Features of the Soviet economic system

The USSR was dominated by a command-administrative system based on socialist doctrine.

Theoretically and practically, socialism was designed to solve two problems:

• eradicate inequality;
• consciously regulate the life of each person and society as a whole with the help of supreme public bodies.

Note 1

The doctrine of socialism began to be consistently embodied in the political, social and economic structure of the Soviet Union.

Soviet ideologists made a lot of efforts to prove the fact that the economic system of our country should be based on public property, which can serve to increase the spiritual and material well-being of each person. In fact, the fundamental principles of the organization of the Soviet economy, which were directly based on the socialist doctrine in the Marxist-Leninist version, consisted of the global nationalization of the national economy.

Note 2

In the Soviet economy, the state was the owner of production resources and made all economic decisions. All economic life was subject to administrative orders of the relevant authorities.

State socialism in the Soviet Union did not recognize private property in any form, including the existence of a market and market self-regulation.

The omnipotence of state management in the economy and all other spheres of life only through bureaucratic methods made it possible to define the Soviet economy as command-administrative and totalitarian, which distinguished it from the larger number of authoritarian states of that time, in which state control was limited only to the political sphere.

The Soviet system was characterized by 3 features:

• total state ownership,
• forced planning,
• egalitarian ideology.

Note 3

All this gave rise to a non-economic nature in the distribution of material wealth, while the material wealth and social status of each person depended on his position in the state hierarchy and membership in the corresponding professional group.

This fact reproduced the principles of the feudal social structure, which was a step back in the movement of human civilization towards the freedom and autonomy of individuals.

The command-administrative system was defined as a special form of organization of economic activity, which was based on the full power of the state in the economy. This system was characterized by forced planning and equalizing non-economic distribution of material goods.

The totalitarian nature of the Soviet economy and the denial of the market logically justified planning as the principle of organizing the national economy. Planning occupied a special place in the Soviet economy and was a tool for crisis-free and dynamic economic development, helping to ensure the historical victory of socialism over capitalism.

Planning in the Soviet economy was the embodiment in practice of socialist ideas of managing the economy from a single center.

Definition 1

The state plan included a system of binding orders from government bodies, which were sent to specific organizations of the national economy and regulated the range and production volume, price and other aspects of economic activity.

Planning as a method of managing the socialist economy of the USSR had several characteristic features:

• Centralized nature, in which the distribution of tasks was carried out from one center (central government body);
• Mandatory (directive) for execution;
• Targeting, that is, the task was brought to a specific organization of the performer.

The change in the internal political situation in the country was of considerable importance in the successes achieved. Death in 1953 I.V. Stalin's revolution marked the beginning of the end of the totalitarian system he created and the beginning of the transition to a new course in domestic politics. Elected to the post of First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev began to pursue a course related to the social orientation of the economy, increasing capital investments in the “B” industries and agriculture, and granting greater rights to the heads of enterprises and collective farms. Particular attention was paid to the development of agriculture. At the same time, the main emphasis was on the development of virgin and fallow lands. In Western Siberia and Kazakhstan, hundreds of new state farms, machine and tractor stations were created, roads were laid, and villages were built. Naturally, this was an extensive development path for the industry. But it made it possible to achieve a 34% increase in agricultural production over five years and to create new areas of agricultural production in the east of the country.

The transition in 1957 to territorial management principles played a major role in the integrated development of regions and the regional economy. The overwhelming number of union and republican ministries were abolished, and enterprises were transferred to the jurisdiction of national economic councils (economic councils) created in the republics, territories and regions. Their formation was a definite step in the decentralization of management of the national economy, in the expansion of rights and material opportunities at the local level, and in the democratization of the economy. However, this created difficulties in implementing a unified national scientific and technological policy, scattered resources, and reduced the effect of the previously existing advantage from the concentration of funds.

During these years, a significant step was taken to improve the standard of living of the population. This was expressed in the Law on Pensions, in tax cuts, in the abolition of tuition fees in secondary schools and universities, in the introduction of a guaranteed minimum wage in agricultural production, in increasing wages in other sectors, reducing the length of the working week, etc.

Particular success has been achieved in solving the housing problem. In the 1950s, preferential loans began to be provided to developers of individual houses. This has improved the housing situation in small and medium-sized towns and rural areas. In the 1960s, when designers and architects ensured the organization of standard housing construction on an industrial basis, housing construction in cities increased sharply, making it possible to provide 80% of families in cities with separate apartments by the end of the 1970s.

The level of public education has increased. The created network of schools, technical schools, and universities made it possible to form a good human resources potential in the country, which had a positive impact on the development of science and culture. It is important to note that in the development of the USSR economy from 1950 to 1970. factors of intensive growth played a significant role, when the increase in national income and gross social product was ensured mainly by an increase in labor productivity and the introduction of scientific and technological progress. For 1950-1960 73% of the national income generated was generated through increased labor productivity. In 1961-1965. this figure reached 83.7%, and in 1966-1970. - 87%. Industrial development was ensured by a systematic increase in capital investments, in the structure of which the share allocated for expansion, reconstruction and technical re-equipment of existing enterprises increased.

Third scientific and technological revolution

During these years, technical innovations were widely introduced in the country's industry and transport. As you know, during the Second World War, the third scientific and technological revolution (STR) began, which is divided into two stages: 1945 - mid-1960s and mid-1960s - late 1980s. The leaders of the first stage of modern scientific and technological revolution were the USA and the USSR.

During these years, the Soviet Union made fundamental changes in technical development. The radio-electronic, nuclear, chemical and instrument-making industries developed at a rapid pace. It was during these years that the country created its own nuclear and missile potential, launched the world's first satellite and then a spaceship, made the first manned flight into space, built the first nuclear power plants and naval nuclear ships. Thus, high rates of economic development were also ensured through the intensive type of expanded reproduction.

In the period 1950-1970. A radical restructuring of the fuel balance was carried out in the country: oil and gas production increased, their share in the total energy resources increased three times - from 19.7 to 60.2%. To transport these foam fuels, pipelines have been built over long distances and with the largest diameters in the world and high throughput. Thanks to a network of pipelines that connected all regions, with the exception of the Far East, a Unified maneuverable oil and gas supply system was created in the country.

Maritime transport has developed significantly, in terms of tonnage the Soviet Union has taken fifth place in the world. The Soviet fleet was the youngest in terms of age of ships. Such an achievement of scientific and technological revolution as the invention of jet and turboprop aircraft has found wide application in our country.

During these years, a technical reconstruction of railways and roads was carried out - a transition to electric and diesel locomotive traction. Since 1958, the production of steam locomotives ceased in the USSR. Road transport has developed, and the scale of road construction has increased. All this led to fundamental changes in the structure of the transport system - progressive means of transportation became the leading ones. The ownership of vehicles by the state ensured their interaction; the transport system was a unified state system.

The electric power industry developed at a high pace - the largest hydroelectric power stations and thermal power plants were built; construction of nuclear power plants began. By 1970, the creation of the Unified Energy System of the European part of the USSR, including the Urals, the largest energy system in the world, was completed.

This period marks the development of television, first in black and white, and from the 1960s in color. The network of relay stations is expanding, due to which the scale of television broadcasting is increasing, and an increasing number of regions and republics are involved in it. In 1970, the Ostankino television tower was put into operation.

The development of new areas and mineral deposits took place on a large scale. The country has urbanized. National wealth grew in the form of thousands of new enterprises, hundreds of new cities and towns.

The development of new lands, the construction of cities and enterprises created new jobs, which, in turn, ensured a healthy socio-psychological climate in the state, confidence in obtaining work, housing, minimal household and socio-cultural goods and services, and confidence in the future.

Economic reform of 1965 The progressive development of the USSR economy was facilitated by the economic reform carried out in 1965. It was expressed, on the one hand, in the centralization of management of the national economy through the liquidation of economic councils and the re-establishment of line ministries. On the other hand, the self-supporting principle of economic management at enterprises was revived, material incentive funds were created, payments were introduced into the budget for the main production assets used by enterprises, enterprises were given broader rights in the field of planning, etc. All these measures were designed to help increase the interest of labor collectives in the final results of production, in increasing the level of intensification of labor and the country's economy as a whole.

Already the first results of the reforms were positive. In 1966-1970 The country achieved fairly high growth rates in key economic indicators. Science and industries that determine scientific and technological progress (mechanical engineering, electronics, energy, petrochemical industry, etc.) developed at a rapid pace. In terms of production volume of a number of types of industrial products, the USSR overtook the USA and took first place in the world.

