New Economic Policy and the 1921-1922 Peasant Rebellion: Study of the Issue
The aim of the study is to state the issue: whether transition to New Economic Policy in 1921 exhausted the peasant rebellion, stopped the armed resistance, reconciling the parties of the conflict. The research is novel in that it provides a generalised view on the issue and the state of its development in the modern Russian historiography; the author calls into question the seemingly undeniable link between the rebellion and change in the state policy. As a result of the study, it was proved that insurgency was directed not just against the surplus appropriation system and that steep decline in insurgency activities in 1921 stemmed not so much from economic innovations of New Economic Policy, most of which, in fact, were implemented much later, as from the ongoing military-communist operations to seize grain, which, amidst rising hunger, on the one hand, and increase in the number of punitive forces, on the other, virtually crushed the armed rebellion in 1922 and destroyed opportunities for its resumption. Peasant rebellion would take on new forms from then on.