Stalin, Siberia and the Crisis of the New Economic Policy (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies, Series Number 81)

This 1991 book makes an important contribution to the evaluation of the origins of Stalinism. Although it is widely acknowledged by Western scholars that the Soviet grain crisis of 1927–8 and Stalin's Siberian tour of January 1928 were crucial factors in the decision to abandon the New Economic Policy (NEP) and return to a more ideologically rigid policy of collectivisation and rapid industrialisation, studies have hitherto concentrated on the role of leading personalities and 'high politics'. In this book, Dr James Hughes presents an in depth examination of the crisis of the NEP from the regional perspective of Siberia and analyses the events and pressures 'from below', at the grassroots level of Soviet society. Using publications of the Siberian party and statistical investigations of the countryside, Dr Hughes offers insights into several largely uncharted features of the Soviet system in these years.

This book makes an important contribution to the current re-evaluation of the origins of Stalinism. Hitherto, Western scholars have focused on leading personalities to analyze the crisis of the New Economic Policy. Dr. James Hughes, however, examines the processes at work under the NEP from the regional perspective of Siberia. He looks at party-peasant relations, the kulak question, Stalin's patron-client network in the provinces, the regional impact of the grain crisis of 1927-28 and the use of emergency measures to overcome it. He concludes that Stalin's experience of conditions that were unique to Siberia accelerated his negative reappraisal of the NEP and initiated the descent into the cataclysm of his "revolution from above" in late 1929.

This 1991 book makes an important contribution to the evaluation of the origins of Stalinism. Dr Hughes presents an in depth examination of the crisis of the New Economic Policy from the regional perspective of Siberia and analyses the events and pressures 'from below', at the grassroots level of Soviet society. Siberian society and economy under NEP were unique by Soviet standards as they were distinguished from other areas of the country in several significant respects, some of which were a legacy of the pre-revolutionary settlement of the region. James Hughes. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 246-254) And Index.