NEP was really more of a temporary expedient to the Bolsheviks ruling circles, including Lenin. The cultural innovation of the NEP period and the very fact that NEP coincided with the formal declaration of the USSR imparted to NEP a luster it does not really merit. Many of the basic precepts of Stalinism were established during the NEP era; the state retained control of heavy industry, international trade, and the Communist Party emerged as the hegemonic political party within the Soviet state. Although Lenin suffered a stroke in 1922 that severely restricted his ability to directly intervene with direct policy, he shared the apprehension many other Bolsheviks had about the crass consumerism and social disorder of the NEP era. What survives of Lenin's writings on NEP suggests he wanted a NEP that last several more years or decades.

The rationale behind adapting NEP was twofold. Firstly, it was to alleviate peasant unrest and prevent famine. Second, it would impart some degree of political stability to let the Soviet state solidify. Once these post-civil war crises had seemingly passed NEP would not survive for long. Not only was NEP ideologically at odds with Bolshevik hard-liners, it also threatened the emerging interest-groups within the Soviet state. NEP's limited acceptance of small scale entrepreneurs and liberalization of agriculture starved the growing Soviet bureaucracy of revenue. The NEP era were lean years for the Red Army to the chagrin of more militant Bolsheviks. Furthermore, there was a growing socioeconomic disparity between the NEPmen and the average Soviet worker. The former could enjoy the new restaurants, dance halls, and sundry "social" amenities (prostitution and abortions skyrocketed under NEP) which an honest Soviet proletarian could not. All of this fused to create a feeling that NEP was a mistake among both the new state elite and many Bolshevik ideologues.

NEP gained a degree of wistfulness with the advent of Stalinism. Some of this was earned. NEP was an era of cultural expression and the NEP years were actually quite beneficial for the peasantry. Opponents of Stalin were able to cast these a nostalgic look back on NEP as the true patrimony of Lenin. This is disingenuous given that it underplays Lenin's deep commitment to create a radical Soviet Union and his ability to make shrewd tactical moves to guarantee that result (this after all was how he managed to win the Revolution and Civil War). Although it is clear Lenin disliked Stalin the person, it is unlikely that he would have been quite as leery of Stalinism. Stalinism did achieve many of the goals of the Bolsheviks: a strong state and party, greater security, and ended the non-Bolshevik characteristics of NEP society such as unemployment.

After Lenin's death, Soviet policy towards NEP was divided between gradualist headed by Stalin and Bukharin and the "Left Oppositionists" led by Trotsky. Although Stalin's famous reversal after Trotsky's expulsion was duplicitous and an example of Stalin's political ruthlessness, the Five Year Plan was a response to the a 1927 war scare which revealed that many Soviet Union was in danger of imminent attack and the NKVD reported that the larger Soviet public would be indifferent to the fate of the USSR in case of an attack. The Stalinist turn had a certain logic to it even for gradualists as it appeared the USSR no longer could afford a breathing space.

Sources

Ball, Alan M. Russia's Last Capitalists The Nepmen, 1921-1929. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.

Brandenberger, David. Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror Under Stalin, 1927-1941. Stanford, Calif: Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 2011.

Weeks, Theodore R. Across the Revolutionary Divide: Russia and the USSR, 1861-1945. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.