With the creation of the community of socialist countries, the international importance of the USSR, which stood at the head of the world socialist system, sharply increased. Many Third World countries adhered to a socialist orientation. In the entire more than thousand-year history of the Russian state, it has not had such a high economic potential, standard of living of the population, international authority and influence on the destinies of the world.

Crisis phenomena in the economy and the development of the shadow economy (1971-1985)

These years included the ninth, tenth, and eleventh five-year plans. The priority areas of industrial development were nuclear power engineering (a new branch of mechanical engineering was created - nuclear engineering) and automotive industry. During these years, the Unified Energy System of the USSR was created. The energy system of Siberia was connected to the energy system of the European part of the Union (the energy system served a territory with a population of more than 200 million people). The world's first nuclear power plant was built. The construction of large industrial and transport facilities was carried out (Kama Automobile Plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, Volzhsky Automobile Plant in Tolyatti, Baikal-Amur Mainline).

A sign of the times was the formation of large territorial production complexes, primarily in the eastern regions (West Siberian, Pavlodar-Ekibastuz, South Tajik, Sayan, etc.), which ensured the entire increase in oil, gas, and coal production.

In the period 1971-1985. Large-scale promising programs were developed for the development of energy, the Non-Black Earth Region, consumer goods, road construction, and a food program.

Causes of negative phenomena in the economy

Since the mid-1970s, symptoms of crisis phenomena in the economy began to appear. There was a slowdown in the development of scientific and technological progress; obsolescence of equipment in leading industries; the gap between infrastructure sectors and main production has increased; a resource crisis emerged, expressed in the movement of natural resource extraction to hard-to-reach areas and in the rise in price of extracted raw materials for industry.

All this had a negative impact on the main economic indicators of the country's national economy. With each five-year period, their average annual growth rate decreased, as illustrated by the following table (in %).

The ratio between the growth of national income and the growth of fixed assets (and this is an important indicator of the economic efficiency of the national economy) worsened. From I960 to 1985, fixed assets grew sevenfold, but national income produced only fourfold. This indicated that the country’s economy developed predominantly in an extensive way, i.e. the volume of additional products and the increase in national income were achieved through the rapid involvement of natural and labor resources in production and the growth of fixed assets.

One of the reasons for this was the ambitious foreign policy of the country's leadership, which required a super-powerful military potential, which was created by the military-industrial complex (MIC). For the development and maintenance of the military-industrial complex, enormous material and financial resources were needed, which could only be obtained through other sectors of the national economy and low wages of workers.

All this, in turn, was ensured by a strict administrative planning and distribution system for managing the country and its economy, and strict limitation of material and financial resources. To ensure the rapid acquisition of these resources, preference was given to extensive methods of farming, and this hampered the development of scientific and technological progress.

By the mid-1970s, the mistakes of the Soviet leadership in socio-economic policy became noticeable. What was acceptable before now gave endless failures. As a result of the imbalance of the leading blocs of industries, the structure of the economy turned out to be ugly. During all the years of socialism, the production of means of production (group “A”) developed predominantly.

Only 10% of fixed production assets were concentrated in the light and food industry (group “B”). Therefore, the share of consumer goods in the total volume of industrial production systematically decreased, which in 1986 amounted to only 24.7% against 60.5% in 1928. This meant that the economy was not focused on the primary satisfaction of human needs; a huge part of industrial production was excluded from the sphere of commodity-money circulation, because the means of production were not sold, but distributed.

Such an economic policy led to a deterioration in the social sphere, since funds for housing construction, healthcare, education, and science were allocated on a residual basis with a steady decrease in their share in state budget expenditures.

In conditions of enormous growth in the scale of production, the number of industrial enterprises and the population, the planning and distribution system of economic management stalled, i.e. control mechanism. The state was unable to stop the decline in production rates and achieve the fulfillment of established production plans, despite the reduction in their five-year plan targets; transfer the economy to an intensive path of development, although this has been repeatedly stated; get rid of unprofitable enterprises (their share reached 40% of the total), ensure savings in material, energy, and labor resources consumed to produce a unit of product; the economy remained unreceptive to scientific and technological progress, as a result of which the Soviet Union fell behind the leading Western countries technologically.

To this was added general nationalization, when they even tried to prohibit personal subsidiary plots; narrowing of democratic principles in the country; producer monopoly; one-party political system. All this led to the alienation of a person from public property and a loss of interest in work and its results. If previously the Soviet people could recognize the priority of national economic interests, now they did not believe in the party slogans about a nation-wide state and the possibility of building communism in the country.

The reason for the negative phenomena in the economy was also voluntarism and, in many cases, the insufficient level of professionalism of top and middle management managers, the so-called nomenklatura of party and Soviet bodies. The monopoly position of the Communist Party predetermined the corresponding personnel policy in the country. It was aimed at the inviolability of the party system for the training and promotion of leading personnel. Specialists and leaders could realize themselves only by joining the Communist Party and working in party organizations, Soviet, Komsomol and trade union bodies. Democratic centralism, the indisputability of the authority of party and other leaders at any level, their intolerance to criticism led to the fact that the party-Soviet and any other nomenklatura often included obedient persons, but who did not have intelligence, initiative and other qualities necessary for leaders. Thus, with each generation, the intellectual and professional potential of the leaders of party and Soviet bodies, enterprises and organizations in the country decreased.

The low level of wages did not contribute to saving labor resources and using the achievements of scientific and technological progress. Extensive methods of economic development and unjustified construction of new enterprises led to a gap between the growth in the number of jobs and the increase in labor resources. If in the pre-war and first post-war five-year plans the growth of labor resources in cities was ensured by residents of rural areas, then by the 1980s these sources had practically exhausted themselves. So, in 1976-1980. the increase in labor resources amounted to 11.0 million people in 1981-1985. - more than 3 million, in 1986-1990. -more than 2 million people. This led to a shortage of labor resources. The socio-economic consequences of this development were expressed in a decrease in labor and technological discipline, the economic responsibility of workers for labor results, damages and losses.

The result of many years of domestic and foreign policy has been a decrease in the country's national wealth. This can be seen from the following data (in comparable prices, billion rubles):

This decrease in national wealth is due to the fact that natural resources decreased faster than property increased. It should be added that the country had hidden inflation, which, according to economists, was approximately 3% per year. Taking into account such inflation, the country's national income stopped growing in the 1980s. However, the population slowly increased. Thus, the size of national income and national wealth per capita decreased, i.e. There was absolute impoverishment of the population.

Militarization of the economy One of the main reasons for the difficult economic situation in which the country found itself was the hypertrophied development of the military-industrial complex - the militarization of the economy.

For many decades, the overwhelming and highest quality part of the state’s material and labor resources was directed to the military-industrial complex. The final products of defense enterprises provided the country's military potential, but the economic return from the material, financial and labor resources used in the military-industrial complex to solve the country's economic and social problems was insignificant; on the contrary, the activities of these enterprises required huge budgetary allocations, and their products were mainly stored. Even new technologies that were developed in the military-industrial complex, due to secrecy, did not enter other sectors of the national economy and therefore did not have the desired impact on the development of scientific and technological progress in the country.

Of course, created at the cost of enormous effort and due to the constant underfunding of other sectors of the economy, the military potential of the USSR ensured the defense power of the state, and also maintained geopolitical balance on the planet, opposed to the US military-industrial complex. However, this same potential encouraged the ambitious foreign policy of the country's leadership, which resulted in constant international tension and an arms race.

This happened in 1950 in North Korea, in 1962 in Cuba, when, after the deployment of Soviet missiles there, the US government presented the USSR with an ultimatum to eliminate them on the island. The world was on the verge of a new world war, and even a thermonuclear one. Relations with the countries of the socialist community were complicated (events in Hungary, Albania, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia). In 1968, a military conflict occurred between the USSR and China over Damansky Island on the Amur. This was the first military clash in history between two states from the socialist camp.

The USSR's military presence and Soviet weapons were in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Egypt, Syria, Iraq and other countries.

In 1978, the USSR became involved in a protracted war in Afghanistan. This war had serious consequences for the country, expressed in the undermining of the international authority of the USSR, further economic exhaustion, and a negative psychological climate within the country.

The excessive development of the military-industrial complex and the associated lag in the civilian sectors of the national economy have led to their technical backwardness and lack of competitiveness in the world market. Within the country, this caused a shortage of goods and constant shortages of products necessary to meet the daily needs of the population. These products were distributed to enterprises and institutions through the so-called “exit trade”. The lack of everyday goods on free sale led to corruption in the sphere of circulation and rising prices.

Unsatisfied demand for goods gave impetus to the creation of underground enterprises and the development of the shadow economy, corruption of officials, social stratification of the population, changes in the social structure of society, and growing discontent among citizens.

