The dissertation, based on a critical analysis of historical sources, achievements of historiography, modern methodology of historical science, traces the Soviet policy in agriculture in the conditions of the NEP, shows the methods and principles of its implementation in certain sectors of agriculture and, first of all, in grain production.
Relevance of research. Attention has been updated to the fact that there is an urgent need for a careful and unbiased study of the national historical experience, in particular the NEP period as one of the most significant in the history of Ukraine of the 20th century, which was filled with significant potential, but could not fully manifest itself due to brutal and economically unjustified interference of the command-administrative system of the Soviet regime in the functioning of economic life. The issues of the research have scientific, theoretical, methodological and practical significance for the reproduction of a number of current problems in agriculture as a basic branch of agriculture, and first of all its main component - grain production. Even in the period of the greatest prosperity of the NEP, when real practice demonstrated success in grain production as the main income item of peasant farms, which contributed to their economic strengthening already in the mid- 1920s, the Soviet socio-economic policy took a number of inconsistent, illogical, non-constructive steps, as a result what happened was the destruction of traditional peasant foundations, the leveling of the Ukrainian peasant's motivation for agricultural work in general and for the cultivation of grain products in particular.
In the first chapter, an analysis of the degree of scientific development of the problem in historiography was carried out, the results of which indicate that the chosen topic was not deprived of the attention of scientists. It has been established that, despite a wide range of theoretical developments and the expansion of the range of specific historical research, issues related to the impact of socio-political and socio-economic processes on Ukrainian grain production in the studied period are practically not separated from the general
stream of research as the history of Ukrainian pre-collective farming villages, peasantry, and agrarian relations.
The source base is sufficiently representative for the implementation of the tasks set in the dissertation. The research is based on various historical sources, the careful and critical study of which contributed to the objective and reliable coverage of the essence of the permanent crisis of Ukrainian grain production, the causes of its occurrence and the destructive consequences caused by the pernicious command-administrative methods of leadership in the agricultural sector, the discrepancy between the declarative statements of the political leadership and the realities of his financial and economic policy. The creative application of scientific principles and methodological approaches contributed to ensuring the essence of the logic of the course of ambiguous and colorful socio-political and socio-economic processes in the period under study.
In the second chapter, the state of Ukraine's agriculture during the years of military troubles of 1914–1921, their destructive impact on the main production and economic elements of agriculture and grain production is clarified. It was established that during the years of the imperialist war, Ukrainian agriculture was significantly destroyed as a result of significant losses of labor force, depletion of rural labor resources, confiscation of traction power as the main driving force of agriculture, and a critical decrease in the supply of agricultural equipment. It has been found that the socio- political and socio-economic cataclysms caused by the imperialist war led to a decrease in the marketability of peasant farms, respectively - to a reduction in the volume of marketable bread, and as a result – caused a crisis in the bread market.
It was determined that during the Ukrainian revolution of 1917–1921, all political formations tried to solve the agrarian issue - each in its own way. The peasant factor became one of the key factors of the revolutionary era, and by trying to solve the land issue, various political regimes sought to "pull" the
mass Ukrainian peasantry to their side, which made up the lion's share of the armed formations of various political camps.
It is proven that the state of grain production in Ukraine was catastrophically affected by the frenzies of the Soviet regime, Bolshevik experiments in agriculture, attempts to implement the utopian idea of an immediate jump to socialism in agriculture, the policy of war communism, and food distribution. The assertion that the introduction of the Bolshevik agrarian military-communist doctrine had devastating consequences for agriculture and, above all, grain production, is substantiated.
