Concession policy of the Soviet state: implementation mechanism

The article analyzes the experience of the concession policy implementation by the RSFSR and the USSR during the 20s of the twentieth century and the approaches used in its framework, which allowed solving simultaneously a wide range of tasks related to the rise of the domestic economy and overcoming foreign policy isolation. This experience of the Soviet state can be used to solve the challenges the Russian Federation is facing today. The authors substantiate that the concession policy of the Soviet state was a rationally constructed mechanism able to solve a number of tasks. 1) Creation of foreign concessions in the Soviet country contributed to withdrawal from the diplomatic blockade declared by Western countries. 2) Through the concession policy the obligations of the Russian Empire to foreign investors were renewed in the conditions of a socialist economy. 3) By creating concessions the Soviet government headed by V.I. Lenin attracted the material and technological resources of the European countries and the USA for the development of the economy of the Soviet country. 4) At concession enterprises models of industrial relations with a high level of labor organization and living conditions of workers were formed at the expense of foreign investors, which then had to be introduced everywhere. 5) The concession policy covered the national suburbs and contributed to unification of the economic potential of the republics as part of the USSR. The analysis of the legal regulation of concession relationships carried out in this article gives reason to suppose that the concession policy of the Soviet state should not be reduced to the NEP because its implementation started earlier. In fact, it was launched with the adoption of the Decree of the Council of People’s Commissars of November 23, 1920 On General Economic and Legal Conditions for Concessions and within its framework a range of tasks that went far beyond the economic recovery envisaged by the NEP through private law principles was solved. Attention should also be paid to the constitutional nature of the regulation of concession legal relations, which was determined by the “Treaty on the USSR Foundation of 1922” and the Constitution of 1924.