In conditions of constant shortage of material, financial and labor resources in the country's economy, there was no competition among producers of products and services. As a result, there were no incentives to improve the quality of products and services, to reduce production costs and prices, to conserve resources, and to replace outdated equipment. By the mid-1980s, more than half of the production equipment fleet was more than 50% worn out. All this, in turn, did not contribute to the implementation of scientific and technological advances, even if domestic science offered them. Industrial products of the USSR were losing their competitiveness on the world market.

The country's agro-industrial complex also did not function effectively enough. Extensive methods prevailed in agricultural production. The emphasis was on expanding the use of land resources. Despite the increase in livestock numbers, organic fertilizers were used poorly, while chemical fertilizers were in short supply and their quality was low. As a result, yields of major crops were noticeably lower than in other European countries.

One of the reasons for the lag of the agro-industrial complex was the poor development of infrastructure and capacities for processing agricultural products. There was a lack of storage for harvested crops, good roads in rural areas, repair services and spare parts for agricultural machinery. All this led to the fact that the sown areas were not always harvested, the harvested crops were poorly stored, and there were huge losses of agricultural products during transportation.

As a result, food crises were constantly occurring in the country, which forced the purchase abroad of 20 million to 40 million tons of grain crops annually, and the food and light industries did not have sufficient quantities of raw materials.

Scientists - economists, sociologists, ecologists, etc. - drew the attention of the country's leadership to the danger and consequences of the hypertrophied development of the military-industrial complex, the backwardness of civil industries and agriculture. But their opinion was not taken into account. By the mid-1980s, the central authorities began to understand this. The reason for this was the deterioration of the financial condition of the state,

Public finances and the financial crisis

In the 1960-1970s, one of the major sources of the state's financial resources was revenues from foreign economic activity. This was mainly income from the sale of raw materials, mainly oil. During this period, the country received more than $150 billion. These funds were used for the purchase of equipment for enterprises, the construction of civil and military facilities, and the purchase of food and consumer goods.

However, by the early 1980s, difficulties began to arise in obtaining such funds. There were a number of reasons behind this. It has become more difficult to maintain the same level of oil production. Old oil fields were drying up. Geological mining conditions have worsened. Light oil has decreased significantly. To extract heavy oil, special equipment was needed, but the engineering industry was not prepared for its production.

The situation in the international oil market has also changed. Energy-saving technologies were increasingly being introduced into the economy. This entailed a reduction in energy demand. The competition between oil-producing countries has intensified in the oil market. Oil prices were falling.

At the same time, the maintenance of the military-industrial complex, low-profit enterprises and non-production spheres required increasingly large budgetary allocations. Their source was external loans and the country's gold reserves, which decreased from 2050 tons in 1953 to 681 tons in 1987 and to 340 tons in 1996.

The problem of our country’s external debt, the volume of which was approximately $80 billion, was not an easy one. Other states owed the country approximately the same amount. However, if the debt of the USSR was mainly to foreign companies and banks for purchased industrial and agricultural products, then the USSR provided loans to other states for the sale of products of its military-industrial complex. These were states of the socialist camp (Vietnam, Cuba, etc.), but mainly Third World countries (Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Angola, Afghanistan, etc.), whose currency solvency was extremely low.

Thus, if the state budget expenditures on repaying external debt increased, then revenues from external sources decreased.

All this led to a deterioration in public finances and an increase in the budget deficit, which was increasingly covered by money emission and the growth of the country’s internal debt. Against this background, there was a growing need to increase budget allocations for subsidizing sectors of the national economy. Subsidies, reaching one fifth of all budget expenditures, practically encouraged dependency and mismanagement of enterprises and collective farms. Losses and unproductive expenses in the national economy increased annually. Thus, from 1981 to 1988 they grew from 12.5 billion to 29.0 billion rubles, including above-plan losses from defects in industry and construction increased from 364 million to 1076 million rubles, losses from writing off costs for unrealized and permanently discontinued capital construction - from 2831 million to 4631 million rubles, losses from livestock deaths - from 1696 million to 1912 million rubles.

For comparison, we point out that in 1988 the volume of state budget revenues was 379.9 billion rubles, i.e. this year, losses in the national economy amounted to more than 7% of budget expenditures.

These and other similar factors negatively affected the state of public finances and brought closer the financial crisis that erupted in the early 1990s, which the constantly changing ministers of finance could not prevent (from 1985 to 1998, this post was held by eleven people, and some of them were only a few months). Many appointed finance ministers and their deputies were unprofessional and did not know financial problems and ways to solve them. The heads of the country's financial department began to change especially frequently in the 1990s. Ministerial leapfrog, the departure of a large number of professional workers from financial bodies to commercial structures, the division of the Ministry of Finance into a number of independent departments, and the lack of proper coordination between them further weakened the public financial management system and the financial condition of the state.

Thus, the economic and then political crisis that erupted in the country in the late 1980s - early 1990s was caused by many years of ineffective economic policies pursued by the country's leadership and its ambitions in international relations. This led to the economic exhaustion of the state, to the discrediting of the socialist mode of production and the entire world socialist system.

The command and administrative system of the USSR was based on socialist doctrine. The attractiveness of socialism as a theory and practice is due to the fact that it undertakes to solve two problems that have worried humanity for centuries: the eradication of inequality, the conscious regulation of the life of society and each person individually by certain supreme bodies of society. The main ideological forerunners of socialism in European culture are considered to be two famous scientists of the late Middle Ages - the English philosopher and statesman T. More and the Italian philosopher, Dominican monk T. Campanella, who were the authors of social utopias about harmonious and happy societies that do not know private property.

The socialist doctrine found its most consistent embodiment in the political and socio-economic structure of the USSR.

Soviet ideologists made great efforts to prove that the economic system of the USSR is based on public property and serves to improve the material and spiritual well-being of every citizen. But in fact, the fundamental principle of the organization of the Soviet economy, which directly followed from the socialist doctrine in its Marxist-Leninist version, was the complete, total nationalization of the national economy.

This means that only the state was the owner of productive resources and only the state could make economic decisions. All economic life was subject to the administrative orders of the authorities. Throughout Soviet history, the state sought to establish comprehensive and all-pervasive control over the economy, and deviations from this trend arose only when the evils of over-bureaucratization began to undermine the stability of power itself. In this system there was no place for man as an independent maximizing economic subject; workers were completely alienated from ownership and management of the means of production.

Soviet state socialism did not recognize private property, the market and market self-regulation. Soviet ideologists associated only exploitation, crises and the “decay of capitalism” with the market organization of economic activity. However, the most brutal oppression of man was the lot of the Soviet system, in which material and social benefits were redistributed using non-economic methods in favor of the party-bureaucratic elite - the “nomenklatura”.

The omnipotence of the state in the economy and other spheres of life and management exclusively through bureaucratic methods make it possible to define the Soviet system as command-administrative and totalitarian and to distinguish it from the numerous authoritarian countries of the modern world, where state control is limited to the political sphere.

From the totalitarian nature of the Soviet economy and the denial of the market, the second principle of organizing the national economy - planning - logically followed. It occupied a particularly “honorable” place in Soviet ideology, since it was declared an instrument of crisis-free, balanced and dynamic economic development, capable of ensuring the historical victory of socialism over capitalism. It is not difficult to see that the principle of planning was the practical embodiment of the socialist idea of ​​managing the economy from a single center.

The state plan was a set of binding orders of government bodies, addressed to specific enterprises and organizations of the national economy and regulating the range and volume of production, prices and other aspects of their economic activities.

Socialist planning consisted of the following. Based on party guidelines and an analysis of the economic situation, central government bodies made economic decisions that were binding on the executor and monitored the implementation of decisions. The main planning document was a five-year plan containing a list of tasks for the production and sale of products in industry and regional contexts. In drawing up this document, the state proceeded not only from objective economic needs and criteria, but also from the political and socio-economic tasks set by the top leadership. Based on the five-year plan, economic management bodies developed tasks for all hierarchical levels down to the individual enterprise.

This determined a fundamental feature of economic activity within the Soviet system: decision makers were obliged to be guided by state planning targets, and not by economic considerations of maximizing profits. Prices for raw materials and finished products, wages for workers, sales conditions and all other economic criteria, as a rule, did not influence the decisions of enterprise directors and other business managers. Their main task was to carry out the plan.

For example, prices did not perform either informational or balancing functions inherent in them in a market economy, but served mainly to measure and account for production, because many planned targets were given in monetary terms. In the consumer market, prices were also strictly set by the state, and producers or sellers did not have the right to change them even if there was a sharp discrepancy between supply and demand. Retail prices were constant and generally applied throughout the country. Therefore, they were often indicated directly on the product - printed, embossed on metal, etc.

