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NARRATOR (V.O.)
By 1920, the war was almost won — but the peace was already being lost . Russia, though united under red banners, was starving. Factories had no fuel. Farms had no seed. The currency had lost meaning; bread had become a unit of survival. The Revolution had triumphed — but the people were dying in its shadow.
INTERVIEW — Dr. Tatyana Volkhina, Economic Historian
VOLKHINA:
"War Communism had been necessary to win the Civil War — but it was poison in peacetime. The state requisitioned grain directly from peasants. Private trade was banned. Industry was nationalized down to the smallest workshop. It created control, yes — but also paralysis."
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[Scene – Kremlin Office, Early 1921]
Lenin sat hunched over reports. Stalin enters, his coat still wet from travel. Piles of papers cover the table — production quotas, famine figures, rail schedules.
LENIN (tired, frustrated):
"The people are angry. Even the Kronstadt sailors now shout for freedom of trade. This cannot hold, Koba. We are strangling ourselves."
STALIN:
"We built control because the war demanded it. But now the war has basically ended. If we loosen the reins too quickly, the state falls apart. Too slowly — the people starve."
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NARRATOR (V.O.):
In those cold months, the two men — often at odds — found a moment of rare agreement.
Lenin saw ideology bleeding out before hunger. Stalin saw hunger eroding authority.
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INTERVIEW — Prof. James Kettering, Oxford University
KETTERING:
"It was a paradox. Stalin's centralized system had saved the Revolution from the Whites — but that same system couldn't feed the country. The supply network was efficient on paper, but the fields were empty. The state was trying to manage what no one could produce."
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[Scene – The Countryside, Tambov Province]
Smoke rises from villages. Armed peasants gather under ragged banners. The Red Army advances through mud and frost.
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NARRATOR (V.O.):
In the Tambov region, rebellion flared.
Peasants, stripped of their grain by requisition squads, took up arms.The government called them bandits. They called themselves the true sons of Russia. It was the largest peasant uprising since Pugachev — and it terrified the Bolsheviks.
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INTERVIEW — Dr. Irina Melnikova, Historian of Revolutionary Movements
MELNIKOVA:
"The Tambov Rebellion wasn't just about food — it was about betrayal. The peasants had supported the Reds against the Whites, believing in change. But War Communism treated them no better than the landlords. Stalin's commissariat became both the symbol and instrument of this repression."
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[Scene – Moscow, Mid-1921]
Inside the Council chamber. Lenin presides, looking pale but resolute. Stalin and Bukharin flank him. Trotsky watches from the opposite end, skeptical.
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LENIN (archival dramatization):
"We cannot command the economy as we command the army. If socialism is to live, it must first allow the people room to breathe."
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NARRATOR (V.O.)
That "room to breathe" became known as the New Economic Policy …. the NEP.
The New Economic Policy, introduced in 1921, was Lenin's partial reversal of War Communism. It allowed limited private trade, small-scale ownership, and local markets to function again. Peasants could sell surplus grain after paying a tax in kind.
State industries remained under control, but the black markets were legalized into "free trade zones." It was capitalism — within a socialist skin.
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INTERVIEW — Prof. Sergei Antonov, Economic Policy Analyst
ANTONOV:
"The NEP was a pragmatic ceasefire between ideology and survival. Stalin had been eager for this change, he'd always commend lenin and the others for this type of policy. Private traders operated, but under watchful commissars. Local councils reopened, but their reports still led to his office."
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NARRATOR (V.O.):
By the year's end, the results spoke louder than words. Famine receded. Grain began to flow back into cities.Petrograd's foundries sputtered to life. Trade revived — first in whispers, then in open daylight. For the first time in years, markets buzzed again.
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INTERVIEW — Dr. Natalia Petrovna, Historian of Soviet Institutions
PETROVNA:
"Stalin saw the NEP not as surrender, but as reorganization. He rebuilt the administrative structure to monitor every transaction, every factory, every shipment of goods. His commissariat became the silent enforcer of the new mixed economy. It was bureaucratic capitalism — but it worked."
[Scene – Closing Montage]
Scenes of daily life: peasants weighing sacks of grain, workers repairing locomotives, children playing in streets once silent. Then, a slow dissolve to Lenin in his final public speech — voice faint, but words resilient.
LENIN (archival audio):
"The New Economic Policy is temporary — but necessary. We must learn to trade, to build, to breathe again."
NARRATOR (V.O.):
The Revolution had survived famine, civil war, and rebellion. But its future now rested on an uneasy compromise —between principle and necessity,between the dream of socialism and the hunger of a nation.And watching from the shadows, organizing, measuring, and preparing for what came next —was the man who would turn that fragile compromise into a machine.
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"By the end of 1921, the New Economic Policy had stabilized Soviet Russia.Industrial output began to recover, and grain production rose by 40%.But beneath the surface, new tensions brewed —between those who believed in NEP's flexibility, and those who saw it as a betrayal of the Revolution."