Why Was The Nep Unpopular With Communists

After World War II the next threat was the Soviet Union and the growing amount of communism. The fear of communism breed the conformist 1950’s, which created suburbs, consumerism, “organization men”, domesticated women, car culture, and explicit gender rules (I&J, 43-58). Communism engulfed everyone so much that people were afraid to be different. The culture of the 1950’s was not only seen in their everyday lives but shown through advertisements.

Stalin’s policy priorities were not building a ‘worker’s paradise’ or a classless society, but protecting Russia from war and invasion. In 1928, Stalin launched the first of two ambitious five-year plans to modernize and industrialize the Soviet economy. These programs brought rapid progress – but also significant death and suffering. Stalin’s decision to nationalize agricultural production dispossessed millions of peasants, forcing them from their land to labor on gigantic state-run collective farms. Grain was sold abroad to finance Soviet industrial projects, leading to food shortages and disastrous famines in the mid-1930s. Soviet Russia was dragged into the 20th century, transforming from a backward agrarian empire into a modern industrial superpower – but this came at extraordinary human cost.

His “Socialism in One Country” policy said that although revolutions in other countries had failed, Russia could still build socialism by using Lenin’s NEP. Stalin and the Centre allied with the Right and Bukharin over the NEP policy, wanting to continue with it. This gave Stalin someone to help him and keep him popular and powerful.

The New Economic Policy (NEP) was a measure implemented in order to counter the arguably disastrous effects War Communism. The New Economic is controversial. Some historians argue it allowed the Soviet economy to solidify and begin to recover, and also allowed the Bolsheviks to retain control over Russia. Others, like Orlando Figes, state it was ultimately a failure, arguing that under the NEP the peasants grew away from the Bolshevik regime, inviting a future, and brutal, reassertion of central control.s This essay will discuss the effectiveness of the NEP economically and politically as well as outlining War Communism and why it failed

Over the period from 1855 to 1964, Russia saw various reforms and policies under the Tsars and the Communist leaders that had great impacts on its economy and society both positive and negative. Lenin definitely implanted polices that changed society and the economy for example with war communism. However whether his policies had the greatest impact is debatable and in this essay I will be assessing the view whether Lenin had the greatest impact on Russia’s economy and society than any other ruler between the period from 1855-1964.

which they had experienced in earlier years. In the 1970s, Soviet Prime minister Kosygin had implemented a five years plan to make the economy more dynamic and to increase the production of goods. However, this plan failed to fulfill expectations and industrial and agricultural stagnations persisted. Agriculture played an essential role in the Soviet economy and in the years before detente agricultural development continued to lag. In the 1950s the gross national product(GNP) had grown over 6 per cent. However, by the late 1960s it had fallen to under 4 per cent.The standard of living in the Soviet Union was also declining due to the decrease in food supply caused by the agricultural stagnation. These shortages of consumer goods prompted the growth of the black market in the USSR which also affected the well being of the economy.The arms industry claimed huge quantities of resources for the arms race with the United States. Brezhnev needed to create improvements to living standards and

Russia was a country rich in raw materials that had been undisturbed by modern extraction and refining techniques until then, however, the majority of the countries resource rich areas were nowhere near any railways, with the bulk of the heavy materials such as steel, iron, coal and copper being in the Urals, almost 1,000km away from the nearest railway system in 1860. Oil, another key ingredient in industrialisation was almost 1,500km away to the south, in the Caucasus area3. This lack of transportation in a period when steam powered machines were producing the goods and steam powered trains were delivering them and leading the industrialisation in other countries like Britain, the USA and a future foe in Germany is an indicator of the distance that Russia was behind its rivals under the leadership of the Tsar. So the Tsar’s Russia was largely an agrarian one, but even in the agricultural sector Russia was lagging far behind the rest of the West in terms of the methods employed by farmers, little fertiliser was used and the labour saving machines used in countries with enormous agricultural output like the US were nowhere near as widespread in Russia. The weaknesses of the Tsar’s management of the agricultural sector were highlighted in 1891 when famine hit. Due to the heavy tax on consumer goods, peasants had been forced to sell more of their

