Early policies by the Bolsheviks were part of state capitalism. The Bolsheviks issued the decree on land, stating that all of the land in Russia belonged to ‘the whole people’. This may seem to be a measure to improve the position of the peasants, but in fact the peasants had been seizing the land and claiming it for themselves since the revolution in February. This decree was simply made to sanction the actions of the peasants, but in reality the peasants would have took this action anyway, whether the decree was issued or not.
State capitalism did not improve the position of the peasants. Most of the rich soil they owned had been given to Germany, and although the decree on land did legitimize their seizing of land, this provided only little boost to their position to society.
In the summer of 1918, Lenin introduced war communism in order for the Bolshevik party to survive the civil war. The terms of war communism created more suffering for the Russian peasants, and richer peasants, called kulaks, were accused of hoarding grain, leading to food shortages across the country. Lenin decided to send squads to forcefully requisition the grain from the peasants.
This policy further downgraded the position of the peasants. They were now being forced to give up the grain that they had made for nothing. This caused many peasants to burn their surplus grain just to stop the requisitioning squads taking it off them. This just further forced the peasants into starvation, as the requisitioning squads took the grain they needed to survive. The result of this for the peasants was a big fall in the production of grain in Russia, which caused many peasants to die during the civil war.
Overall, the position of the peasants decreased greatly during the years that the war communism policy was adopted.
After the civil war was over in 1921, Lenin realized that war communism was not the solution to Russia’s food problem, so he introduced the new economic policy (NEP). The NEP abandoned state requisitioning and allowed peasants to trade again. This measure did give the peasants more freedom to sell their surplus, thus allowing peasants to buy items that they could never afford before. This increased the amount of grain that was produced, allowing more and more peasants to avoid starvation and famine. On this basis it seems that the NEP did enhance the position of the peasants
However, although the peasant’s position was enhanced in the freedom they were given, problems still remained. The peasantry had money to spend, but goods were simply not available to be bought in these remote areas of the countryside. Lenin did try to increase industrial production to try to eradicate this problem, but industry could not keep up with the growth in agriculture. This lead to the scissors crisis, where the price of grain dropped dramatically due to the surplus of grain, but prices of industrial goods stayed high. This meant peasants were selling grain at a too low price to be able to afford manufactured goods, which did lower the position of the peasantry.
Overall, the NEP did higher the position of peasantry in Russian society. They were allowed to sell their surplus grain instead of it being requisitioned, and able to buy manufactured goods with their profits. The scissors crisis did lower their position a little, but the peasants were still in a better position than they were during the war communism period.
Overall, I believe that the position of the peasantry did not improve during the period between 1917 and 1924. Although the NEP did higher their position in society, the production of grain still did not match pre-war levels. Before the Bolsheviks gained power, the peasants had seized land and cultivated it as their own anyway, keeping the surplus for themselves. This is almost the same position the peasants had in 1924. Although the NEP was a success for the peasants, it only undid the suffering endured during war communism, and did not improve on their position in 1917.