilski. The United Opposition sought to campaign by clandestine means, making invectives against the authoritarianism of the regime, which had the hollow ring of hypocrisy. Stalin organised the smashing of their printing presses, and by November 1927 the Central Committee had expelled Trotsky, Kamenev and Zinoviev from the party. Kamenev and Zinoviev recanted and were readmitted to the party; Trotsky did not recant and was sent into internal exile at Alma-Ata. The United Opposition was crushed. Stalin and Bukharin were completely victorious by 1927-8.

By this time output had recovered to the pre-war level; economic recovery had been achieved. Engineering in particular had increased beyond its pre-war level. Agriculture was becoming more diverse; the percentage of land given over to cereal crops decreased from 90% to 82% between 1914 and 1927.

However, the end of the NEP was brought about by errors of judgement by the administration. In 1926-7 they reduced the prices paid for agricultural produce by the state by 6% - in the case of grain the reduction was 20-25%. They simultaneously lowered prices of state industrial goods. However, the effect was that peasants would not release their surplus stocks and were not attracted by the lower industrial prices. Factory goods were bought up by middle men seeking to make a profit, so there were shortages of food in the last three months of 1927 in the towns. This problem in itself was not sufficient to bring about the demise of the NEP. But Stalin used it as the pretext to break with it.