There was no room for competition in the Soviet system. It was declared one of the main vices of capitalism, leading to the waste of material resources, and was purposefully eradicated - for example, by combating the “duplication” of production capacities, i.e. production of identical products at different enterprises. In addition, the concentration of production was encouraged - the creation of large enterprises - to save unit costs. All this resulted in an unusually high degree of monopolization of the Soviet economy and the dictatorship of the producer over the consumer, completely deprived of the right to choose.

Socialist planning responded to the idea of ​​Soviet post-revolutionary Marxists about organizing the economy as a single factory. If all the mines, factories and shops belong to the state, then why do we need money and prices in settlements between them? Does the owner of a capitalist enterprise allow purchase and sale relations between the departments of his factory? The Soviet leadership was unable to realize the idea of ​​an economy as a single factory simply due to the technical difficulties of managing a huge economy, but it is fully consistent with the spirit of Marxist theory, and during the years of the most severe political and economic dictatorship of the national economy, the USSR noticeably approached this ideal.

Three features characterized planning as a method of managing a socialist economy. Firstly, this is centralization, that is, the distribution of tasks by the central government body - the State Planning Committee - or other authorized bodies, secondly, directiveness, or mandatory implementation, and thirdly, targeting, that is, bringing the task to a specific enterprise - performer. In addition, Soviet theorists attributed “scientificness” to socialist planning as a fundamental feature that contrasted the socialist economy with the anarchy of the capitalist market, although in fact the plan was an instrument for implementing the political and economic guidelines of state power and, as a rule, did not take into account objective economic proportions and trends.

Attempts to give planning a “scientific” character constantly ran into insoluble methodological problems of drawing up a plan and monitoring its implementation. How should plan targets be given, in kind or in monetary terms? Is it necessary to describe tasks in detail or can aggregated indicators be allowed that give enterprises some freedom to maneuver? Are special tasks needed to implement the achievements of scientific and technological progress? These and similar questions constituted the main subject of socialist political economy, and until the end of the Soviet economy they never found a clear solution, and the planning methodology often changed.

Total state ownership and forced planning, combined with an egalitarian ideology, gave rise to the non-economic nature of the distribution of material goods. A person’s material wealth and social status depended on his position in the state hierarchy and membership in one or another professional group; this reproduced the principles of the feudal structure of society, and was a huge step back in the main movement of human civilization towards the freedom and autonomy of the individual.

Thus, the command-administrative system can be defined as a special form of organization of economic activity, based on the absolute domination of the state in the economy, forced planning and equalizing non-economic distribution of material goods.

Of course, the actual functioning of the Soviet system was more complex and varied. For example, after Stalin's death, some forms of non-state economic activity began to be allowed in the form of “individual labor activity” or work on one’s own plot of land, but this was officially viewed as temporary concessions and actually violated the purity of the “socialist idea.” In the 60-80s before the start of perestroika, attempts were made to expand the economic independence of enterprises and strengthen the so-called “economic incentives” for workers. During the same period, economic approaches began to penetrate economic practice in an unofficial form.

During the historically short period of the existence of the USSR, various forms of organizing the state economy were tried and attempts were even made to combine socialism with the market. The path that the Soviet economy took before the start of perestroika is an instructive experience for economic theory, demonstrating the historically limited capabilities of command and administrative management of the national economy.

The economic history of the USSR until 1985 can be divided into four stages. At the first stage (1918-1921), an attempt was made to directly implement the Marxist doctrine. The economic policy, which later became known as “war communism,” was aimed at the immediate and forced liquidation of private property and commodity-money relations. In their place came relations of natural exchange between enterprises and the free provision of many goods and services to the population. Most banks and other financial institutions were closed. Agricultural products were confiscated from peasants. They received low-quality industrial goods from the city in exchange. "War communism" combined with the Civil War threatened Soviet power. Under these conditions, on the initiative of Lenin, the “new economic policy” was proclaimed in 1921, which marked the beginning of the second stage.

By introducing the NEP, the Soviet leadership delayed the implementation of socialist principles until a certain stabilization of the economy was achieved. Therefore, trade, hiring of workers, small and medium-sized private production, exchanges, banks, market pricing and other market institutions and mechanisms were allowed. At the same time, the state retained the “commanding heights,” that is, complete control over heavy industry. The NEP contributed to the revitalization of the economy, the development of industry, the growth of agriculture and the rise in the living standards of the people. However, the NEP did not last long. It was curtailed because it objectively undermined the party’s monopoly on power, and also because the country’s leadership set a course for accelerated industrialization and militarization.

The third period is the period of the Stalinist dictatorship (1920s - 1953). The Stalinist system fully embodied the essential features of socialism as a special economic model. During this period, economic activity was carried out exclusively on the basis of planned targets, which were based on politically determined party demands and guidelines. The main task was to create a powerful army. Therefore, during the Stalinist period, the military industry became the basis of the Soviet economy. Agriculture was subject to forced collectivization. Market relations found no place in the Stalinist system. Money did not perform the functions that are inherent in it in a market economy. Throughout the Stalinist period, the Soviet economy maintained very high growth rates. There have been huge structural changes in the economy. Stalinism caused such an overstrain of the forces of the entire society that immediately after the death of the dictator, the new leadership was forced to “loose the screws.”

In 1953, the Soviet economy entered its fourth stage, the stage of mature socialism and relative stability. This period was characterized by the Soviet leadership's departure from the manifestations of Stalinism - mass repressions, harsh exploitation of the population and closeness from the outside world. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, during the reign of N.S. Khrushchev, new industries related to scientific and technological progress, as well as industries in the consumer sector, grew rapidly. But already at this time, the national economy of the USSR was faced with the exhaustion of its resource base and the need for a transition to an intensive type of development. Therefore, at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. A discussion “on improving socialist planning methods” appeared in the scientific press, at the center of which was the question of how to combine compliance with national interests with initiative and relative independence of enterprises. After the change of Soviet leadership in 1964, these discussions provided the ideological basis for economic reform. The reform was intended to give impetus to the socialist economy by expanding the economic independence of enterprises and introducing certain elements of the market mechanism. The work of enterprises was based on “cost accounting”. Cost accounting is a management system that provided for self-sufficiency and self-financing of socialist enterprises. In other words, the enterprise had to independently recoup its costs and earn funds for planned capital investments by producing and selling products in accordance with the enlarged tasks of the state plan. Such changes in planning methodology for the first time allowed the enterprise not only to make decisions on the range of products, but also to look for suppliers and consumers that were profitable for itself.

In December 1991, the USSR, and with it the Soviet economic system, ceased to exist. In the last years of the existence of the USSR, state power lost the ability to collect taxes, control the money supply and lost controllability.

1. The abolition of private ownership, primarily of the means of production, and its replacement by public property, which was ideologically defined as national property, existing in two forms: state and cooperative-collective farm.
2. Refusal from the market, transition to systematic coordination of activities (centralized planning) and, as a consequence, the absence of cyclical development, i.e. economic crises.
3. State pricing system.
4. The purpose of the enterprises' activities was to fulfill planned targets.
5. Overcoming wealth inequality based on the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” through a distribution system with a high degree of equalization and guarantees
6. Three sectors clearly stood out in the economy:

Military-industrial (aerospace industry),

Extractive sector (extraction of natural resources),

Civil sector:

ü investment complex - a group of interrelated industries producing investment goods (machinery and equipment, buildings and structures), including mechanical engineering and construction, as well as industries producing basic materials for them - metallurgy, building materials industry,

ü a complex of industries producing consumer goods.

First of all, resources were allocated to the military-industrial complex, then to the mining sector, and lastly, resources were sent to the civilian sector. After a certain time, the civil sector turned out to be unable to supply the national economy with the means of production in the required quantities, therefore the production capacities in the country were aging, both physically and morally - they lagged behind world analogues in terms of their technical characteristics.

As a consequence of the functioning of this system in the economy, the following problems were observed:

1. Lack of flexible and quick response to changing needs and economic situation
2. Lack of tangible incentives for enterprises to innovate
3. Shortage of goods and services, which is a hidden form of inflation (V. Novozhilov, J. Kornai)
4. irrational use of resources (the cost of producing a unit of output was 1.5–2 times higher than the world level)
5. With huge reserves of natural resources and the second place in the world in terms of the volume of social product produced, the population’s standard of living is relatively low
6. The irrational structure of the national economy, the predominance in it of industries of the first division (producing means of production) to the detriment of industries of the second (producing consumer goods), as well as extractive industries to the detriment of manufacturing
7. Formal use of elements of a market economy - money, prices, trade
8. Development of the shadow economy

The limited possibilities for the development of a command economy became apparent already in the second half of the 70s, which was reflected in the slowdown in the growth rate of national income: according to official statistics in the USSR for 1966–70. this figure increased by 41% in 1971–75. – by 28%, for 1976–1980. by 21%.

