[WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too! (in response to Fred Bauder)

Wed Jun 2 14:37:19 UTC 2004

Over the past 18 months that I've been contributing to Wikipedia, I've been 
asking Fred over and over again to stop charging that I am a Stalinist, a 
Communist, or a Soviet supporter. These are outright lies. **I am not a 
Stalinist or a Communist.**

However, I do not ask that readers of the mailing list believe take my word 
for it, but rather judge me by the work I've contributed to WP, as opposed 
to the second-hand lies and distortions on the mailing list. Enclosed in 
this e-mail below is an example of some of my work, which should put these 
stale lies and slandars to rest once and for all.

As sources, I've used, e.g., Gregory, Stuart, Goldman, Lewin, McCauley-- 
sources that are wholly within the mainstream of Western Soviet and Russian 
studies (btw, my user page can direct you to links on the leading academic 
journals in the field).

Incidentally, my work on the Soviet economy and history on Wiki owes more to 
the likes of Friedrich Hayek than anything coming from the Stalinist USSR. 
As an example, here is my article on the economy of the Soviet Union. Yes, I 
do avoid lacing my writing on Soviet histroy with emotive, bellicose, 
Reaganite anticommunist rhetoric, but this is a matter of style and not 
substance per se and staying on topic (hence, I don't bring up the Gulags, 
the Great Purges, the terror-famines, the deportations, etc. when it isn't 
on topic).

Note my recomendations for further reading in this article and the listing 
of [http://assets.cambridge.org/0521826284/sample/0521826284WS.pdf The 
political economy of Stalinism: evidence from the Soviet secret archives / 
Paul R. Gregory] in particular in the external links.

-172

The '''economy of the Soviet Union''' was based on a system of state 
ownership and administrative planning. Like other [[Communist state]]s in 
the former [[Warsaw Pact]], the Soviet Union forged a [[centrally planned 
economy]]. Since the dissolution of the [[Soviet Union]] ([[1991]]), all but 
a handful of the 15 former Soviet republics have dismantled their 
Soviet-style economies (''see'' [[History of the Soviet Union 
(1985-1991)#Restructuring the Soviet system|Transition from economic 
planning in the former Soviet Union]]).

==Planning==

Based on a system of state ownership, the Soviet economy was controlled 
through ''[[Gosplan]]'' (the State Planning Commission) and ''[[Gosbank]]'' 
(the State Bank). The economy was directed from [[1928]] by a series of 
five-year plans. For every enterprise planning ministries (also known as the 
"fund holders" or ''fondoderzhateli'') defined the mix of economic inputs 
(e.g., labor and raw materials), a schedule for completion, and wholesale 
and almost all retail prices.

Industry was long concentrated after 1928 on the production of [[capital 
goods]] through [[metallurgy]], machine manufacture, and chemical industry. 
In the Soviet terminology, the capital goods are known as ''group A goods'', 
or ''means of production''. This emphasis was based on the Marxist economic 
theory about the necessity of a more rapid growth of the ''production of 
means of production''. Since the death of Stalin ([[1953]]), consumer goods 
(''group B goods'') received more emphasis.

===Drafting the five-year plans===

Under [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]]'s tutelage, a complex system of planning 
arrangements had developed since the introduction of the first five-year 
plan in 1928. Until the late-[[1980s]] and early-[[1990s]], when economic 
reforms backed by Soviet leader [[Mikhail Gorbachev]] introduced significant 
changes in the traditional system (''see'' ''[[Perestroika]]''), the 
allocation of resources was directed by a planning apparatus rather than 
through the interplay of [[market economy|market]] forces.

'''Timeframe.''' From the Stalin-era through the late-[[1980s]], the [[Five 
year plan|five-year plan]] integrated short-range planning into a longer 
timeframe. It delineated the chief thrust of the country's economic 
development and specified the way the economy could meet the desired goals 
of the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union|Communist Party]]. Although the 
five-year plan was enacted into law, it contained a series of guidelines 
rather than a set of direct orders.

