Why and When Did NEP Die?: An Economist's Reflections

For about sixty years all Soviet economists and historians have celebrated the demise of NEP as socialism's greatest victory. You could count advocates of the opposite point of view on your fingers. The situation has changed in the last two or three years. The press today is for the most part filled with hymns of praise for NEP as the most successful period in the development of Soviet society. There is admiration for the miraculous recovery of Russia's economy after the civil war, for the economy's high effectiveness during that period, and for the establishment of a hard currency. We look to NEP for lessons that will help us to resolve our current economic problems. The termination of NEP in the late 1920s is bewailed as the turning point in Soviet history that marked the victory of the Administrative System with all its known tragic consequences for the life of Soviet society. Those responsible for the death of NEP are named: Stalin and those around him, members of the party machine [apparatchUd] infected with the ideology of War Communism, and individual social strata (poor peasants, part of the working class, and youth).