Deficiencies arose in the consumer market, which were first covered by imports - the country sold oil (the 70s were a time of high oil prices) and purchased consumer goods, later purchases of equipment and technologies began to increase, since the ability to satisfy its needs for these goods were independently exhausted.

At the end of the 1980s, “petrodollars” became insufficient to maintain balance in the domestic commodity market, and the USSR began to borrow money abroad. External debt began to increase. The domestic market was in a stable state of shortage, there was a shortage of almost everything - and what was not satisfactory to consumers in terms of quality, since the equipment on which these goods were produced was physically and morally worn out.

An attempt to change the situation in the country in 1985, but the changes undertaken were not systemic in nature. The reforms carried out were called “perestroika”. The main role was initially assigned to structural transformations in mechanical engineering (reanimation of the investment complex) and expansion of the economic independence of enterprises (increasing interest in efficient work).

Enterprises received some financial independence: they had to cover all their expenses from their own income, and the net profit after settlements with the budget, banks and higher organizations remained at their disposal. Enterprises were allowed to make their own decisions about what to produce, but only after they had fulfilled mandatory government orders. The expansion of financial independence of enterprises led to the fact that an ever-increasing portion of profits was directed to consumption in all possible ways. In addition, the reforms made it possible to earn money from cooperatives. As a result, in 1989 alone, the monetary income of the population increased by 13.1% against 7.1% according to plan, in 1990 by another 16.9%, and all this with constant prices and virtually no increase in production. Thus, an imbalance arose in the economy between the amount of money in the hands of the population and the amount of goods produced, the so-called money overhang, which led to increased deficits and hidden inflation. By the end of the 1980s, deficits became alarming, and the country switched to a card system in peacetime. They stopped giving loans from abroad, there is no grain. Took hold of gold reserves. It was 1200 tons, until 1991 it became 80 tons. Pavlov exchanges 100 rubles and 50 rubles in three days. banknotes There was a terrible confiscation. Yeltsin is destroying the union. Vice Prime Minister E. Gaidar - an order to do anything, there are 2 months left before famine. There was no money in the budget.

Did you know that in the 30-40s, Soviet society offered the world a socio-economic innovation, on the basis of which almost 85% of the Western economy has been operating for 50 years? Do you know that it was this Soviet innovation that ensured the West’s victory over the USSR in the Cold War and scientific and economic leadership in the modern world? And by the way, do you know that the leadership of the USSR abandoned this innovation in the 60s?

When discussing the Soviet economy, most people come up with images of queues, shortages of goods, senile people at the helm of the country and the military-industrial complex “eating up” all budget money. And if we take into account how this whole epic ended for the USSR, many a priori consider the planned economy to be ineffective, and the socialist method of production to be delusional. Someone immediately turns their attention to the West and, not understanding how the economy there really works, insists that we need a market, private property and other benefits of the “civilized” world. However, there are some very interesting nuances here that I want to tell you about.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit everything into one post, so first I propose to consider those basic (and little-known) economic postulates on which this very innovation of the “Stalinist economy” (1928-1958) was built.

By tradition, I give some conclusions at the very beginning:

The Soviet economy cannot be viewed as a single whole. Chronologically and logically it is divided into several stages: a) war communism; b) NEP; c) Stalinist economy; d) Kosygin-Liberman reforms; e) acceleration and restructuring.

The basis of the Stalinist economy (in addition to the socialization of property and systemic measures in the form of labor) was the law of vertical integration, the socialization of added value and increasing the well-being of citizens.

The main goal of the socialist mode of production is to improve the well-being of citizens. Capitalist – maximizing profit per unit of time.

Under socialism, added value is socialized. Under capitalism, it is appropriated by individuals or groups of people.

It's worth starting with the fact that The Soviet period of the economic history of our country falls into several stages. And these were such different stages that we need to talk not about the Soviet economy in general, but about economic models of individual periods. This fact is very important to understand. After all, many here believe that everything that happened after the NEP was a continuation of Stalin’s industrialization and collectivization. And this is fundamentally wrong, because... Stalin's economy is only a part of the Soviet economy. Just like acceleration and restructuring under Gorbachev were part of the Soviet economy. And to equate Stalin’s economy with Gorbachev’s economy is, at the very least, reckless.

Initially (and not because of a good life), the Bolsheviks had to go for direct distribution of products without using money, which marked the transition to the policy of war communism. This period lasted from January 1918 to March 1921. Since war communism did not meet the tasks of economic development in peaceful conditions, and the Civil War was moving towards its logical conclusion, a new phase began on March 14, 1921, called the NEP. I will not analyze it, like the previous stage, but will only indicate that the NEP actually ended by 1928.

We will dwell in more detail on the next phase - the Stalinist economy, which covers the period from 1928 to the 1958s. I want to consider this period in detail for several reasons.

Firstly, in the public imagination it is the most controversial. Someone endlessly loves the world-famous effective manager, without particularly going into the specifics of what and how he did. Well, someone complains about “the millions shot by Stalin personally,” points to the free labor of “50 million Gulag prisoners,” and claims that it is this mustachioed bastard (Gazzaev) who is to blame for all the problems of modern Russia, because collapsed the NEP.

Secondly... by the way, look at the tables.

As we see by 1928, after WWII, the Civil War, the intervention of the Entente and the New Economic Policy, the Russian economy lagged behind the economies of Western countries more than in 1913. Yosya described the current situation very clearly and clearly in February 1931: “We have fallen behind from advanced countries for 50–100 years. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do this or we will be crushed.”

As a result of industrialization in 1927–1940. About 9,000 new factories were built in the country, the total volume of industrial production increased 8 times, and according to this indicator, the USSR took second place in the world after the USA. In 1941, the Great Patriotic War began, which we ended in Berlin and... reached the pre-war level of production by 1948, simultaneously lending and rebuilding the economy of future partners in the ATS (all of Eastern Europe). Let me remind you that in the next 10 years, in addition to the atomic bomb, we built the world's first nuclear power plant, five hydroelectric power stations, exploded a hydrogen bomb, launched the first satellite, established more than 600 enterprises in the CMEA countries, dug several canals, and so on.

I repeat, after WWII we reached the pre-war level of industrial production in less than 3 years. And this is after almost 3 years of brutal occupation. And without external help. I don’t know who and how, but personally I always had a question, How did we do this? If the economy founded in the 30s and 40s was unviable and ineffective, How did we achieve such indicators?

The Forerunner of Vertical Integration

The socialist economy, as we know, is based on the principle of socialization of the means of production. Plus, industrial relations are based on cooperation and mutual assistance (or so they say). We won’t talk about this, because... There's a lot of philosophy here. Let us dwell on the fact that the socialist economy incl. is built on the basis of the law of vertical integration, according to which profit is derived only from the final product.

What kind of law is this, you ask? Let me give you an example. We have furniture production. In order to assemble a cabinet, you need processed raw materials (MDF, glass), fittings, assembly, delivery. In the modern Russian economy, all these things are usually handled by different companies that are in no way connected with each other. Company X supplies glass with its own markup of 10-15% (+ taxes), Company X2 - MDF with a markup of 10-15% (+ taxes), Company X3 - fittings with a markup (+ taxes), etc. As a result, the cost of the cabinet that Firm P assembles and sells is growing slowly but surely. After all, Company P has to purchase all these materials, in which a couple of “ends” have already been laid.

However, that's not all. Our cabinet needs to be sold, and for this it is exhibited on the podium in a store that belongs to another Company G. Taking into account Russian specifics, the store adds another 80-100% to the cabinet. As a result, we have a cabinet priced at 50,000 rubles with a real cost of 20,000 - 25,000 rubles. For a capitalist economy this is a normal situation, because in it, each link of production strives to extract maximum profit per unit of time.

What we have? Firstly, we have an arrogant parasite at the end of the chain, because of whom the price of the cabinet doubles. He doesn't make any effort. It doesn't produce anything. He stupidly has excess profits, due to which there is a significant increase in the price of products. Secondly, our products are becoming uncompetitive compared to, for example, Belarusian products, where rental rates and salaries are lower, and materials are cheaper. Thirdly, the price of the cabinet hits the pockets of ordinary citizens and reduces their well-being. It is clear that this problem concerns not only the closet, but everything and everyone in our economy.

How could this production be organized in a vertically integrated complex? We would still have all the Firms X, X2, X3, etc. But they would be united within a single holding company, in which all intermediate links would transfer their products to Firm P at cost. And Firm P would already be selling its products with the added value it needs. No one would profit from intermediate products and raw materials. All profits would come from the final product. Can you imagine how much the efficiency of the enterprise and the economy as a whole would increase?

