What was the outcome of centralized planning and collective farming introduced by the Bolsheviks in 1927-28?
Answers
(1) The New Economic Policy (NEP).
This policy was implemented in March 1921, primarily because massive peasant revolts all over Russia threatened Bolshevik power. The peasants were revolting against war communism, the forcible requisitioning of their produce to feed the army and the cities. War communism was carried out with particular ruthlessness in Tambov province. Lenin had begun this practice in the spring of 1918 (see ch. 2) .
At the same time, there was growing unrest in the towns as well as protest against undemocratic Bolshevik rule. In March 1921, the same "Red sailors" of the naval base on the island of Kronstadt (pron: Kronshtatt, island just outside Leningrad), who had fought for the Bolsheviks in November 1917, now revolted against them. The sailors demanded free and secret elections to the Soviets; freedom of speech and press; the peasants' right to work their own land as they wished; and the legalization of small scale private industry.
The Kronstadt revolt was brutally put down by Trotsky (then War Commissar) and Tukhachevsky, who led troops over the frozen sea to the island base. The government condemned the revolt as a "White Guardist Plot." This was propaganda, since no "White Guard" officers were involved. In reality, the Kronstadt revolt expressed general unrest and convinced Lenin that he had not only peasant revolts to deal with. Thus, the threat to Bolshevik power convinced him of the need to relax controls and rebuild the economy. Therefore, he persuaded his colleagues in the leadership to implement the New Economic Policy, NEP.
NEP was a mixture of socialism and capitalism. The state kept control of "the heights," i.e., of heavy industry, banking, and transport, but allowed a free internal market Therefore, it allowed some scope to private enterprise, i.e. private shops, restaurants, and small scale manufacture, as well as the leasing of some larger enterprises to private entrepreneurs. It also allowed the peasants to work their farms. However, they were to do so within the old communal system, and use only family labor. Forced deliveries were abolished and peasants paid graduated taxes instead. The state remained the owner of the land.
A new class of entrepreneurs appeared, called Nepmen. They were really middlemen, who made a very good living by finding and selling what was most needed. They also supplied state owned industry with parts and raw material. They could be seen everywhere in large cities spending their money in first class restaurants and shops.
The Soviet economy revived quickly. There was more food from the farmers; there were goods in the shops and outdoor markets. But was this communism or even socialism ? Many party members did not think so; they considered NEP to be a betrayal of communist principles.
Lenin himself saw NEP not as a departure from socialism, but as a temporary expedient. He called it "state capitalism," and claimed it was "the ante-chamber of socialism." He had, in fact, tried briefly to implement a similar system in spring 1918, calling it the "New Course," but abandoned it after a short while (see ch. 2).
(Note. We should bear in mind that NEP, whose best known exponent and defender was Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin, 1888-1938, murdered by Stalin in 1938, inspired plans for economic reform in Poland and Hungary in the late 1950s and and early 1960s; in the USSR under Nikita S. Khruschev in the early 1960s, and under Mikhail S. Gorbachev in the late 1980s . It also inspired some of the reforms carried out in Red China by Deng Xsiao Ping in the 1980s and after).
(2) Education, the Arts. and Religion in the NEP Period.
The Soviet government launched a campaign to eradicate illiteracy and reorganized the school system. Education at all levels was free, but it taught communist ideology; it also combined book learning with physical work. The old high schools, called "gimnazia," were abolished and replaced by new secondary schools which combined general education with vocational training; both inculcated communist ideology. Finally, during the 1920s, most schools abolished textbooks and examinations. While this was partly due to new educational theory, it also stemmed from a lack of appropriate textbooks written in a communist framework.
Centralized planning and collective farming introduced under the Five-year plan during the Bolshevik rule in Russia.
Explanation:
- As Stalin came under power in 1927, he introduced a series of reforms in the Soviet Union.
- He tried to introduce modernization in the country by implementing a death and terror rule to keep people under control.
- Stalin forced rapid industrialization and the collectivization of agricultural land.
- Centralized planning led to economic growth with increasing industrial production.
- New factories set up with heavy industrial production.
- The collectivization of agriculture (Kolkhoz) restricted private farming and introduced state-owned agriculture.
- Collectivization improved agricultural productivity with raids on rich peasants (Kulaks) by the government to take out the holding stocks of grains in the countryside.
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What is centralized planning
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