[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred Bauder)
Abe Sokolov
abesokolov at hotmail.com
Wed Jun 2 14:37:19 UTC 2004
Over the past 18 months that I've been contributing to Wikipedia, I've been
asking Fred over and over again to stop charging that I am a Stalinist, a
Communist, or a Soviet supporter. These are outright lies. **I am not a
Stalinist or a Communist.**
However, I do not ask that readers of the mailing list believe take my word
for it, but rather judge me by the work I've contributed to WP, as opposed
to the second-hand lies and distortions on the mailing list. Enclosed in
this e-mail below is an example of some of my work, which should put these
stale lies and slandars to rest once and for all.
As sources, I've used, e.g., Gregory, Stuart, Goldman, Lewin, McCauley--
sources that are wholly within the mainstream of Western Soviet and Russian
studies (btw, my user page can direct you to links on the leading academic
journals in the field).
Incidentally, my work on the Soviet economy and history on Wiki owes more to
the likes of Friedrich Hayek than anything coming from the Stalinist USSR.
As an example, here is my article on the economy of the Soviet Union. Yes, I
do avoid lacing my writing on Soviet histroy with emotive, bellicose,
Reaganite anticommunist rhetoric, but this is a matter of style and not
substance per se and staying on topic (hence, I don't bring up the Gulags,
the Great Purges, the terror-famines, the deportations, etc. when it isn't
on topic).
Note my recomendations for further reading in this article and the listing
of [http://assets.cambridge.org/0521826284/sample/0521826284WS.pdf The
political economy of Stalinism: evidence from the Soviet secret archives /
Paul R. Gregory] in particular in the external links.
-172
The '''economy of the Soviet Union''' was based on a system of state
ownership and administrative planning. Like other [[Communist state]]s in
the former [[Warsaw Pact]], the Soviet Union forged a [[centrally planned
economy]]. Since the dissolution of the [[Soviet Union]] ([[1991]]), all but
a handful of the 15 former Soviet republics have dismantled their
Soviet-style economies (''see'' [[History of the Soviet Union
(1985-1991)#Restructuring the Soviet system|Transition from economic
planning in the former Soviet Union]]).
==Planning==
Based on a system of state ownership, the Soviet economy was controlled
through ''[[Gosplan]]'' (the State Planning Commission) and ''[[Gosbank]]''
(the State Bank). The economy was directed from [[1928]] by a series of
five-year plans. For every enterprise planning ministries (also known as the
"fund holders" or ''fondoderzhateli'') defined the mix of economic inputs
(e.g., labor and raw materials), a schedule for completion, and wholesale
and almost all retail prices.
Industry was long concentrated after 1928 on the production of [[capital
goods]] through [[metallurgy]], machine manufacture, and chemical industry.
In the Soviet terminology, the capital goods are known as ''group A goods'',
or ''means of production''. This emphasis was based on the Marxist economic
theory about the necessity of a more rapid growth of the ''production of
means of production''. Since the death of Stalin ([[1953]]), consumer goods
(''group B goods'') received more emphasis.
===Drafting the five-year plans===
Under [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]'s tutelage, a complex system of planning
arrangements had developed since the introduction of the first five-year
plan in 1928. Until the late-[[1980s]] and early-[[1990s]], when economic
reforms backed by Soviet leader [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] introduced significant
changes in the traditional system (''see'' ''[[Perestroika]]''), the
allocation of resources was directed by a planning apparatus rather than
through the interplay of [[market economy|market]] forces.
'''Timeframe.''' From the Stalin-era through the late-[[1980s]], the [[Five
year plan|five-year plan]] integrated short-range planning into a longer
timeframe. It delineated the chief thrust of the country's economic
development and specified the way the economy could meet the desired goals
of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Communist Party]]. Although the
five-year plan was enacted into law, it contained a series of guidelines
rather than a set of direct orders.
Periods covered by the five-year plans coincided with those covered by the
gatherings of the [[Congress of the CPSU|CPSU Party Congress]]. At each CPSU
Congress, the party leadership presented the targets for the next five-year
plan. Thus, each plan had the approval of the most authoritative body of the
country's leading political institution.
'''Guidelines for the plan.''' The [[Central Committee of the CPSU]] and,
more specifically, its [[Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee|Politburo]]
set basic guidelines for planning. The Politburo determined the general
direction of the economy via control figures (preliminary plan targets),
major investment projects (capacity creation), and general economic
policies.
The Politburo sent its list of priorities for the five-year plan to the
[[Sovnarkom|Council of Ministers]], which constituted the government
bureaucracy of the USSR. The Council of Ministers was composed of industrial
ministers, chairmen of various state committees, and chairmen of agencies
with ministerial status. This committee stood at the apex of the vast
economic bureaucracy, including the state planning apparatus, the industrial
ministries, the trusts (the intermediate between the ministries and the
enterprises), and finally, the state enterprises. The Council of Ministers
elaborated on Politburo plan targets and sent them to ''[[Gosplan]]'', which
gathered data on plan fulfillment.
