[vidarh]

I halfway agree with this. NEP certainly shows that Lenin at least in theory was open to it, though NEP was a climb-down. It's of course impossible to see what Lenin would have done if he'd stayed alive, but I guess the closest parallel would be Deng's reforms in China and Đổi Mới in Vietnam, both of which certainly either improved growth or coincided with it (the one caution is that you can see Chinese growth starting before the reforms - China's GDP growth was punctuated through Mao's reign and into Deng's by every political upheaval Mao caused, and as such the period of stability Deng brought clearly is at least part of the reason).

I don't think I'd agree Lenin was all that favourable to markets initially though. It seemed to me to be more of a pragmatic attitude and acceptance that things couldn't continue the way they did prior to NEP, and it being short enough after the civil war created a very convenient way of drawing a line under the old policies as driven by the war.

Stalins role in dismantling it is certainly critical.