You may ask, what will all the companies in this chain live on then? They don't make a profit. It's simple. Having minimal rental rates, which are transferred in favor of the state, and cheap raw materials, the added value from the final product will be redistributed throughout the holding.

You say that the profit may simply not be enough. This is wrong. Let me explain with a simple example. 1000 lettuce seeds cost 5 rubles. 75-80% of these seeds will germinate into a healthy plant, for which at retail you can get from 60 to 150 rubles. 1 seed can generate revenue 12,000 times more than its cost. Do you feel the difference? Think for yourself, what is better for the country’s economy - to sell 100 tons of aluminum for 60 rubles per kilogram or to make 1 IL-78 from it for 3.5 billion rubles? Where will you earn more?

So, it is much more profitable to produce high value-added products than to trade raw materials. After all, its added value is tens and sometimes hundreds of times greater. Plus, when it is created, a cartoon effect is launched. After all, about 90-100 related enterprises work to build one aircraft. And these are jobs. And this is the demand for qualified personnel, which inevitably entails investment in science and education.

For a better understanding of what vertical integration means for the economy, science and defense capability of the state, I will give the following example. In a market economy, there are types of activities that are “extremely unprofitable.” For example, the production of spacecraft. (And in general, space itself doesn’t bring in much money, unless you send communications and navigation satellites there). If we simplify everything extremely, then it can be divided into 3 parts: 1st, 2nd and 3rd engines, launch vehicles, orbital ships. Individually, as practice has shown, only engines survive.

NPO Energomash is actively pushing the RD-180 and NK-33 to all sorts of Lockheeds, Martins and Boeings and lives well off of this. RSC Energia, which developed the Soyuz, Progress and Buran spacecraft, is gradually bending, fortunately the bourgeoisie did not get stuck on the delivery vehicles. The story with TsSKB-Progress is no better. Analogies can be drawn with our civil and military aviation. The same song was played in 2008-2009 in Pikalevo at cement factories. Knowing the result, I think you will be able to answer the question of how complete is the theory about the sanitizing function of the market, thanks to which “ineffective” companies die off.

And if it were a vertically integrated complex, then there is a high probability that everything would be fine. The low profitability of some industries would be compensated by synergy with others, because at the end of the chain there would be a quality product with high added value. As a result: the country would have a full-fledged space program and new production facilities; science has an incentive for development; people have work. Or do you think that we don’t fucking need the space program?

I'll make a small remark. In the 30-50s, the law of vertical integration had not yet been fully implemented. Intermediate chains still had the opportunity to receive a minimum profit (3-4%), and all added value was immediately appropriated by society. Moreover, at that time there was no such thing as vertical integration. Its discovery and scientific substantiation were made by a team of scientists led by Moscow State University professor S.S. Gubanov in the 90s, while studying the Soviet economy of that time.

Well, back in the 60s, the leadership of the USSR decided to abandon this path of development. First, we broke up the production chains, allowing them to extract the maximum profit at each stage. Then in the 90s they set a course for complete decentralization with total privatization. That is, we have prioritized not the efficiency of the country’s economy as a whole, but the efficiency of individual enterprises.

Do you know what structure Samsung, Cisco, Melkosoft, Toyota, Volkswagen, Apple, General Electric, Shell, Boeing, etc. have? Do you know what we owe today's economic leadership to the USA, Germany, Japan, and China? In 1970, large Western vertically integrated corporations owned 48.8% of total capital and 51.9% of profits; in 2005 their share rose to 83.2 and 86%, respectively. Their share in exports, savings, research and development, and innovation is also comparable. This is not surprising, because they concentrate the best production, technological, research and management resources. Unlimited credit lines, government lobbying.

In developed countries, the corporate economy is completely dominant, not the small enterprise economy that is successfully imposed on us. All of their largest companies operate on the basis of the law of vertical integration, on which the Stalinist economy was built and which we have abandoned.

Added value

However, let's return to the Stalinist USSR. In addition to the law of vertical integration in the USSR (and this is very important) socialized... added value. Yes, added value - the holy of holies of capitalism, for the sake of which it exists, has been socialized. If in a capitalist economy all profits were appropriated by an individual capitalist or a group of them, and society received horseradish all over the face, then in the USSR it was socialized and went to reduce production costs, capital investments, free public goods (free medicine, education, sports, culture, compensation air-rail transportation). That is, it was used to improve the well-being of citizens. After all, the goal of a socialist economy is to improve the well-being of citizens, and not to maximize profits.

How did it work? Let's return to our furniture factory. The relevant ministry, together with industry committees and specific enterprises, formed a plan that defined a number of target indicators (about 30), incl. volume of production and its price. Then the production process began.

The entire pricing process looked like this. Enterprise-1 (P-1) sold intermediate products (for example, MDF) to Enterprise-2 (P-2) at a price that consisted of cost + 3-4% profit of P-1 (p1). P-1 used this profit to provide bonuses to employees, pay for their vacations, and improve their financial situation. The state also levied a tax on this profit.

P-2, after the necessary manipulations with the product (made a cabinet from MDF), gave it away for sale through the state trading system at a price of p1 + cost + 3-4%. This price was called the enterprise wholesale price (p2). Then the state imposed a so-called turnover tax on this p2. The turnover tax was the same added value that was appropriated for the benefit of the entire society. The result was the wholesale price of industry (p3). Well, on top of this price was superimposed 0.5-1%, from which the activities of the state trade system were financed. As a result, p3 + 0.5-1% was called the retail price.

For example, we made a refrigerator. Its cost + our profit of 3% is 10 rubles. The state imposed a turnover tax on him of 25 rubles + 50 kopecks went to support the trade system. The total retail price of the refrigerator is 35.5 rubles. And these 25 rubles of turnover tax went not into someone’s pocket, but into the entire society.

Thus, economic cells received a minimum of profit, which was used for material incentives for cell workers. The main part of the added value was socialized through the turnover tax and went to free education, housing, medicine, sports, recreation, compensation for railway and air transportation. And also for the modernization of fixed assets and means of production, the construction of new enterprises and the implementation of infrastructure projects. Let me remind you that machines, land, buildings, etc. did not belong to individual enterprises, but were owned by the people. As you can see, no private planes, dozens of personal cars, castles and elite prostitutes. Everything is for the people.

Improving the welfare of citizens

Since the goal of the socialist economy was to increase the well-being of citizens, the priority of the state and enterprises was to provide people with everything they needed. At first it was work and food. Next - clothing and housing. Then - medicine, education, household appliances. The system was not interested in profit, but in the number of products.

For example, refrigerators appeared. A decision was made: to include refrigerators in the list of goods provided to the population. This meant that plans were being made to develop refrigerator models and build factories to produce them. At the stage of mastering production - quite naturally - there were not enough refrigerators. There was a shortage. But as development progressed, production reached the planned level and the shortage disappeared. But a new product appeared - televisions and the cycle repeated.

However, the welfare of citizens increased not only due to an increase in gross indicators. Reducing production costs played an important role. For example, a cabinet has a cost price of 10,000 rubles and a wholesale price for the enterprise of 10,500 rubles. How to increase the profit of an enterprise at planned prices? There are 2 ways: a) reduce costs; b) increase the quantity of products produced.

That is, if in the first year the profit from one cabinet was 500 rubles, then, for example, in the second year the team was able to reduce the cost to 9,000 rubles and produced several more cabinets above the plan. As a result, the company’s profit increased by at least 1,500 rubles. However, to prevent the company’s staff from getting too greedy, the state annually revised prices downwards. As a result, products gradually became cheaper, which meant that citizens’ expenses for purchasing them decreased. In fact, there was competition to reduce production costs and to introduce methods to increase production efficiency.

The main goal of the Stalinist economy was to improve the well-being of the population, which consisted of: a) a constant and planned reduction in production costs; b) expansion of free public goods; c) reducing the working time of citizens. And this goal was achieved by increasing the overall efficiency of the national economy, and not its individual enterprises.

The Soviet economy reached pre-war production levels by 1948-1949. However, it was obvious that it was impossible to endlessly produce means of production (category A). Moreover, it contradicted the very idea of ​​socialism. After all, maximum satisfaction of the constantly growing material and cultural needs of the entire society required the production of goods of category B (consumer goods). This problem needed to be solved. Moreover, it should be decided taking into account the beginning of a new round of scientific and technological progress. All this required improving the work of the socialist economy and changing the priorities of its development.

So how did the Soviet economy change after Stalin's death? What decisions did Soviet leaders make? And how did they see the future of the USSR?

