Threats to the Revolution: The Development of the New Economic Policy

Abstract

In late 1920, with the end of the Civil War in sight, the Bolsheviks faced an exasperating economic and political situation. The Civil War and the policy of War Communism had exhausted the country. Most peasants as well as the industrial workers on whom Lenin and the Bolsheviks counted for support recoiled from the government and its economic experiments. The country exploded in large-scale rural rebellions, strikes, industrial disturbances, and mutinies, of which the most threatening was that of sailors at Petrograd’s Kronstadt naval base.