Kondratiev and Economic Policy during NEP

Abstract

Kondratiev was not the only participant in Russian revolutionary events to be turned rightwards by the experience. Lenin himself was the initiator of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, in which the freedom to trade was partially restored and the canons of financial orthodoxy were partially reinstated as official doctrine, albeit only temporarily. The first element of NEP was the replacement of the grain requisitioning of War Communism by a tax in kind, which was adopted in a government decree of 21 March 1921, and this led to further liberalisation in related areas.1 For example concessions to foreign firms were allowed in certain areas of raw materials production such as mines, forestry and oilfields.2 Lenin directed that communists should ‘learn to trade’ and proclaimed that the socialist elements of the Soviet economy should defeat the ‘bourgeois’ elements through victory in economic competition, not by political or military force. In the following chapter the consequences of this general move rightwards in Bolshevik policy for Kondratiev are examined.KeywordsForeign TradeAgricultural GoodCredit ExpansionSoviet EconomyExport PolicyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.