Reaction to New Economic Policy

Lesson Snapshot:

Was the NEP successful?

• So, once peasants and shopkeepers could work for a profit, goods appeared for sale.
• New small businesses and market stalls sprang up in the towns.
• A new class of profiteers emerged who did very well out the new freedom to trade. They became known as the NEP men.
• Capitalism had started to make a comeback then, but although the profiteers, peasants and shopkeepers were happy, many workers who had supported the revolution thought that the NEP was a betrayal of their values.
• Lenin, although suffering bitter opposition, saw the NEP as the only way to get Russia back on track, his Communism and further plans would have to wait a little while longer…

The NEP was meant to be a temporary measure. The Russian government would soon regain more control over industry again once it was more secure politically. In some ways the NEP was highly successful. Peasants and workers were happier and produced more food and goods, but their farms were small and quite inefficient. The profiteers, Kulaks, grew rich by selling their surplus crops at a high profit and in fact, began to get some of the less well off peasants to work for them causing a split in this particular group of people in society. Lenin’s policy had allowed a capitalist class of peasants to develop and this meant that in future, agricultural reform was going to be much more difficult to engineer as Stalin was to discover in 1929.

 Lesson Worksheet:

• Aimed at Students studying across UK Year 7,8 & 9 or equivalent
• Premium resource
• Use as you wish in the classroom or home environment
• Structured worksheet task.
• Complete worksheet on the reaction to Russia’s New Economic Policy (NEP)