Save the revolution. Transition to a New Economic Policy as a crisis of Russian revolutionism. 1920–1921

Abstract

The phenomena and events of Russian history from 1918 to the beginning of 1921, during which the Bolsheviks tried to implement the concept of a direct transition to a socialist mode of production, are analyzed. It is emphasized that the entire logic of the actions of the Bolsheviks in the economic and political spheres during this period was dictated precisely by the consistent implementation of the left-radical version of the development of the revolution, which interpreted the transition to socialism as the fastest and most complete materialization of the main provisions of the Marxist theory of socialism. It is Approved that this logic was violated at the beginning of 1921, when, under the influence of a total economic and political crisis, there was a direct threat to the gains of the revolution and the loss of socialist identity, it was decided to switch to the New Economic Policy. The transition to the New Economic Policy is interpreted as an obvious crisis of Russian revolutionism in the Bolshevik variation, expressed in the collapse of hopes for a quick and direct transition from capitalism to socialism.