What was the New Economic Policy and how was it executed?

Lenin's "New Economic Policy" (NEP) was first executed in March 1921. It reverted to state capitalism; the state was to continue owning all major industry and financial concerns, while the people were allowed to have private property, trade freely within limits, and, most of all, farm land for themselves. Fixed taxes on the peasantry was used instead of grain requisitioning (the plus side was that anything that peasants grew beyond tax requirements was theirs to keep/do whatever they wanted!). The figure most associated with the NEP was Nikolai Bukharin, a young Bolshevik who believed that the best way to industrialize the Soviet Union was to tax private peasant economic activity. Peasants were thus encouraged to "enrich themselves" so their taxes could support industrialization.

This was a fairly easy policy to execute. Simple collection of taxes and leniency on private trade/property was introduced throughout the country. Peasants were allowed to do as they pleased, and they responded by actually decreasing the discrepancies in wealth between the rich and the poor (they divided redivided noble lands among themselves), sticking to traditional social structures, and by producing large quantities of grain.