'''Gosplan.''' Combining the broad goals laid out by the Council of
Ministers with data supplied by lower administrative levels regarding the
current state of the economy, ''Gosplan'' worked out, through trial and
error, a set of preliminary plan targets. Among more than twenty state
committees, ''Gosplan'' headed the government's planning apparatus and was
by far the most important agency in the state bureaucracy. The task of
planners was to balance resources and requirements to ensure that the
necessary inputs were provided for the planned output. The planning
apparatus alone was a vast organizational arrangement consisting of
councils, commissions, governmental officials, specialists, etc. charged
with executing and monitoring economic policy.
The state planning agency was subdivided into its own industrial
departments, such as [[coal]], [[iron]], and [[machine]] building. It also
had summary departments such as [[finance]], dealing with issues that
crossed functional boundaries. With the exception of a brief experiment with
regional planning during the [[Nikita Khrushchev|Khrushchev]] era in the
[[1950s]], Soviet planning was done on a sectoral basis rather than on a
regional basis. The departments of the state planning agency aided the state
agency's development of a full set of plan targets along with input
requirements, a process involving bargaining between the ministries and
their superiors.
'''Planning ministries.''' Economic ministries performed key roles in the
Soviet organizational structure. When the planning goals had been
established by ''Gosplan'', economic ministries drafted plans within their
jurisdictions and disseminated planning data to the subordinate enterprises.
The planning data were sent downward through the planning hierarchy for
progressively more detailed elaboration. The ministry received its control
targets, which were then disaggregated by branches within the ministry then
by lower units, eventually until each enterprise received its own control
figures (production targets).
'''Enterprises.''' Enterprises were called upon to develop the most detailed
plans covering all aspects of their operations so that they could assess the
feasibility of targets, thus opening up the most intense bargaining phase in
the planning process. As the individual enterprise drafted its detailed
production plans, the flow of information was reversed; enterprise managers
and even rank-and-file workers often participated in the planning process at
this level. According to Soviet reports, roughly 110 million Soviet workers
took part in discussions in the final period of state planning in the
late-[[1980s]] and early-[[1990s]].
The enterprises' draft plans of the were then sent back up through the
planning ministries for review. This process entailed intensive bargaining,
with all parties seeking the target levels and input figures that best
suited their interests.
'''Redrafting the plan.''' After this bargaining process, ''Gosplan''
received the revised estimates and re-aggregated them as it saw fit. Then,
the redrafted plan was sent to the Council of Ministers and the Party's
Politburo and Central Committee Secretariat for approval. The Council of
Ministers submitted the Plan to the [[Supreme Soviet]] (the rubber-stamp
parliament) and the Central Committee submitted the plan to the Party
Congress, both for rubber stamp approval. By this time, the process had been
completed and the plan became law.
'''Approval of the plan.''' The review, revision, and approval of the
five-year plan were followed by another downward flow of information, this
time with the amended and final plans containing the specific targets for
sector of the economy. At this point, implementation began and was largely
the responsibility of enterprise managers.
==Economic development==
Starting in 1928, the [[five year plan]]s began building a heavy industrial
base at once in an underdeveloped economy without waiting years for capital
to accumulate through the expansion of light industry, and without reliance
on external financing. The country now became industrialized at an
unbelievable pace, perhaps surpassing [[Germany]]'s pace of
industrialization in the nineteenth century and [[Japan]]'s earlier in the
twentieth.
Industrialization came with the extension of medical services, which
improved labor productivity. Campaigns were carried out against [[typhus]],
[[cholera]], and [[malaria]]; the number of physicans increased as rapidly
as facilities and training would permit; and death and [[infant mortality]]
rates steadily decreased.
As weighed growth rates, economic planning performed reasonably well during
the early and mid-[[1930s]], [[World War II]]-era mobilization, and for the
first two decades of the postwar era. The Soviet economy became the largest
and the strongest after that of the [[United States]]. The Soviet Union
became the world's leading producer of [[oil]], [[coal]], [[iron ore]],
[[cement]], and [[steel]]; [[manganese]], [[gold]], [[natural gas]] and
other [[minerals]] were also of major importance.
Growth slowed after [[1960]], but this was considered characteristic of a
mature, industrialized economy at the time. However, the planning ministries
had failed to loosen their control of the enterprise level in time to stem
the prolonged stagnation of the [[1970s]] and [[1980s]], which showed signs
of deep flaws in the Soviet model.
The planned economy was not tailored at a sufficient pace to the demands of
the more complex modern economy it had helped to forge. As the economy grew,
the volume of decisions facing planners in [[Moscow]] grew overwhelming. The
cumbersome procedures for bureaucratic administration did not enable the
free communication and flexible response required at the enterprise level
for dealing with worker alienation, innovation, customers, and suppliers.
