NEPman

NEPmen (Russian: нэпманы, romanized: nepmani) were businesspeople in the early Soviet Union, who took advantage of the opportunities for private trade and small-scale manufacturing provided under the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921–1928).

[4] The biggest group of the 3 million or so NEPmen were engaged in handicrafts in the countryside, but those who traded or ran small businesses in the cities faced the most negative attitudes, especially because some amassed considerable fortunes.

[8] As Joseph Stalin consolidated his power, he moved aggressively to end the NEP and to put NEPmen out of business, eventually abolishing private commerce in 1931.

[11] Lenin combated this slander and disapproval by asserting that the NEP was just a temporary measure required to repair the Soviet's crumbling economy.

In the eyes of those who supported the policy, NEPmen were nothing more than a stepping stone, providing stability for the creation of the Soviet socialist state in that era.

However, by the time of Lenin's death in 1924, the NEPmen were being phased out of society to make room for socialist values, and during the Stalin era, NEPman became a dying breed.

[14] As a result, Stalin gained the maneuverability to propose a new economic strategy, and the freedom to develop means of eliminating private entrepreneurship.

Nonetheless, with Stalin's increasingly unlimited power, tensions escalated, and force became an acceptable means of removing the wealthier class or the "enemy of the people".