Summary
After
3 years of war communism, a mutiny at the Kronstadt naval base
scared the Bolsheviks, and they realised that they were
pressing the people too hard.
Lenin – much to the annoyance of hard-line
Communists – brought in the New Economic Policy,
which allowed some free enterprise, and concentrated on
stimulating production.
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Links
Kronstadt
Rebellion 
The
New Economic Policy
Reed
Brett on the NEP
Prof Rempel on
the NEP
Was
the NEP a success?
So who was
more important: Lenin or Trotsky?
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Causes
In 1921,
the sailors at the
Kronstadt Naval Base mutinied.
They
demanded free speech, free elections, free trade unions and an
end to war communism.
Trotsky’s
Red Army put the mutiny down with great losses.
The mutiny scared the Bolsheviks, because the
Kronstadt sailors had been their greatest supporters!
Lenin said later that the rebellion was 'like a flash of lightning
which threw more of a glare upon reality than anything else.' So
he abandoned the policy of War Communism and brought in the NEP.
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The New
Economic Policy
National
freedoms
a. Lenin allowed
freedom to national and Muslim
cultures.
b. In the Ukraine, although the Bolsheviks
were in power, the Ukrainian language was used in
government and business, and children were taught it in
schools.
c. In the Muslim areas of central Asia (such as
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) bazaars were allowed to
reopen, mosques were taken from Soviet control, the Koran was restored, and native languages were
encouraged.
Experts
Coal, iron, steel and railways
stayed nationalised, but the Bolsheviks brought in experts, on high wages,
to increase production.
Private
enterprise
a. Small
factories were handed back to their owners.
b. New traders (called 'nepmen') were allowed to set up
small private businesses.
c. At the same time - where War Communism had forced the
peasants to hand over ALL their surplus grain - Lenin let them sell their surplus, and pay a tax instead.
Some hard-working peasants became rich (the ‘Kulaks’).
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A
1925 advert for ‘Kalenkin’ beers, sodas and syrups.
A
poster: ‘You will be able to go anywhere in the world if you win the
state lottery’.
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Source A
Everyone is so infinitely
better off that present conditions see paradise by
comparison... 250,000 private traders have
migrated to Moscow since the NEP began.
They crowd the restaurants where it costs $25 a head
for dinner with French wine ... and lose a thousand or
so an evening at cards without turning a hair.
Walter Duranty, I Write AS I Please (1935)
Duranty
- an American journalist who had been in Russia during the revolution -
remembering the NEP in 1992.
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Source B
The NEP restored
some prosperity
to Russia .
But to many of us this prosperity was distasteful... We felt
ourselves sinking into the bog, paralysed, corrupted...
There was gambling, drunkenness, and all the filth of former times.
Classes were reborn in front of our very eyes..
Victor
Serge, From Lenin to Stalin (1937)
Serge
was a Bolshevik, remembering the NEP
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Source C
There wasn’t any food in the country.
We were down to a little bread each.
Then suddenly they started the NEP.
Cafes opened.
Factories went back into private hands.
It was Capitalism.
In my eyes it was the very thing I had been fighting against...
Most people supported Lenin, other said he was wrong, and many tore up
their party membership cards.
Nikolai Izatchik, a Bolshevik, remembering the NEP in 1992
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