An interesting POD might be that Stalin dies in Fall 1945, leading to Beria-Malenkov-Molotov running the show with Khrushchev-Zhdanov-Bulganin-Voznesensky-Mikoyan as very important players. The Nature of Stalin’s Dictatorship: the Politburo has a good listing of who was spending the most time in Stalin’s office each year
They pursue a neo-NEP, which was quite popular within the Soviet bureaucracy because it would make it much easier to tax all the small businesses which sprang up during the war (Julie Hessler has a good article on this). They also implement some basic agrarian reforms to improve incentives on collective farms, which avoids the worst of the ‘46-48 famine. While crop failures were unavoidable, better state policies could have avoided mass starvation.
The Gulag system remains in its reduced postwar state and doesn’t experience its late-40s expansion, which both Beria and Malenkov regarded as inefficient and counterproductive. The Special Meeting of the NKVD also has its powers reduced significantly, as Beria proposed in 1946.
This raises some interesting questions about how the new leadership clique manages labor discipline after the war, both on the collective farm and to a lesser extent in industry. Stalin pursued mass incarceration as a solution, which like I said even Beria disagreed with (on practical rather than moral grounds).
The net result might be that the neo-NEP snowballs as the regime needs to placate workers with increased consumption and collective farmers with more financial incentives. Not a complete liberalization, but something akin to the 1920s with tight political controls but more room for economic debate and experimentation within the Party. The horizons for reform and liberalization were much broader in the immediate aftermath of the war than in 1953.
The central Soviet state was also much weaker compared to local Party leaders in 1945 than it was before the war or in 1953. Filip Slaveski’s Remaking Ukraine and Khlevniuk/Gorlizki’s Substate Dictatorship have nice discussions of this. Stalin’s death will only increase their power as the new leadership vies for their support.
They pursue a neo-NEP, which was quite popular within the Soviet bureaucracy because it would make it much easier to tax all the small businesses which sprang up during the war (Julie Hessler has a good article on this). They also implement some basic agrarian reforms to improve incentives on collective farms, which avoids the worst of the ‘46-48 famine. While crop failures were unavoidable, better state policies could have avoided mass starvation.
The Gulag system remains in its reduced postwar state and doesn’t experience its late-40s expansion, which both Beria and Malenkov regarded as inefficient and counterproductive. The Special Meeting of the NKVD also has its powers reduced significantly, as Beria proposed in 1946.
This raises some interesting questions about how the new leadership clique manages labor discipline after the war, both on the collective farm and to a lesser extent in industry. Stalin pursued mass incarceration as a solution, which like I said even Beria disagreed with (on practical rather than moral grounds).
The net result might be that the neo-NEP snowballs as the regime needs to placate workers with increased consumption and collective farmers with more financial incentives. Not a complete liberalization, but something akin to the 1920s with tight political controls but more room for economic debate and experimentation within the Party. The horizons for reform and liberalization were much broader in the immediate aftermath of the war than in 1953.
The central Soviet state was also much weaker compared to local Party leaders in 1945 than it was before the war or in 1953. Filip Slaveski’s Remaking Ukraine and Khlevniuk/Gorlizki’s Substate Dictatorship have nice discussions of this. Stalin’s death will only increase their power as the new leadership vies for their support.
