New Economic Policy (NEP), Part 4

Question 1: Briefly discuss the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Answer 1: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was founded by Vladimir Lenin in 1912, five years before the revolutions that resulted in the creation of the Soviet Union, after which it became the only political party in Union history. During that time it controlled all levels and branches of government and maintained said control by preventing opposition. The CPSU’s governing body was the Party Congress, which in turn elected a higher-ranked and more exclusive Central Committee, which in turn elected a higher-ranked and more exclusive Politburo. Under the CPSU were the Communist Parties of the Union’s individual republics. The elite in the CPSU, the nomenklatura, had several privileges denied other members, including access to better goods and services. Party membership was so prominent that non-CPSU Soviets were practically guaranteed to remain lower-class citizens. Following a long and tumultuous history both within itself and with the rest of the world, the CPSU dissolved along with the Soviet Union itself in 1991.

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Question 2: Discuss in depth the privileges that nomenklatura CPSU members received.

Answer 2: The nomenklatura, an elite subset of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, were bestowed a multitude of privileges denied the average CPSU member or non-party members throughout the Soviet Union. These included access to things like well-stocked stores with high quality products, vacation resorts and dachas, and preference when house hunting and applying to prestigious schools or for prestigious jobs. Travel abroad, a practice severely curtailed under Stalin, was also made much easier. In essence, the nomenklatura were the first class citizens of the Soviet Union, making the CPSU hypocritical in its championing of the working class who were afforded no such privileges.Nevertheless, the nomenklatura were not guaranteed safety throughout Soviet history. During Joseph Stalin’s rule, millions of party members, including those among the nomenklatura, were suspected of disloyalty and imprisoned and/or killed as punishment.

Question 3: Briefly describe the policies of NEP.

Answer 3: The most dramatic policy change of NEP was the replacement of prodrazvyorstka with quotas. Rather than taking all surplus of agricultural produce as it had under prodrazvyorstka, the state demanded a simple quota. Citizens could use any produce left over after the quota was filled for private gain. In an effort to modernize the now badly out-of-date country, the state reformed this new private sector by drastically cutting the central government budget and discarding its attempts to nationalize certain industries. The state also accepted foreign investments to pay for its projects, including investments from western nations, as part of the modernization effort. Finally, the state tried to further distance itself from the “old ways” of Czarist Russia by encouraging the peasants, who were notoriously overlooked and dismissed by the former Empire, to pursue their self interests in a proto-Soviet “American Way” fashion by letting them own private land, but the endeavor was stunted by the state’s maintained control over farming.

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