And again the conclusions:

Since the 60s, the USSR economy purposefully moved away from a planned system to an unplanned one, which led it first to capitalist self-financing, and then to complete disorganization.

The socialist economy (1928-1953) prioritizes the efficiency of the national economy of the entire country. “Revisionist” economics is the efficiency of an individual enterprise.

The key reason for the collapse of the USSR was the growth of an uncontrollable bureaucracy and its desire to maintain and expand its privileges.

Khrushchev: MTS, virgin lands, state farms

The starting point for fundamental changes in the socialist structure of the Soviet Union was the 20th Party Congress on February 25, 1956. On it, Khrushchev slandered Stalin and the fundamental ideas of socialism. This congress is the starting point for criticism of the Soviet system. This congress is the beginning of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR. This congress is the beginning of undermining the USSR from within. This congress is still a source of dirt for the fight against the ideas of socialism and communism, and simply for criticizing our country.

Because The topic of the post concerns only the economy and industrial relations, we will not look at specific examples of how the 20th Congress influenced ideology, internal party struggle, foreign policy, attitude towards political prisoners, etc., but will immediately move on to Khrushchev’s initiatives.

Khrushchev's main activity was focused on agriculture. Reason: he considered himself a great expert in this matter. What decisions did our agronomist make? First of all, It’s worth saying about the MTS reform(1957-1959). MTS are machine and tractor stations that cultivated the land and harvested crops on collective farms.

Under Stalin, collective and state farms did not have their own heavy equipment: tractors, combines, reapers, cars, etc. And Stalin insisted that under no circumstances should they be transferred to collective farms. Here's what he wrote in 1952: “... offering the sale of MTS to collective farms, i.e. Sanina and Venzher are taking a step back towards backwardness and trying to turn back the wheel of history... This means driving collective farms into great losses and ruining them, undermining the mechanization of agriculture, and reducing the rate of collective farm production.”. A similar experience took place at the beginning of 1930, when, at the suggestion of a group of shock workers, collective farmers, they were given ownership of equipment. However, the very first check showed the inappropriateness of this decision, and already at the end of 1930 the decision was canceled.

Why can’t MTS be transferred into the ownership of collective farms? Several arguments can be made here. Firstly, efficient use of technology . Let’s assume that an average collective farm only needs one combine to have time to harvest. But no collective farm would risk limiting itself to one combine harvester, since if it breaks down, nothing good will happen. The crop will die. And someone will have to answer for the toilet breakdown. Therefore, such a collective farm will buy 2 combines for insurance. Thus, if the Stalinist MTS served 100 collective farms, then after the transfer of equipment it will be necessary to have a total of 200 combines. Stalin's MTS, with a reserve of 10-15%, could have only 110-115 combines and cope with harvesting on all 100 collective farms.

What does it mean? Formally, we will see an unprecedented increase in tractor production. All this will be reflected in the figures of official statistics. Far-reaching conclusions will be drawn about the growth and effectiveness of everyone and everything. But in fact, this is an ineffective use of funds that could be used, for example, for the construction of schools and hospitals. Plus, you need to understand that Khrushchev forced the collective farms to buy out MTS, and this is not only a serious one-time expense, but also an item in the budget (after all, the equipment must be maintained and modernized). How can collective farms cover such losses? Only by increasing prices for final products.

Previously, the state could use prices to force MTS to reduce the cost of cultivating land. The increase in the number of equipment at MTS and the unjustified increase in the cost of this equipment affected MTS’s costs and their profits. They could increase it only by increasing their efficiency and the efficiency of their equipment. That is, they were the economic controller of agricultural machinery factories: they did not allow them to produce inefficient equipment, and did not allow them to produce more equipment than necessary. And with the liquidation of the MTS, the production of agricultural machinery in the USSR began to increase pointlessly, increasing the cost of food.

The second and much more important point - with the transfer of MTS ownership, the collective farm actually becomes an independent producer . This is a violation of one of the fundamental principles of a socialist economy. Indeed, in such a scenario, collective farms become owners of the means of production. Those. they would find themselves in an exceptional position that no other enterprise in the country had. This would further alienate collective farm property from public property and would lead not to a closer approach to socialism, but, on the contrary, to a distance from it. The collective farm became an independent producer. What is the motivation of an independent manufacturer? Only profit. And it is logical to assume that such a collective farm will begin to dictate its terms on product prices and volume.

In a letter to Sanina and Venzher, Stalin pointed out that it was necessary to gradually exclude surplus collective farm production from the system of commodity circulation and include it in the system of product exchange between state industry and collective farms. In the end, everything was done the other way around.

Khrushchev's next initiative, put forward in December 1958, there was a reduction in personal subsidiary plots . Formally, almost the entire rural population of the country was united into collective farms. But in fact, peasants receive only 20% of their income from working on the collective farm, and the rest of the profit comes from the “gray” sector - from the trade in unaccounted for products produced by collective farmers on their private farms, and their sale to state procurement agencies. As a result, Khrushchev accused Malenkov of sympathizing with petty-bourgeois tendencies in agriculture, achieved his removal and carried out another reform.

What is the logic of this reform? In Anti-Dühring, Engels wrote that in the course of the proletarian revolution, all means of production must be socialized. This must be done to eliminate commodity production. In principle, this is the right decision, but there is one caveat. Engels, speaking about the elimination of commodity production, has in mind countries where capitalism and concentration of production are sufficiently developed not only in industry, but also in agriculture. At the time of writing Anti-Dühring, only Great Britain was such a country.

There was nothing like this either in France, or in Holland, or in Germany. Yes, capitalism developed in the countryside, but it was represented by a class of small and medium-sized producers in the countryside. There is no need to talk about our country. The course towards “farming” was taken only under Stolypin a couple of years before the First World War. You yourself know what happened next.

In September 1952, in “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,” Stalin wrote: “It is also impossible to consider as an answer the opinion of other pseudo-Marxists who think that they should, perhaps, take power and go to the expropriation of small and medium-sized producers in the countryside and socialize their means of production. Marxists also cannot take this senseless and criminal path, for such a path would undermine any possibility of victory of the proletarian revolution and would throw the peasantry back into the camp of the enemies of the proletariat for a long time.” . Lenin wrote about this in his cooperative plan.

The data presented in the analytical note of the agricultural economist N.Ya. Itskov dated April 1962 is also interesting. It indicates that the personal plots of collective farmers at the end of 1959 produced from 50 to 80% of the gross production of milk, meat, potatoes and vegetables, eggs of the collective farm sector. He argued that the state was not ready to take on the supply of a population that made up half of the country's inhabitants. Why did Khrushchev ignore all this? What guided him when carrying out the reform?

The grain problem was not solved either. The development of virgin lands contradicted the decisions of the September 1953 plenum. Because decisions were made on it to intensify agricultural production, and plowing virgin soil was an extensive method of farming. However, it is worth recognizing that the average annual grain harvest for 1954-1958 nevertheless increased and amounted to 113.2 million tons against 80.9 million in 1949-1953. They continued to grow in the 60s. But the “development of virgin lands” was superimposed by a host of other decisions (consolidation of collective farms, reduction of subsidiary plots, certification, transfer of MTS, voluntaristic decisions about what and where to plant), which did not allow the grain issue to be fully resolved. The situation was aggravated by the growth of urbanization: during the period from 60 to 64, almost 7 million people moved to cities. In this situation, virgin lands not only failed to strengthen the country’s grain balance, but also led (along with other factors) to a decrease in production and the need to purchase grain abroad.

Revisionist coup: Kosygin-Liberman reform.

Voluntary decisions in the agricultural sector led to the fact that within two to three years agriculture became a commodity economy. Its cost increased sharply, which forced in 1962, for the first time in the post-war years, to raise prices for all its products. And in 1963, the crisis in commercial agricultural production led to the fact that for the first time since 1934, the USSR was forced to begin purchasing grain abroad. However, the matter was not limited to agriculture. The next “goal” of the reformers was industry and the national economic management system.

The destabilization of economic processes in industry began with the economic reform of 1957-1959. Its essence can be reduced to the replacement of a centralized control system with a geographically distributed system . A number of all-Union and Union-Republic sectoral industrial ministries were abolished, and their enterprises were transferred to the direct subordination of economic councils. The planning function was also destabilized: long-term planning was transferred to the State Economic Council, and current planning to the State Planning Committee.

For a better understanding of what all this meant, I will explain the following thing. For example, you need to automate all jobs in industry. Make your production capital-intensive and more efficient. On the scale of the entire country's economy, this will have a colossal effect: the workforce will be freed up, it will be possible to shorten the working day while maintaining current salaries, more people will strive to receive a quality education, this will stimulate the development of science and technology, etc. Obviously, this is not a one-day job. To implement all this, you will need a development strategy for 8-10 years, as well as the ability to act by order for the benefit of the entire national economy.