For many decades, Russia was isolated from other part of the world politically and geographically. During the First World War, Russia’s industrialization was progressing fairly, as they implemented an education reform program to promote literacy among people. The program would have been successful if it was continued without obstacles. They also implemented a program named Stolypin in order to modernize the agriculture, which was bringing successful changes to the country; however, the Stolypin program was not completed because of problems such as War, the absent of a proper parliament institutions ,the corruption and excess of power among the secret police. Ethnicity in Russia groups was also among the problems as the Russian empire was becoming anarchical and it was getting difficult to maintain it due to pressure form the population who felt that their basic need were not being responded while the monarchy was having an extravagant lifestyle (Kennan,1). By 1917, most Russian were now convinced about the fact that Czar Nicholas II was not good enough to help revive the economy in Russia. Also, Corruption in the government was still untouched and the king had already dissolved the Duma because they did not agree to his will. The economy was still backward, without jobs, frustrated people were tired of the conditions that they lived

In this source it also explains how Russia changed traditionally, economically wise, and even military

The increase in military spending is another argument that caused stagnation in the Soviet Union during the period. Brezhnev spent huge amount of money in the defense sector and according to Blanchard & Froot et al. (1994) the share of defense spending in GNP was 12% in 1960-70, and increased by 4% in 1975-80 to 16%, even though the country was is deep economic crisis. Brezhnev increased military spending each year; even as the country needed the spending in other “important” sectors, to boots the growth of the country, and caused low-level of economic development. Brezhnev increased the spending specifically on nuclear materials production plants, compared to weapons. During this time in history both the superpower, USA and Soviet Union

In the early 1920’s, fear of communism gripped the United States. Rumors spread with wildfire that Russia and China were attempting to take over the world and spread communism throughout. The actions of a few people caused widespread fear and hatred of the larger groups that came here from Russia and China. This fear became known as the Red Scare. Of course it was Communism and with 9/11 it was Muslims and basically all Middle Easterners.

The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact was extremely significant in regards to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, however there were several other factors that also led to the outbreak of WWII. These factors include; the allied policy of appeasement, the failure the League of Nations and Collective Security and the aggressive nature of Nazi and Italian foreign policy.

The many long-term internal causes of the collapse of the Soviet Union centralized around weaknesses in their economy. They had an inflexible central planning system, the inability to modernize, and the inefficiency in their agriculture production. Sometime around the 1970's the computer and automation revolution had emerged. This revolution took over the West, but practically missed the Soviet Union, except in the military sector (Baylis & Smith, 2001.) Gorbachev's goal in economic restructuring was to create a separation between the economic and the political. The major changes began with the legalization of private farming and business co-operatives, and the allowing of foreign company ownership over Soviet enterprises (Baylis &Smith, 2001) All of Gorbachev's ideas on economic restructuring backfired on him since the price levels were inconsistent, and a sense of social confusion about the future of their state was created.

It would have been curious to see what communism could have done for black people in America between the 1920s – 1960s, but much like the rest of the world, the implementation theory was mired in personal grudges and beliefs. The people of America and their government, especially, were so afraid that under that despicable black skin of their underclass they would find naturally occurring red, red blood, red muscle, red sinew, something resembles a human being worthy of equality and fair treatment. The pre-cold war attack on black activism was not about communism at all, but white fear. It didn’t have to be communism, it could have been atheism, Islam, socialism, it could have been their skin alone it was just that communism was the most readily

To combine this compromise with the ideology of the party, the state kept control of the heavy industries. Lenin saw the NEP as a short-term fix which meant "a step backwards" in the development of communism but one which would restore the economy. Once this had happened, the country could take the "two steps forwards" to achieve a communist state. The success of the NEP was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the NEP had revived the economy, increased foreign trade and also electrified the country which was seen as a great success. On the other hand the NEP divided the party into a left and right wing.