Modern Historiography of the NEP: A Century Was Not Enough

The article, based on an examination of an array of publications by researchers in academic journals, focuses on the extent to which the new economic policy in the USSR has been studied. The author highlights the most difficult aspects of the problem, namely the quality of self-organisation, the interaction of the sectors of the NEP economy, the effectiveness of control “from the top”, which indeed raised many questions among politicians, scholars and specialists in the late 1920s and among historians for many decades. The analysis suggests that there is a distinctive historiographical bridge between the best historical studies of the Soviet era and those of the first decades of the twenty-first century. The main achievement of the historical research on the problem has been to reveal the scale of the difficulties of an ideological, financial and personnel nature that arose during the years of the NEP, primarily in agriculture. Historians have justifiably pointed out the low profitability of public sector enterprises. The possibility of implementing an industrial project on the basis of the New Economic Policy remains a controversial issue in the academic literature. At the same time, a study of the combinaion of factors that led to the adoption of the first five-year plan demonstrates the potential of the multilayered economy of the 1920s, refuting the thesis of the “backwardness” and “doom” of the NEP. The analysis of historiographical writings on the NEP leads to the conclusion that in recent years this period has reverted to a relatively neglected research area in contemporary academic literature: studies on the historical methodology of Bolshevism and Stalinism have been suspended; characteristic is the absence of major works on the “new economic policy” as a system in the context of the political, social and economic development of Soviet society. The article systematises and elaborates on overlooked and little-studied problems.

Keywords

historical research, historiography, historical academic schools, new economic policy, USSR, diversity

Received

09.02.2022

Publication date

20.06.2022

Number of characters

40788

Cite

GOST	Feldman M. Modern Historiography of the NEP: A Century Was Not Enough // Novaia i noveishaia istoriia – 2022. – Issue 3 C. 27-41 [Electronic resource]. URL: https://nni.jes.su/S013038640020234-5-1 (circulation date: 24.04.2024). DOI: 10.31857/S013038640020234-5
MLA	Feldman, Mikhail "Modern Historiography of the NEP: A Century Was Not Enough." Novaia i noveishaia istoriia 3 (2022):27-41. DOI: 10.31857/S013038640020234-5
APA	Feldman M. (2022). Modern Historiography of the NEP: A Century Was Not Enough. Novaia i noveishaia istoriia (3), pp.27-41 DOI: 10.31857/S013038640020234-5

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