Such a task will require the involvement of both capital and labor of a large number of enterprises. At the same time, enterprises are not always interested in implementing such initiatives. There can be a variety of reasons: no capital, no personnel, no time, no interest, etc. As a result, you are faced with a dilemma: either the development of the economy of the entire country depends on the plans of individual economic units (enterprises), or the development of economic units will be consistent with the interests of the entire economy .

In a capitalist system (i.e., in a modern economy), everything depends on specific enterprises. This is understandable, because In this system, the main priority is profit maximization, and the main indicator is the growth of companies' capitalization. The good of individual companies is an axiom and a sacred law. In the Soviet system before 1957, the priority was to increase the well-being of citizens, which was impossible without the development of the entire national economy.

In 1957, introducing the system of economic councils, Khrushchev actually made the development of the economy of the entire country dependent on the plans of individual business entities . Now the plans came not from the all-Union central ministries, but on the contrary, they went to them. In fact, the development of the plan began to begin at enterprises, continue in the council of the national economy and in the State Planning Committee of a particular republic, and only then did it end up in the State Planning Committee of the USSR. And regional barriers were added to the intersectoral barriers.

Would the USSR have been able to develop and implement the GOELRO plan in the 1920s if it had waited for electrification plans from each enterprise? Would industrialization have been carried out if the country's leadership had waited for plans from individual economic entities? How quickly would agricultural mechanization have been introduced if the USSR had waited for the initiative of private owners? I think the answer is obvious.

The development of the country's economy, the growth of the well-being of its citizens and scientific progress are possible only with centralized (state, industry and inter-industry corporations) accumulation and redistribution of resources. Neither a separate enterprise nor a separate economic council can provide anything like this. Reform 1957-1959 took planning away from the area of ​​domination of national economic interests into the area of ​​domination of the interests of enterprises and the interests of regional elites.

Reform 1957-1959 For the first time, the question was raised about what interests would dominate the economic policy of the state - a system or an element, a whole or a private one, a national economy or an individual enterprise. The final answer in favor of private interest was given in 1965 by Kosygin.

Kosygin understood perfectly well that the country was developing successfully only on paper. In fact, the plans were fulfilled only in bulk, and the cost of products grew and its quality decreased. Manufacturers were chasing improvements in their departmental indicators. The end consumer and the volume of products sold were of little interest to them.

As a result, a solution was found - the enterprises were transferred to self-financing. The main criteria for the efficiency of the enterprise were indicators of profit and profitability of production. Planned indicators were reduced from 30 to 9. Enterprises were allowed to determine the number of their employees, wholesale prices, average wages, attract their own funds and loans for production development, and create material incentive funds. In general, it turned out to be a typical capitalist enterprise, but in a socialist system.

Once again Stalin involuntarily comes to mind: “If we take profitability not from the point of view of individual enterprises or industries and not from the perspective of one year, but from the point of view of the entire national economy and from the perspective of, say, 10–15 years, which would be the only correct approach to the issue, then temporary and the fragile profitability of individual enterprises or branches of production cannot be compared with the highest form of strong and constant profitability that the laws of planned development of the national economy and national economic planning give us, saving us from periodic economic crises that destroy the national economy and harm society colossal material damage, and providing us with the continuous growth of the national economy at its high pace" .

As a result of the new reform, the short-term interests of individual enterprises were put at the forefront. And they were motivated only by extracting profit in every possible way and increasing the fund of material incentives. This inevitably led to inflation, because... profits could only be used to increase wages. Wages grew, but their supply of goods lagged significantly behind. Already in the mid-60s, a “money overhang” began to form, which would result in galloping inflation and redenomination in the 90s.

The transfer of enterprises to self-financing meant the subordination of the entire national economy to the interests of individual economic units. We rolled back to 1921-1928, when the country had the NEP, when self-financing of trusts and syndicates was in effect in industry and agriculture. That is, the “innovative” reform of 1965-1967 was essentially a return to the management practices of 30 years ago.

The system of price reductions was also covered with a “copper basin”. Last time we gave an example with a cabinet costing 10,000 rubles. In Stalin's economy, in order to increase a company's profits, it was necessary either to produce more cabinets or to reduce the cost per unit of production. The “Kosygin reform” turned everything upside down - now it became unprofitable to reduce the cost of the cabinet. After all, profit was formed as a share of cost. That is, the higher the cost, the greater the profit. 10% of 10,000 rubles – 1,000 rubles profit. And 10% of 15,000 rubles – 1,500 rubles in profit. This means that we should strive not to reduce, but to increase the cost of production. Any reduction in cost is a blow to the enterprise’s pocket. This is where the practice of speculative inflating prices and falsifying products began and then spread throughout the entire economy of the USSR.

Self-supporting prices escaped control and government administration; they destroyed the controllability and balance of the Soviet economy, made any planning impossible, distorted ideas about the priorities and prospects for the country's development, and led to an increase in commodity shortages and difficulties in the consumer market. The economy of the entire country became subordinated to the interests of short-term profit, which inevitably led to its disorganization .

But more importantly, industrial democracy was dealt a blow. Now it doesn’t matter how competent you are. It doesn't matter what your productivity is. It doesn’t matter what innovations you can and are ready to bring to production. “Nobody gives a damn.” Having killed the price reduction mechanism, any motivation to work better and more disappeared. The motivation to create has disappeared. The majority began to care about stable and quiet work with planned increases in positions and salaries.

But clan-like isolation of the “red directors” and the “bureaucracy”, interested in maintaining the status quo, began to appear. They were the social base that stood for the further decentralization of the economy, the subordination of the state plan to contracts of self-supporting enterprises, the abolition of the turnover tax and the planned procedure for withdrawing enterprise profits to the state budget. In 20-25 years, these people and their children will initiate “acceleration” and “perestroika.” And in the 90s they will become today's oligarchs, effective managers and executives.

The next 15 years before the “acceleration” were marked by an oil rally. After the Yom Kippur War, hydrocarbon prices skyrocketed. This contributed to even greater stagnation of the Soviet economy. Rising oil revenues masked real problems for almost 15 years. However, in the 80s, prices collapsed, and a few years later the Soviet Union collapsed along with them.

Since the 60s, the restoration of capitalism was in full swing in the USSR. “Reformers” were able to replace the development formula with a rollback to “market” fundamentals, passing it off as innovation and the path to a wonderful tomorrow. It was in the 60s that the period of inefficiency and stagnation of the Soviet economy began. But the cause of stagnation was not the “socialist mode of production” that has been so actively reviled over the past 25 years. The reason was the disorganization of the national economy in favor of market forces. It was the beginning of decentralization, the transition to self-financing and maximizing self-supporting profits that led us to the 90s. And the end point of this whole epic was the privatization of national economic enterprises, and the subsequent legalization of private ownership of the means of production, land, enterprises and infrastructure.

Sources:

Industrial production in the USSR (1913, 1928-1952) - http://istmat.info/files/uploads/36 634/rgae_1562.33.1185_22-33.pdf ;

Foreign trade of the USSR for 20 years 1918-1937. Statistical collection - http://istmat.info/node/22114;

Brief statistical collection - http://istmat.info/files/uploads/36 699/narodnoe_hozyaystvo_sssr_za_1913-195 5_gg.pdf ;

Chaebolization of the country (about Samsung) - http://malchish.org/index.php?option=co m_content&task=view&id=128&Itemid=31.

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Bachurin A.V. Profit and turnover tax in the USSR. M., 1955.

Dikkut V. Restoration of capitalism in the USSR. 1988.

Grandberg Z. Neo-industrial paradigm and the law of vertical integration.

Gubanov S.S. Power breakthrough. M., 2012.

Gubanov S.S. Kosyginskaya reform - http://institutiones.com/personalit ies/672-kosiginskaya-reforma.html;

Gubanov S.S. Lenin's course towards state capitalism - http://behaviorist-socialist-ru.blogspo t.ru/2013/09/blog-post_2203.html ;

Zverev A.G. National income and finances of the USSR. M, 1961.

Katasonov V.Yu. Stalin's economy in the history of the USSR - http://ruskline.ru/video/2014/02/10/eko nomika_stalina_v_istorii_sssr;

Larin Yu. Private capital in the USSR. M., 1927.

Molyakov D.S. Profit and profitability of an industrial enterprise. M., 1967. - http://www.library.fa.ru/files/Moly akov/Molyakov33.pdf ;

Naimushin V. “Post-industrial” illusions or systemic neo-industrialization: the choice of modern Russia.

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