Vladimir Lenin
Famine and the New Economic Policy: 1920–1922

In February 1921, Lenin introduced a New Economic Policy (NEP) to the Politburo; he convinced most senior Bolsheviks of its necessity and it passed into law in April. Lenin explained the policy in a booklet, On the Food Tax, in which he stated that the NEP represented a return to the original Bolshevik economic plans; he claimed that these had been derailed by the civil war, in which Sovnarkom had been forced to resort to the economic policies of war communism, which involved the nationalization of industry, centralized distribution of output, coercive or forced requisition of agricultural production, and attempts to eliminate money circulation, private enterprises and free trade, leading to the severe economic collapse. The NEP allowed some private enterprise within Russia, permitting the reintroduction of the wage system and allowing peasants to sell produce on the open market while being taxed on their earnings. The policy also allowed for a return to privately owned small industry; basic industry, transport and foreign trade remained under state control. Lenin termed this " state capitalism ", and many Bolsheviks thought it to be a betrayal of socialist principles. Lenin biographers have often characterised the introduction of the NEP as one of his most significant achievements, and some believe that had it not been implemented then Sovnarkom would have been quickly overthrown by popular uprisings.
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