Global Money and Bolshevik Authority: The NEP as the First Socialist Project

Abstract

The article recounts the Bolsheviks’ first attempt at organizing the economic life of their young project in peace time following the establishment of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921. It argues that the Bolsheviks built their regime on a liberal foundation, concretely the gold standard; although this is often noted in passing, it has not been given the socio-economic weight this political decision deserves. In an attempt to establish their monetary authority within their territory—a sine qua non for the formation of state authority—and in international markets, they appealed to the legitimating institution of the gold standard. The prescriptions of that institution led to a set of policies and chronic political anxieties that structured much of the domestic and international policies of the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s. The study documents the thinking behind the monetary reform that tied the Communist project to the liberal world order as well as the international economic conjunctures that determined its small failures and eventual success. The analysis takes an interdisciplinary approach to the understanding of money as a social institution, and aims to renew the historiographical debate over NEP by establishing its trajectory firmly within the international context that governed it.