“NEP crisis” in the northern village, or peasant “proletarianization” as a specific form of “de-peasantization” in non-agricultural regions in the interests of industrialization

Abstract

Issues of industrialization and collectivization in the northern regions of Soviet Russia have been well studied, with an emphasis on both positive and negative consequences. The article provides grounds for another discussion - of alternative forms of social, economic and political development of the country on the example of a particular territory. The authors focus on the role of the “NEP crises” in the final transition to the “forced industrialization”. There were two major crises - “crisis of sales” (1923- 1924) and “crisis of grain procurement” (1927-1928), which to a greater or lesser extent affected the transition to the planned economy. “Labor crisis” is less known: it broke out in the northern (forest) regions of the European North during the 1925/26 logging season and played a similar role in the industrialization of the Soviet timber industry. The essence of this “crisis” was the competition of logging organizations, which contributed to the peasants’ (loggers and rafters) refusal to conclude contracts, while waiting for more profitable offers. The semi-peasant economy of loggers allowed them to be quite independent from earnings in the forestry sector. Sabotage of loggers and refusal to fulfill already concluded agreements disrupted production plans and, thus, violating export obligations, especially of the “sluggish giants” (state trusts), and created prerequisites for the government measures for the planned organization of the workforce. The same applies to the “colonization” of the region, since the constant shortage of labor significantly increased the cost of export timber. There were increasingly more suggestions about regional specialization and, eventually, “proletarization” of the peasantry engaged in logging. These radical ideas under real problems took over rational economic managers’ minds. Negative results of the semi-state management in the resource territories during the NEP period led to the idea of five-year plans as the most promising and quickest way to solve all problems. Despite the persistent revolutionary enthusiasm with its ideas of freedom, practitioners agreed with the ideas of the 19thcentury entrepreneurs about forced labor. Sending administratively expelled peasants to settlements in forest areas and setting tough logging tasks for the local population, including collective farmers, were seen as the only way out of the crisis that is considered in the article as another “NEP crisis”.