THE DISINTEGRATION OF THE NEP SYSTEM AND THE SEARCH FOR NEW SOLUTIONS

The NEP was an inherently unstable social and political system: it contained the seeds of its own destruction. The Bolsheviks carried out policies in which they did not fully believe and whose implications worried them. For the sake of economic reconstruction they had allowed the reemergence of private enterprise, and as time went on, many of them came to be convinced supporters of this mixed economic order. Others, however, based on their reading of Marxist texts, found such policies distasteful. They feared that the new economic policies would strengthen those social forces which, in the long run, were bound to be hostile to socialism.

The Bolsheviks were particularly concerned about developments in the countryside. While in the cities the new order was firmly established, in the villages the Soviet government lacked the organizational strength to enforce its will; and therefore, as the revolutionaries saw it, the power of the kulaks was especially threatening. The peasants were encouraged to produce because the government desperately needed their products, but at the same time the successful peasants faced the threat of being defined as kulaks, and therefore enemies. Ambivalence led to confused policies. The leaders of the regime abandoned the policies of the NEP not so much because they were eager to resume the advance toward a socialist society, as because the existing system was unraveling.