Having fulfilled the mission of strengthening Soviet power, the NEP was phased out by the end of the 1920s. For decades, NEPman turned into a cultural antihero, and any private enterprise was equated with the extraction of "unearned income". This situation persisted until the end of the 1980s, when in a disintegrating state, the economy of which found itself in the deepest crisis again, entrepreneurial activity was allowed in a form of industrial cooperation.