How Far Were Economic Problems Responsible for Stalin's Decision to replace the New Economic Policy with the First Five Year Plan?

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How Far Were Economic Problems Responsible for Stalin's Decision to replace the New Economic Policy with the First Five Year Plan?

New Economic Policy (NEP) was brought in by Lenin to bring Russia out of the famine that had been caused by War Communism. Lenin put a lot of work in NEP, facing opponents and making compromises with communism. So have argued that Lenin’s battle with NEP and subsequent stress were the cause of the three strokes that finally killed him. After Stalin triumphed from the struggle for power, one of his first decisions was to replace NEP with the 5 Year Plans (5YPs).

There were many economic problems with NEP. Peasants were allowed concessions to communism to have small capitalistic ventures, this included selling produce and homemade goods. It also allowed people to pay a tax and to keep their grain to feed themselves and sell the remainder, this led to many economic problems: the peasants were not producing enough grain to feed the rapid industrialisation of Russia that Stalin planned; NEP also allowed people to carry out subsistence farming – which involved people growing small amounts of crops for their own needs, and was not very efficient and it also fuelled a capitalistic enemy within Russia, a class of Kulaks who performed well under NEP. Stalin needed to change from NEP to the 5YP to fix these problems. By enforcing Collectivisation productivity was supposed to increase, pooling resources would produce fewer losses – by eradicating individual barns and housing then it’d be harder for peasants to withhold grain and work against the government. Collectivisation would also free up many peasants to leave the rural areas of Russia and work in the factories of the cities, this was incredibly important for the success of modernising Russia. An increase of grain production was also necessary for cash crops – Stalin needed to sell grain to fund the industry side of the 5 Year Plans, this would not be achievable under NEP.

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However there were other reasons for turning from the NEP. Stalin had recently won the struggle for power and needed to cement his success. During the struggle for power he had ruled NEP as uncommunist that had allowed him to expel Tomsky, Rykov and Bukharin from the party; to live up to this declaration he needed to introduce a new policy. At this point the global eye was on Russia, western countries like America and Britain were incredibly sceptical of communism. Stalin needed to perform to prove Russia able to compete, he argued that if Russia was to modernise people ...

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