As growth rates sank, supply shortages of food and consumer goods became
more and more widespread. Perhaps belatedly, calls for greater freedom for
managers to deal directly with suppliers and customers were gaining
influence among reform-minded Communist cadres during the mid-1970s and
1980s. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, all but a handful of the
15 former Soviet republics scrapped their Soviet-era systems of centralized
planning and state ownership (''see'' [[History of post-Communist Russia]]).
==Agriculture==
[[Agriculture]] was organized into a system of state and collective farms.
Organized on a large scale and highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one
of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests (as in
[[1972]] and [[1975]]) necessitated imports and slowed the economy. The
[[1976]]-[[1980]] five-year plan shifted resources to agriculture, and
[[1978]] saw a record harvest. [[Cotton]], [[sugar beet]]s, [[potato]]es,
and [[flax]] were also major crops.
Despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries,
and a large rural work force, Soviet agriculture was relatively
unproductive, hampered in many areas by the [[climate]] (only 10 percent of
the Soviet Union's land was arable), and poor worker [[productivity]].
Conditions were best in the temperate black-earth belt stretching from the
Ukraine through southern [[Russia]] into the west spanning the extreme
southern portions of [[Siberia]].
Stalin established the USSR's system of state and collective farms when he
moved to replaced the NEP with collective farming in 1928, which grouped
peasants into collective farms (''[[kolkhoz]]es'') and state farms
(''[[sovkhoz]]es'').
===Agricultural labor===
Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization was a major factor explaining
the sector's poor performance. In the new state and collective farms,
outside directives failed to take local growing conditions into account.
Also, interference in the day-to-day affairs of peasant life often bred
resentment and worker alienation across the countryside (although some
landless or poor peasants benefited from the process). The human toll was
catastrophic. In the collective farms, low labor productivity was a
consequence for decades to come.
The ''sovkhozy'' tended to focus on larger scale production than the
''kolkhozy'' and had the ability to specialize in certain crops. The
government tended to supply them with better machinery and [[fertilizer]]s.
Labor productivity (and in turn incomes) tended to be higher on the
''sovkhozy''. Workers in state farms received wages and social benefits,
whereas those on the collective farms tended to receive a portion of the net
income of their farm based, in part, on the success (or better yet lack of
success) of the [[harvest]] and their individual contribution.
Although accounting for a small share of cultivated area, private plots
produced a substantial share of the country's [[meat]], [[milk]], [[egg]]s,
and [[vegetable]]s. Private plots were among many attempts made to
restructure Soviet farming. However, the weakness worker incentives and
managerial autonomy, which were the crux of the problem, were not addressed.
Although the Soviet Union was the world's second leading agricultural
producer and ranked first in the production of numerous commodities,
agriculture was a net drain on the economy.
==Trade and currency==
Largely self-sufficient, the Soviet Union traded little in comparison to its
economic strength. However, trade with noncommunist countries increased in
the [[1970s]] as the government sought to compensate gaps in domestic
production with imports.
In general [[fuel]]s, [[metal]]s, and [[timber]] were exported.
[[Machinery]], [[consumer goods]], and sometimes [[grain]] were imported. In
the [[1980]] trade with the [[Council for Mutual Economic Assistance]]
(COMECON) member states accounted for about half the country's volume of
trade.
The Soviet currency was non-convertible between [[1926]] and [[1937]]. Since
1937, the exchange rate was pegged by [[Gosbank]], the state bank,
responsive to the fulfillment of the government's economic plans. Soviet
[[bank]]s furnished short-term credit to state-owned enterprises.
==Further reading==
* Paul Gregory and Robert Stuart, ''Soviet and Post Soviet Economic
Structure and Performance'' 7th edition (Boston: Addison Wesley, 2001).
* Marshall Goldman, ''What Went Wrong With Perestroika'' (New York: Norton,
1991).
* Marshall Goldman, ''Lost Opportunity: Why Economic Reforms in Russia Have
Not Worked'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994).
* Moshe Lewin, ''The Making of the Soviet System'' (New Press, 1994)
* Mary McCauley, ''Soviet Politics 1917-1991'' (Oxford University Press,
1992).
==External links==
* [http://assets.cambridge.org/0521826284/sample/0521826284WS.pdf The
political economy of Stalinism: evidence from the Soviet secret archives /
Paul R. Gregory]
* [http://www.hubbertpeak.com/reynolds/SovietDecline.htm Douglas B.
Reynolds, "Soviet Economic Decline: Did an Oil Crisis Cause the Transition
in the Soviet Union?"]
* [http://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/afganwar.pdf Rafael Reuveny and Aseem
Prakash, "The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union," Review
of International Studies, 25 (1999), 25, 693-708].
* [http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/what_went_wrong.html Andre Gunder
Frank, "What Went Wrong in the 'Socialist' East?"]
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