From the Tsarism to the New Economic Policy. The Regulation Problems of the Multistructure Peasant Economy of Soviet Russia in the Discourse of the State Power

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Abstract:

This article attempts to identify the specifics of the multistructure peasant economies management from the point of view of studying the features of the paradigm shaping — a model of relationship with the majority of the population that does not form political background. First of all, the problem is considered within the scope of the methodology of political discourse as the analysis of the explicit and implicit political meanings of the emergence of a new power.

The analysis reveals that both sectors of the peasant economy — individual and socialist — were developed during the entire period under investigation. However, the opportunities for their development were not equal. A “military-communist” management system was formed in the extreme conditions of the revolution and civil war. It employed forced methods, dictated by circumstances, and elements of a socialist assault. The search for a compromise with the peasantry led to a revival of commodity-money relations and the market at the end of the Civil War. Success in revitalizing and restoring agriculture was obvious.

The material, which is analyzed in the article, shows that by the end of the 1920s the state returned to the measures of the most extreme regulation of the individual peasant economy and prepared a “decisive throw” towards its destruction. The future was mistakenly associated with large-scale industrial production, including agriculture. Small-scale farming was declared as non perspective.

As a result, these measures led to the nationalisation of all spheres of the peasant economy, transition from the emerging market relations to the state contracting, forcing the socialist sector development in the absence of economic and psychological readiness of the peasants, who constituted the majority of the population.

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