The End of NEP

Abstract

‘That which Lenin introduced “seriously and for a long time” did not last at all long. Stalin liquidated NEP, while pretending to be following Lenin’s precepts.’ This is how Anatoli Rybakov summarizes a view also widely held by Western scholars.² There is another view, also widely held, that, on the contrary, NEP was seen all along as a temporary manoeuvre, and that Stalin, in ending it, was continuing Lenin’s work. Then there is what could be called the ‘Bukharinistalternative’ school, which speculates on what could have happened if there were a Bukharin-Rykov leadership, which would have pursued a (slower tempo) industrialization strategy on the basis of a continuing NEP. One must also look to Trotsky and the ‘Left Opposition’: did they have an alternative policy, and is it correct to see Stalin, in 1928, stealing their clothes? Finally, there is what could be called the pragmatic view: that Stalin was driven into ending NEP by a series of unforeseen crises, which rendered its continuance increasingly difficult. This last view approximates to that of E. H. Carr.

This was my contribution to the Festschrift for Professor Olga Crisp. Since it was written the discussions on the subject in the Soviet Union have ranged far and wide. Thus the view that Stalin’s ‘revolution from above’ was a coup d’état (perevorot) was challenged in a remarkable set of articles by A. Tsipko:¹ stalinism, he asserts, ‘is above all the tragedy of the Bolshevik old-guard, its pain and its historic guilt’. NEP ended because its basis was not really accepted by or acceptable to the bulk of the party. The debate continues.