Power Сrises and Labor Conflicts During the NEP Period

Abstract

The post-revolutionary period, which lasted almost 12 years, until Stalin’s “revolution from above” despite being extensively studied remains a field of scientific debate due to the previous focus on ideological-political events, when the first plan was to transform the foundations of society, the world of work. Meanwhile, this problem requires an obvious rethinking, since it affects a number of essential aspects of the interaction of government institutions with the socio-economically active layers of society. These include: the nature and dynamics of the legitimacy and perception of power primarily by the proletariat, on whose behalf the government positioned itself; conflict in the sphere of social and labor relations; the nature and dynamics of social tension. The 1920s are considered as a certain unstable state, the coexistence and interaction of normal socio-economic rules and practices and the doctrinal interests of the institutions of power in maintaining their dominance. It appears that among the causes of crises, “killing the new economic policy”, the main ones were not so much political and economic as a crisis of legitimacy, trust and support of the majority of the population that forced the Bolshevik leadership to the restoration of the proven in the years of Civil war ideocratic (power of idea) and protective mobilization model of social management. The author considers such aspects of the crisis legitimacy as manipulation of social tension, gaps between the propaganda and the reality, which led to ‘desacralization’ of power, labor conflicts, and the labor protest.