NEPman

The NEPmen were businessmen and women in the young Soviet Union who took advantage of the opportunities for private trade and small-scale manufacturing created by the New Economic Policy (NEP). The NEP was a response to revolts against meager rations in the USSR during the early 1920s under Lenin's policy of War Communism. Lenin responded by instituting the NEP, which encouraged private buying and selling, even to, as one official put it, "get rich". ^[1]

These entrepreneurial activities, and their very existence, were an affront to the Communist Party and its goal of building socialism in the USSR. Yet, so long as state commercial and cooperative institutions were incapable of meeting the demand for goods and services, NEPmen were tolerated. As they gained a greater standard of living compared to their poor, working class counterparts, NEPmen became reviled, and stereotyped as greedy, and in some cases, Jewish.^[2]

By the early 1920s, NEPmen began to be taxed heavily, which spurred the rise of black markets in some commodities.^{[citation needed]} In 1925, these restrictions were reduced, affording NEPmen greater leeway in conducting commerce. This would not last for long, however. As Stalin consolidated power, he moved violently to end the New Economic Policy and put NEPmen out of business. Many former NEPmen ultimately fell victim to the repression of the Great Purges.

See also

• Kulak

References

• A History of Russia by Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg
• soviethistory.org
• "The Making of the West" by Hunt, et. al.

1. ^ Hunt, et. al., The Making of the West,Bedford/St. Martin's, 2009
2. ^ http://www.soviethistory.org/index.php?page=subject&SubjectID=1924nepmen&Year=1924