The Rise & Fall of the Soviet Economy Part 1: From Tsarist Russia to Lenin's NEP

In this Institute of Economic Affairs Podcast, Managing Editor Dan Freeman interviews Aymen Aulaiwi, DPhil student at Lincoln College, Oxford, in the first of a three-part series examining the Soviet economy's rise, peak and downfall. The conversation begins with an analysis of Russia's economic state in 1900, exploring the autocratic tsarist system, the dominance of agriculture with over 80% of the population working the land, and early signs of industrial progress driven by foreign investment and state-directed policy under Finance Minister Sergei Witte. They discuss the limitations of serfdom's abolition in 1861, the challenges of the village commune system (mir), and Stolypin's land reforms that attempted to create private agricultural plots.

The discussion covers the devastating economic impact of World War One on Russia's underdeveloped manufacturing capacity and infrastructure, leading to the February Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the tsarist regime. Aulaiwi explains the complex power-sharing arrangement between the Provisional Government and the Petrograd Soviet, examining the different socialist factions including the Social Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks. The conversation explores Lenin's theoretical justification for bypassing traditional Marxist stages of development, drawing on Marx's own correspondence about Russia's potential to leap from feudalism to socialism through peasant communes and international revolution.

The episode concludes with an examination of War Communism (1918-1921), where the Bolsheviks nationalised industry, requisitioned grain from peasants, and launched class warfare against the kulaks while attempting to abolish money during the civil war period. They discuss how this radical programme led to economic collapse and famine, forcing Lenin to introduce the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 - a mixed economy approach that allowed private enterprise in small businesses and free markets in agriculture while maintaining state control of major industries. The conversation ends with the tensions this created within the party, setting up the ideological battle between Bukharin's support for gradual development and Trotsky's call for primitive socialist accumulation that would ultimately shape Stalin's approach.

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