What if the Soviet Union maintained the New Economic Policy?

If you're unfamiliar with it, the New Economic Policy was proposed by Lenin in 1921 as a response to an economic crisis in Soviet Russia, which allowed some private ventures on a small scale for profit, while the state continued to control the "commanding heights" of the economy like industry, banking, and trade.

In 1928, this policy was abandoned by Stalin in favor of forced industrialization and agricultural collectivization.

Now, what if Stalin decides to keep the NEP in place?
 
I don't think that Stalin would continue to support the NEP indefinitely for two reasons:
1) It appeared to stand in the way of rapid industrialization. Peasants had no incentive to leave their land and work in state-owned factories when they could do well for themselves farming and selling produce to the cities for a good price.
2) The continued existence of the NEP made Stalin vulnerable to charges that he was selling out communism by the "Left Opposition" (Trotsky)

In the absence of state coercion, Russia would industrialize, but not as fast as Stalin and the central planners desired. The only way their ideology would allow them to speed this up (since they did not believe in economic incentives) was forced collectivization, and the end to the NEP. The enormous human cost of collectivization was preferable to these ideologues to the ideological bankruptcy that would result from failing to adopt a fully communist economic policy.
 
Why would Stalin maintain NEP? That's Bukharin's thing, and not only was he not popular within the Party, he was also in the process of being shoved out in '28.

What you'd need to keep NEP is for Bukharin to have significantly more influence and power in the Party; even then, it wouldn't have been kept forever.
 
Should the Nazis get into power and start something like Barbarossa the USSR is defeated rapidly due to not having the capacity to make up for the industrial losses from early 1941.
 
We seem to see this kind of thread a lot.

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The Soviet Union struggles on until World War II, then gets whipped by the Germans. After that, it's pretty much a standard Nazi victory in the east scenario, who won the war in the west would more or less depend on how far the Americans were willing to escalate a nuclear war with the Nazis (who could have retaliated with gas, producing an unequal form of MAD).
 
Guys

From what I remember reading the NEP was a temporary measure Lenin introduced during the crisis of the end of the civil war when even hard line Bolsheviks were growing hostile to the previous policy of 'war-communism'. He himself curtailed this a couple of years later when he felt that he had regained enough control.

If the policy had continued for a couple of decades you would probably have needed an end to the Bolshevik dictatorship. If this could have been done without further fighting and Russia got a period of stability it would probably have been markedly stronger that in OTL. Might not have had as much heavy industry but a markedly larger population and a broader technological base as well as a more professional army and a population that wasn't so eager to welcome a foreign invader.

Steve
 
The Soviet Union struggles on until World War II, then gets whipped by the Germans. After that, it's pretty much a standard Nazi victory in the east scenario, who won the war in the west would more or less depend on how far the Americans were willing to escalate a nuclear war with the Nazis (who could have retaliated with gas, producing an unequal form of MAD).

I think you're looking at it as a zero-sum game, i.e., "NEP = no large-scale industrialization", when both could be done to an extent.

Also, I don't think the industrialization helped the Soviets not lose the war in Decemeber (logistical issues, Hitler's military incompetence and the climate did that); with a somewhat smaller industrial base, the Soviets take a few losses but 1941 and 1942 are more or less the same.

If anything, the big change is that the Soviets maybe "lose" at Kursk, and are only able to kick the Germans out of Russia as opposed to push into the Reich itself by 1944, which mostly has the effect of ensuring that the Allies capture Berlin, not the Soviets.

My thought when making this was basically a Russia that is friendlier to the West, and is kind of like OTL China economically and socially.
 
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yourworstnightmare

Banned
Donor
If you're unfamiliar with it, the New Economic Policy was proposed by Lenin in 1921 as a response to an economic crisis in Soviet Russia, which allowed some private ventures on a small scale for profit, while the state continued to control the "commanding heights" of the economy like industry, banking, and trade.

In 1928, this policy was abandoned by Stalin in favor of forced industrialization and agricultural collectivization.

Now, what if Stalin decides to keep the NEP in place?
NEP was always going to be temporary. Not even Bukharin supported keeping it indefinitely, just prolonging it. Stalin supported NEP at first to get rid of the left Bolshies, who wanted to abolish it immediately and start collectivization. Then he turned against it, and broke his alliance with the right Bolshies who wanted to still prolong NEP.
 
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