Russian Revolution 1917-1927 Historical Inquiry: NEP

The New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced by Lenin at the Tenth Party Congress in March 1921, represented a major departure from the party’s previous approach to running the country.

New Economic Policy (NEP), the economic policy of the government of the Soviet Union from 1921 to 1928, representing a temporary retreat from its previous policy of extreme centralization and doctrinaire socialism.

A comparison between the tsarist economy on the eve of the revolution and the Soviet economy in the mid-1920s. Questions posed include, was the tsarist economy successful, but destroyed by World War I? And was the breakdown of the mixed economy of the 1920s an arbitrary political act?

By the time 1921 came around, Russia’s economy had been maimed by the effects of War Communism. Socialism had not begun on a good note, and Vladimir Lenin was becoming concerned with the unfortunate state of the economy. His response to the poor economy he adopted and how he planned to improve it was called the New Economic Policy, or the N.E.P., which got its name from the fact that it was “new,” in comparison to the “old” Czarist economic “policy.”

Report To The Second All-Russia Congress Of Political Education Departments October 17, 1921 by Vladimir Lenin.