Viktor Viktorovich Kondrashin,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Politics “Facing the Village”: Did the NEP Have Potential in the Agrarian Sector of the Country’s Economy?
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2022-4-7
Based on the analysis of the policy “Facing the Village”, the article examines the problem of the potential of the NEP. It is concluded that it exists in the form of further state support for peasant farms, subject to the abandonment of emergency methods of grain procurement and a decrease in the pace of industrialization. This policy turned out to be effective as a means of restoring and developing the country’s agriculture on the basis of individual peasant farms. The NEP peasant economy could continue to exist and develop, increasing the volume of agricultural production. But its low marketability, which limited the scale of grain exports when the pre-revolutionary level of gross grain harvests was restored, the unwillingness of the peasants to sell bread under unfavorable conditions for them, created problems for the accelerated industrialization of the country, proclaimed by the Soviet government. In addition, politically, the further “revival of the soviets” in the countryside threatened the monopoly on power of the Communist Party. And the NEP was broken by the authorities as soon as the danger arose in the form of peasant opposition to the slowdown in the industrialization of the country during the grain procurement campaigns of 1927–1929.
Publishing: 28/08/2022
The article has been received by the editor on 15/04/2022
How to cite: Kondrashin V.V. Politics “Facing the Village”: Did the NEP Have Potential in the Agrarian Sector of the Country’s Economy? // Historical Courier, 2022, No. 4 (24), pp. 80–92. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2022/ISTKURIER-2022-4-07.pdf]
The article was prepared as part of the approbation of chapter 13 of volume “History of Russia” of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Links: Issue 4 2022
Keywords: NEP; “Facing the Village” policy; “revival of the soviets”; peasant economy; grain procurements