Periods covered by the five-year plans coincided with those covered by the 
gatherings of the [[Congress of the CPSU|CPSU Party Congress]]. At each CPSU 
Congress, the party leadership presented the targets for the next five-year 
plan. Thus, each plan had the approval of the most authoritative body of the 
country's leading political institution.

'''Guidelines for the plan.''' The [[Central Committee of the CPSU]] and, 
more specifically, its [[Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee|Politburo]] 
set basic guidelines for planning. The Politburo determined the general 
direction of the economy via control figures (preliminary plan targets), 
major investment projects (capacity creation), and general economic 
policies.

The Politburo sent its list of priorities for the five-year plan to the 
[[Sovnarkom|Council of Ministers]], which constituted the government 
bureaucracy of the USSR. The Council of Ministers was composed of industrial 
ministers, chairmen of various state committees, and chairmen of agencies 
with ministerial status. This committee stood at the apex of the vast 
economic bureaucracy, including the state planning apparatus, the industrial 
ministries, the trusts (the intermediate between the ministries and the 
enterprises), and finally, the state enterprises. The Council of Ministers 
elaborated on Politburo plan targets and sent them to ''[[Gosplan]]'', which 
gathered data on plan fulfillment.

'''Gosplan.''' Combining the broad goals laid out by the Council of 
Ministers with data supplied by lower administrative levels regarding the 
current state of the economy, ''Gosplan'' worked out, through trial and 
error, a set of preliminary plan targets. Among more than twenty state 
committees, ''Gosplan'' headed the government's planning apparatus and was 
by far the most important agency in the state bureaucracy. The task of 
planners was to balance resources and requirements to ensure that the 
necessary inputs were provided for the planned output. The planning 
apparatus alone was a vast organizational arrangement consisting of 
councils, commissions, governmental officials, specialists, etc. charged 
with executing and monitoring economic policy.

The state planning agency was subdivided into its own industrial 
departments, such as [[coal]], [[iron]], and [[machine]] building. It also 
had summary departments such as [[finance]], dealing with issues that 
crossed functional boundaries. With the exception of a brief experiment with 
regional planning during the [[Nikita Khrushchev|Khrushchev]] era in the 
[[1950s]], Soviet planning was done on a sectoral basis rather than on a 
regional basis. The departments of the state planning agency aided the state 
agency's development of a full set of plan targets along with input 
requirements, a process involving bargaining between the ministries and 
their superiors.

'''Planning ministries.''' Economic ministries performed key roles in the 
Soviet organizational structure. When the planning goals had been 
established by ''Gosplan'', economic ministries drafted plans within their 
jurisdictions and disseminated planning data to the subordinate enterprises.

The planning data  were sent downward through the planning hierarchy for 
progressively more detailed elaboration. The ministry received its control 
targets, which were then disaggregated by branches within the ministry then 
by lower units, eventually until each enterprise received its own control 
figures (production targets).

'''Enterprises.''' Enterprises were called upon to develop the most detailed 
plans covering all aspects of their operations so that they could assess the 
feasibility of targets, thus opening up the most intense bargaining phase in 
the planning process. As the individual enterprise drafted its detailed 
production plans, the flow of information was reversed; enterprise managers 
and even rank-and-file workers often participated in the planning process at 
this level. According to Soviet reports, roughly 110 million Soviet workers 
took part in discussions in the final period of state planning in the 
late-[[1980s]] and early-[[1990s]].

The enterprises' draft plans of the were then sent back up through the 
planning ministries for review. This process entailed intensive bargaining, 
with all parties seeking the target levels and input figures that best 
suited their interests.

