HIST 236 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: New Economic Policy, Fiat Money, Drug Liberalization
19 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
New Economic Policy (NEP)
The NEP (1922-1928) allowed for a mixed public-private economy
after the Bolsheviks' more aggressive and unpopular attempts to rush
ahead to communism
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The government needed time and resources to overcome Russia's
economic backwardness and pursue its plan to create a modern
industrial economy
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"Primitive socialist accumulation" would allow it to develop the
resources that were not present at the time of the October Revolution
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Reform the currency, create a currency for foreign trade (gold backed)
and then the ruble that is a fiat currency
Want to import things to the Soviet Union but no one wants to
be paid in rubles so they need a currency that has actual value
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In the private sector there are fluxuating prices and there is the
relegalization of private trade
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Trying to stabilize the situation in Russia so they can move forwards
Need peasants, workers, military on their side
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People think that this is a large step backwards
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The Alliance of Town and Countryside
In practice, this meant squeezing grain out of the peasantry to sell in
exchange for hard currency to use to buy the technology needed to
industrialize the country
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The government backed off from forced requisitions of grain in favour
of a "tax in-kind"
If you pay the tax in grain to us, you can do whatever you want
with your surplus
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Peasants were now allowed to sell their surpluses on the open market
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Instead of an antagonistic relationship, there would be an alliance of
town and countryside
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After the Civil War ends there is a huge famine and the government
has to beg for international relief
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While the famine is happening, the Bolsheviks keep selling grain on
the world market to buy technology
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The famine undoes the alliance with the countryside
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The "Scissors Crisis"
In the wake of WWI, the Civil War and a deadly famine in 1921,
agriculture rebounded more quickly than industry; shortages of
consumer goods remained
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Prices for consumer goods increased while prices for agricultural
products decreased
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Peasants withdrew their grain from the market, waiting for prices to
rise
The government has to go out to the countryside to get grain
from the peasants
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This is creating shortages all around, peasants want grain so
they are unhappy and workers are unhappy because they want
to buy things in the cities
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The government intervened to force the "scissors" back together
Have to do this through a variety of economic manipulations
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The Return of Private Trade
The ban on private enterprise was lifted in 1921
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Most private trade during the NEP took the form of small-scale
enterprise (restaurants, shops, etc.); people were not allowed to set
up mining companies, for example (were not allow to be seen as
capitalist)
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Those who took advantage of the new opportunities for gain were
known derisively as "NEPman"
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They were heavily criticized as new bourgeoisie, profiting off of
workers and off of shortages
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Government is appealing to foreign capitalist to invest in Russia
Mining companies, etc because they want more capital
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The New Soviet Man
Following the October revolution, there were attempts to create the
"New Soviet Man"; selfless, healthy, hard-working, intelligent
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Bourgeois individualism was to be replaced with communist
collectivism
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There was great hope that by revolutionizing people's every day lives,
proletarian consciousness would soon emerge as Russia's largely
peasant population
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Leon Trotsky: man will become a superman
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Abolish all of the old social hierarchies
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Everyone becomes known as "comrade"
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Combatting Illiteracy
The Commissariat of Enlightenment was formed in 1918
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Liquidating illiteracy became official policy in 1919
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Being literate became a fundamental prerequisite of socialist
citizenship
Only around 1/4 of all people could read in the late Tsarist
period
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If in 1926, only 51% of the population were literate, by 1939,
around 90% of en and 70% of women were literate
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They sent books out to the countryside
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New Soviet Symbols and Rituals
The Soviet government replaced old Tsarist and religious symbols and
rituals with new communist ones in an effort to get people to accept
the new values
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Lenin's image was now found everywhere when the Tsar had been
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Religious ceremonies (baptisms and weddings) were replaced with red
substitutes
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Changing the symbologies of every day life
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People name their children after revolutionary things like Stalinas to
bring the revolution into their every day life
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Equality of the Sexes
Full equality between men and women was one of the Bolshevik's
major aims before the revolution and they declared it soon afterward
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The 1918 Family Code swept away centuries of patriarchal and
ecclesiastical authority on the subject of marriage and family
Religious marriage was no longer recognized, only civil marriage
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There was no long any such thing as illegitimate children
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The 1926 Family Law introduced the concept of "de facto marriage"
(cohabitation)
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Free Love
Marriage was seen by many as a dying bourgeois institution after the
revolution
Men and women could and should have platonic sexual
relationships that did not end it marriage
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At the same time, men were often criticized for abandoning women
and children under the logic that it was communist to engage in free
love
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Aleksandra Kollontai was a big proponent of free love
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Lecture 17 -Post-Revolutionary Russia
Monday, February 26, 2018
11:11 AM
