Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2020 number

The article is devoted to the modern stage of studying private trade entrepreneurship during the NEP years. The fundamental difference is that under modern conditions researchers have an opportunity to use different theoretical approaches, apply various methods, and rely on various historical sources. A significant distinctive feature of the modern stage of historiography is a closer integration of domestic and foreign researchers, wide use of interdisciplinary and integration approaches in studying the past. The new economic policy as a model of transition economy includes various methods of state regulation, implying both planned and market beginnings, both economic and administrative measures of influence, assumes the existence of a multi-layered economy and a complex system of links between its constituent elements. Under these conditions, trade mediation played a significant role in NEP economics’ system of relations. While at the previous historiographical stage it was not given adequate attention, then under conditions of market relations formation, it attracted greater interest. Accordingly, attention to these relation carriers - private entrepreneurs - increased. Being the most economically active part of population, private entrepreneurs were discriminated on the basis of their profession and deprived of the right to vote. The procedures of deprivation and restoration of rights are a special subject of research, as they help to understand the process of constructing a new society, principles of its social stratification. The attention of researchers to marginal social strata and groups is another distinctive feature of the historiographical stage under consideration. Contemporary studies in private commercial entrepreneurship emphasize social aspects of the problem as opposed to the political ones that dominated during the Soviet period. Thanks to using such historical sources as personal files of “lishentsy”, reports of the Joint State Political Directorate, judicial and investigative cases, memoirs, it became possible to address the fate of private entrepreneurs, to get information from the first person. The modern period is characterized by both attention to macroeconomic processes and study of economic practices at a micro level, as well as traditional attention to public policy, and investigating the individuals’ fate based on an anthropological approach. The diversity of research and differences in approaches of modern scientists are organically consistent with the diversity of NEP decade, in this regard, the author concludes on the relevance and good significant prospects to study this topic on the eve of NEP’s centenary.