'''Redrafting the plan.''' After this bargaining process, ''Gosplan'' 
received the revised estimates and re-aggregated them as it saw fit. Then, 
the redrafted plan was sent to the Council of Ministers and the Party's 
Politburo and Central Committee Secretariat for approval. The Council of 
Ministers submitted the Plan to the [[Supreme Soviet]] (the rubber-stamp 
parliament) and the Central Committee submitted the plan to the Party 
Congress, both for rubber stamp approval. By this time, the process had been 
completed and the plan became law.

'''Approval of the plan.''' The review, revision, and approval of the 
five-year plan were followed by another downward flow of information, this 
time with the amended and final plans containing the specific targets for 
sector of the economy. At this point, implementation began and was largely 
the responsibility of enterprise managers.

==Economic development==

Starting in 1928, the [[five year plan]]s began building a heavy industrial 
base at once in an underdeveloped economy without waiting years for capital 
to accumulate through the expansion of light industry, and without reliance 
on external financing. The country now became industrialized at an 
unbelievable pace, perhaps surpassing [[Germany]]'s pace of 
industrialization in the nineteenth century and [[Japan]]'s earlier in the 
twentieth.

Industrialization came with the extension of medical services, which 
improved labor productivity. Campaigns were carried out against [[typhus]], 
[[cholera]], and [[malaria]]; the number of physicans increased as rapidly 
as facilities and training would permit; and death and [[infant mortality]] 
rates steadily decreased.

As weighed growth rates, economic planning performed reasonably well during 
the early and mid-[[1930s]], [[World War II]]-era mobilization, and for the 
first two decades of the postwar era. The Soviet economy became the largest 
and the strongest after that of the [[United States]]. The Soviet Union 
became the world's leading producer of [[oil]], [[coal]], [[iron ore]], 
[[cement]], and [[steel]]; [[manganese]], [[gold]], [[natural gas]] and 
other [[minerals]] were also of major importance.

Growth slowed after [[1960]], but this was considered characteristic of a 
mature, industrialized economy at the time. However, the planning ministries 
had failed to loosen their control of the enterprise level in time to stem 
the prolonged stagnation of the [[1970s]] and [[1980s]], which showed signs 
of deep flaws in the Soviet model.

The planned economy was not tailored at a sufficient pace to the demands of 
the more complex modern economy it had helped to forge. As the economy grew, 
the volume of decisions facing planners in [[Moscow]] grew overwhelming. The 
cumbersome procedures for bureaucratic administration did not enable the 
free communication and flexible response required at the enterprise level 
for dealing with worker alienation, innovation, customers, and suppliers.

As growth rates sank, supply shortages of food and consumer goods became 
more and more widespread. Perhaps belatedly, calls for greater freedom for 
managers to deal directly with suppliers and customers were gaining 
influence among reform-minded Communist cadres during the mid-1970s and 
1980s. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, all but a handful of the 
15 former Soviet republics scrapped their Soviet-era systems of centralized 
planning and state ownership (''see'' [[History of post-Communist Russia]]).

==Agriculture==

[[Agriculture]] was organized into a system of state and collective farms. 
Organized on a large scale and highly mechanized, the Soviet Union was one 
of the world's leading producers of cereals, although bad harvests (as in 
[[1972]] and [[1975]]) necessitated imports and slowed the economy. The 
[[1976]]-[[1980]] five-year plan shifted resources to agriculture, and 
[[1978]] saw a record harvest. [[Cotton]], [[sugar beet]]s, [[potato]]es, 
and [[flax]] were also major crops.

Despite immense land resources, extensive machinery and chemical industries, 
and a large rural work force, Soviet agriculture was relatively 
unproductive, hampered in many areas by the [[climate]] (only 10 percent of 
the Soviet Union's land was arable), and poor worker [[productivity]].

Conditions were best in the temperate black-earth belt stretching from the 
Ukraine through southern [[Russia]] into the west spanning the extreme 
southern portions of [[Siberia]].

Stalin established the USSR's system of state and collective farms when he 
moved to replaced the NEP with collective farming in 1928, which grouped 
peasants into collective farms (''[[kolkhoz]]es'') and state farms 
(''[[sovkhoz]]es'').

