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the
nep had many achievements to its credit. to begin with, it was
successful in bringing the economy back to its prewar condition. by
1923?4 the hyperinflation of the civil war had been reigned in and
financial stability restored. by 1926?7 the prewar levels of
agricultural and industrial production had been achieved. the
revival of market relations in the countryside allowed the peasant
economy to grow, making the twenty-four million peasant households
the main beneficiaries of the nep. the peasantry gained three
things: security of land tenure, freedom from requisitioning, and a
free hand in selling agricultural surpluses. by making these
concessions, lenin admitted that the soviet regime could ill afford
to disregard the interests of some 80 percent of the population. but
the communists?retreat also gave them a much-needed six-year
breathing spell after which they would resume their onslaught on the
countryside. |
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the
truth is that the nepæ¯ reliance on market and money-commodity
relations was alien to the interests of the new bureaucratic
communist hierarchy. the nep system encouraged the growth of the
class of small and medium-size entrepreneurs, including shopkeepers,
owners of service shops, cafes, and restaurants. communists were to
coexist competitively with these small capitalist nepmen, learn from
them how to be efficient and productive, and eventually demonstrate
the superiority of the socialist system. in everyday practice,
however, the capitalists proved their superior efficiency and
flexibility. |
the state-controlled industries, by contrast, were
lagging behind both in volume of production and in quality. the fact
that the private initiative represented by the nepmen was doing
better than the nationalized sector was unendurable in the long run,
because it disproved the doctrines on which the bolsheviks based
their claim to power. it was obvious that either the market-based
forces of the nep would corrode the soviet system or the system
would have to destroy them in order to survive.
the
communist administrators?disapproval of the nep was shared by broad
sections of the impoverished urban and rural masses. as a result of
hardships and privation imposed by war, famine, and economic
adversity, their numbers had swelled considerably. the idea of a
centrally administered economy that envisaged a primitive
egalitarian distribution of wealth appealed to these population
groups. socialism to them meant nothing more than total equality at
a subsistence level, whereas economic relations that promoted
talented and enterprising people were frowned upon. these population
groups eagerly supported the negative view of the nep, articulated
by some of the communist leaders. they saw the return to capitalist
patterns as a retreat from their vision of socialism.
the
main reason for the vulnerability of the nep was that it was based
on an unstable balance of two sectors, private and public. it
represented a shaky compromise between communism and capitalism,
between collectivism and individualism. the expansion of private
initiative and market relations was unacceptable to the communist
authorities as it meant the curtailment of state control over the
economy. by the late 1920s the nep supporters within the soviet
leadership were politically isolated and the nep itself curtailed.
the economic methods of running the economy were supplanted by the
total domination of administrative, coercive, and extraordinary
measures. the vestiges of the nep were completely eradicated by the
early 1930s, and by the mid-1930s it was completely displaced by a
strictly hierarchical command-bureaucratic system.
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