How did Vladimir Lenin’s New Economic Policy change Soviet civil law?

Vladimir Lenin’s introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921 marked a significant shift in Soviet civil law, reversing the post-revolutionary trend of dismantling market-based legal structures.1

Prior to the NEP, the regime had largely abolished property, contract, and business law under the ideology that legal institutions would eventually "wither away". To facilitate the economic recovery necessitated by the failures of War Communism, Lenin ordered the drafting and enactment of a new civil code modeled after western European civil law.1

This legal transformation included several key changes:
* Restoration of Rights: The new code provided the legal basis for the economy to function by protecting basic contract and property rights.1
* Business Entities: It allowed for the formation of private business entities, supporting the return of retail trade and small-scale industry to private management.21
* Enforcement: Legislation was established to create a court system specifically tasked with enforcing these newly recognized rights and adjudicating criminal cases.1

These reforms remained in effect until the late 1920s, when the government under Joseph Stalin moved to reassert central control, nationalize private businesses, and end the NEP.21