===Agricultural labor===

Stalin's campaign of forced collectivization was a major factor explaining 
the sector's poor performance. In the new state and collective farms, 
outside directives failed to take local growing conditions into account. 
Also, interference in the day-to-day affairs of peasant life often bred 
resentment and worker alienation across the countryside (although some 
landless or poor peasants benefited from the process). The human toll was 
catastrophic. In the collective farms, low labor productivity was a 
consequence for decades to come.

The ''sovkhozy'' tended to focus on larger scale production than the 
''kolkhozy'' and had the ability to specialize in certain crops. The 
government tended to supply them with better machinery and [[fertilizer]]s. 
Labor productivity (and in turn incomes) tended to be higher on the 
''sovkhozy''. Workers in state farms received wages and social benefits, 
whereas those on the collective farms tended to receive a portion of the net 
income of their farm based, in part, on the success (or better yet lack of 
success) of the [[harvest]] and their individual contribution.

Although accounting for a small share of cultivated area, private plots 
produced a substantial share of the country's [[meat]], [[milk]], [[egg]]s, 
and [[vegetable]]s. Private plots were among many attempts made to 
restructure Soviet farming. However, the weakness worker incentives and 
managerial autonomy, which were the crux of the problem, were not addressed.

Although the Soviet Union was the world's second leading agricultural 
producer and ranked first in the production of numerous commodities, 
agriculture was a net drain on the economy.

==Trade and currency==

Largely self-sufficient, the Soviet Union traded little in comparison to its 
economic strength. However, trade with noncommunist countries increased in 
the [[1970s]] as the government sought to compensate gaps in domestic 
production with imports.

In general [[fuel]]s, [[metal]]s, and [[timber]] were exported. 
[[Machinery]], [[consumer goods]], and sometimes [[grain]] were imported. In 
the [[1980]] trade with the [[Council for Mutual Economic Assistance]] 
(COMECON) member states accounted for about half the country's volume of 
trade.

The Soviet currency was non-convertible between [[1926]] and [[1937]]. Since 
1937, the exchange rate was pegged by [[Gosbank]], the state bank, 
responsive to the fulfillment of the government's economic plans. Soviet 
[[bank]]s furnished short-term credit to state-owned enterprises.

==Further reading==

* Paul Gregory and Robert Stuart, ''Soviet and Post Soviet Economic 
Structure and Performance'' 7th edition (Boston: Addison Wesley, 2001).
* Marshall Goldman, ''What Went Wrong With Perestroika'' (New York: Norton, 
1991).
* Marshall Goldman, ''Lost Opportunity: Why Economic Reforms in Russia Have 
Not Worked'' (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994).
* Moshe Lewin, ''The Making of the Soviet System'' (New Press, 1994)
* Mary McCauley, ''Soviet Politics 1917-1991'' (Oxford University Press, 
1992).

==External links==

* [http://assets.cambridge.org/0521826284/sample/0521826284WS.pdf The 
political economy of Stalinism: evidence from the Soviet secret archives / 
Paul R. Gregory]
* [http://www.hubbertpeak.com/reynolds/SovietDecline.htm Douglas B. 
Reynolds, "Soviet Economic Decline: Did an Oil Crisis Cause the Transition 
in the Soviet Union?"]
* [http://faculty.washington.edu/aseem/afganwar.pdf Rafael Reuveny and Aseem 
Prakash, "The Afghanistan war and the breakdown of the Soviet Union," Review 
of International Studies, 25 (1999), 25, 693-708].
* [http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/what_went_wrong.html Andre Gunder 
Frank, "What Went Wrong in the 'Socialist' East?"]

_________________________________________________________________
Watch the online reality show Mixed Messages with a friend and enter to win 
a trip to NY 
http://www.msnmessenger-download.click-url.com/go/onm00200497ave/direct/01/