The Lessons of History: New Economic Policy in China and the USSR

In searching for an alternative to both capitalism and ‘classical socialism’, contemporary Soviet and Chinese academics have sought inspiration from history.1 Their attention has increasingly settled on the experiences of the Soviet Union in the 1920s and, to a lesser extent, China during the early 1950s. In part this is due to the parallel between a country emerging from the cataclysm of war and revolution, and one escaping the adamantine grip of Stalinism. More importantly, however, the periods of New Economic Policy (NEP) have been seen as eras of conspicuous economic success. This was particularly true among economic historians in the Soviet Union during the late 1980s, not least because of the rehabilitation of Bukharin (January 1988) and many of the other advocates of NEP during 1987 and 1988 (Davies, 1989, ch. 3). Although there has been extensive disagreement about the source of the dynamism of the Soviet farm economy (some seeing it as the product of an essentially market economy and others taking the ‘Chayanovian’ view that NEP’s rural success was based on a combination of independent co-operatives and private household farming), assessments have been overwhelmingly favourable.2