Volta
EconomyMarch 1921 – 1928

New Economic Policy (NEP)

Also called: NEP

With the economy shattered by civil war and peasants in revolt, Lenin ended grain requisitioning and allowed small-scale private trade and enterprise. The economy gradually recovered to pre-war levels.

A chervonets banknote issued under the New Economic Policy, 1922
A chervonets banknote issued under the New Economic Policy, 1922

Boleslav1 · Public domain · Source

When the Kronstadt sailors rebelled in March 1921 under the slogan “Soviets without Communists”, Lenin changed course at the Tenth Party Congress that same month. Forced requisitioning gave way to a fixed tax in kind, after which peasants could sell their surplus grain on the market, and small factories and shops were allowed to operate privately.

The state kept the “commanding heights” — banks, large industry and foreign trade. Under the policy farm and factory output approached pre-war levels by the mid-1920s, and traders known as “Nepmen” prospered. The same congress, however, banned factions within the party, tightening Communist dictatorship. The NEP ended in 1928 when Stalin launched the Five-Year Plans.

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States at the time
Russia · led by
Places
Moscow Kremlin

People

  • Vladimir Lenin1870 – 1924

    leader · Leader of the Bolsheviks who set up the Soviet government in the October Revolution of 1917, chaired it, and founded the USSR in 1922

Before and after

Earlier
1918 Russian Civil War and War Communism

Themes that include this event

  • World War I and the Russian Revolution1908 – 1923

    From the Balkan crises to a war of trenches and total mobilization that toppled four empires; the Russian Revolution it unleashed, which created the first socialist state; and the Versailles settlement of national self-determination and the League of Nations