According to Pipes, the economic policies Lenin imposed were not in the best interest of the Russian people, it was a façade in a way to implicitly have control over the people. Pipes states that the Bolsheviks were revolutionaries not for the sake of improving the condition of the people but for the sake of gaining domination over the people and remaking them in their image. Lenin tried to introduce state capitalism in 1917. However, Lenin’s period of economic trial and error saw his move from capitalism to socialism to communism. Therefore, we could see how workers’ rights and conditions diminished overtime. Pipes also goes on to say that foreign trade was a minimum. He states With private commerce outlawed (until 1921 and again after 1928), the Soviet regime controlled all legitimate wholesale and retail trade. The ideological opposition of the Bolsheviks to outside international trade, their refusal to pay the debts of Russia’s World War I, and the civil war turmoil, limit foreign trade to the bare minimum required for the indu
strial development of the country. However, Lenins NEP loses the monopoly over foreign trade of the commissariat, enabling the creation of other organizations that can trade directly with foreign partners. This meant that foreign trade began to improve. Pipes believes that there wasnt a strong amount of state control. For example, he says the rebellion spread to frontline troops, who deserted in droves to share in the spoils; to workers, who took control of industrial enterprises; and to ethnic minorities, who wanted greater self-rule. This is due to the control given to the workers. Workers ‘ control is imposed in all manufacturing, retail, agricultural industries that employ people to work for them in their shops or that give them work to take home, in the hopes of comprehensive supervision of the national economy. That power applies to the production, processing, procurement, and selling of raw materials and finished products as well as the company’s finances. This meant that state control decreased and greater self-rule was given.