The State and Peasantry of Soviet Russia. Search for the Model of Interaction (Analysis of Discussions from the 1920s)

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Abstract:

The material which is analyzed in the article allows to show that after the Bolsheviks captured the state power, the formation of the state agriculture management principles took place in a complex environment of intense destruction of the old economic system and the creation of the economic mechanism, which matched the political model of the new system. Gradually, on the basis of the principles founded in the practical realization of the idea of creating a new economy, policies evolved that are often in conflict with the real economy. This search has been difficult and painful.

The article analyzes a wide range of theoretical discussions of the 1920s: the role of the market and commodity-money relations in the socialist economy, the evolution of the peasant economy, the accumulation of sources, economic growth, etc. It is shown that, within each discussion there were opinions ranging from openly hostile to the regime, to the Bolshevik orthodoxy. By the end of the reporting period, the position of scientists who did not fit the orthodox Marxism, came into conflict with the dominant ideology, when the world (scientific, political) of a specialist was identified with the subject of their professional activity.

The economic debate of the 1920s showed a number of possible options for development. However, the most preferred way turned out to be gaining control of the state in all spheres of society, especially among the “petty-bourgeois peasantry”, which constantly created a threat to the authorities. This option did not appear as the final and irrevocable decision. Despite the “regime of the most-favored” followed by the ruling party, it has long pursued its way in the turns and retreats of the economic policies in debates and discussions. Yet right there, as the study has found, the turning line of NEP was defined, when irreversible mechanisms of administrative-command system came into being, which by the end of 1920 was issued in the streamlined system of totalitarianism.

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