ABSTRACT
Between 1924 and 1928 a fierce struggle took place to determine who would lead the Party and set its policies. As alliances among the contenders shifted, so too did official policies. The Party continued to maintain a facade of unity, but its “general line,” as official policy came to be called, in fact zigged and zagged. What private entrepreneurs could and couldn’t do under NEP, how they were taxed, how peasants could own or hold land and deal on the market and how they were taxed, how ideologists viewed the failure of international revolution, all changed in only a few years. And then in 1928 to 1929 when Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili) seized power, he changed much of it again. This did not escape the attention of contemporaries.
