THE CRISIS OF THE "N. E. P." IN SOVIET RUSSIA.

LENIN, Vladimir Ilich, 1870-1924; ECONOMIC policy; MACROECONOMICS; SOCIAL policy; TAXATION; PUBLIC finance

The article focuses on the crisis of the New Economic Policy instituted by Vladimir Lenin in 1921. An account of how Lenin abandoned pure Communism, reversed his system of taxation, and decreed the New Economic Policy is provided. The policy supported the socialization of the Soviet economic system by permitting individualistic and capitalistic business methods. The program assumed the correctness of a hypothesis that has never been tested. It assumed that two economic systems which in theory are hopelessly divided would in practice prove entirely compatible. Lenin's idea was that while wilder and wider economic fields were methodically being brought under the sway of economic socialization, individual business should continue to fulfill such functions as socialization was not able to take over. This implied that socialization should extend its field of operations only when it felt itself capable of duplicating that accomplishments of private business.