Totalitarianism and the formation of the command-administrative system in the USSR. Formation of a command-administrative system
In the 1920s, the USSR began to develop politic system, in which the state exercised absolute control over all areas of society.
The Bolshevik Party became the main link in the state structure. The most important government decisions were first discussed within the circle of party leaders - the Political Bureau (Politburo) of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), which in 1921 included V.I. Lenin, G.E., Zinoviev, L.B. Kamenev, I.V. Stalin, L.D. Trotsky, etc. Then they were approved by the Central Committee of the RCP (b), and only after that all issues were enshrined in state decisions, i.e. Soviet authorities. All leading government posts were occupied by party leaders: V.I. Lenin - Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars; M.I. Kalinin - Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee; I.V. Stalin - People's Commissar for Nationalities, etc.
At the Tenth Congress of the RCP (b), a secret resolution was adopted “On the unity of the party,” which prohibited the creation in the RCP (b) of factions or groups that had a point of view different from the party leadership. However, this decision did not stop the internal party struggle. Disease V.I. Lenin, and then his death in January 1924, complicated the situation in the party. I.V. became the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b). Stalin. Different understandings of the principles and methods of socialist construction, personal ambitions, the desire to occupy a leading position in the party and state (L.D. Trotsky, L.B. Kamenev, G.E. Zinoviev, etc.), their rejection of Stalinist methods of leadership - all this caused opposition speeches in the Politburo of the party, in a number of local party committees, and in the press. By pitting political opponents against one another and skillfully interpreting their statements as anti-Leninist, I.V. Stalin consistently eliminated his opponents L.D. Trotsky was expelled from the USSR in 1929, L.B. Kamenev, G.V. Zinoviev and their supporters were repressed in the 30s.
I.V. Stalin concentrated enormous power in his hands, placing cadres loyal to him in the center and in the localities. A cult of personality of I.V. was taking shape. Stalin.
In the 1920s, the Bolshevik leadership dealt a blow to the remaining opposition political parties. In 1922, newspapers and magazines of the left socialist parties were closed.
In the summer of 1922, a public trial of Socialist Revolutionary leaders accused of terrorist activities was held in Moscow. In the mid-20s. The last underground groups of right-wing Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks were liquidated. A one-party political system was finally established in the country.
Through the system of secret employees of the Cheka - OGPU (United State Political Administration - since 1924), control was established over the political sentiments of civil servants, intelligentsia, workers and peasants. Secret investigation agencies isolated all active opponents of the Bolshevik regime in prisons and concentration camps, and punitive measures affected all segments of the population. Following dispossession, repressive measures were taken against the urban population.
Repressions were accompanied by violations of the law. Extrajudicial bodies were created in the state security system, whose decisions on issues of repression were not subject to control. Installed new order conducting business about terrorist acts. Their consideration was carried out within 10 days without the participation of the defense and prosecution.
Command-administrative methods of managing the socio-political and cultural life of the country were strengthened. Many public organizations were liquidated.
In the mid-30s, repressions against the command cadres of the Red Army intensified (M.N. Tukhachevsky, I.E. Yakir, I.P. Uborevich, A.I. Egorov, V.K. Blyukher).
Tens of thousands of innocent people were sentenced to imprisonment in the State Administration of Camps (GULAG).
The number of people imprisoned in them increased from 179 thousand in 1930 to 996 thousand in 1937.
By the mid-30s, an administrative-command system had developed in the USSR. Its most important features were: the centralization of the economic management system, the merging of political management with economic management, the “seizure of the state by the party,” the destruction of civil liberties, the unification of public life, and the cult of the national leader.
November 7, 1929 Stalin's article "The Year of the Great Turning Point" appeared in Pravda, which spoke of "a radical change in the development of our agriculture from small and backward individual farming to large and advanced collective farming." At the end of December 1929 Stalin announced the end of NEP and the transition to a policy of “liquidation of the kulaks as a class.” Two interrelated violent processes took place in the village: the creation of collective farms and dispossession. The liquidation of kulak farms was aimed at providing collective farms with a material base. At the same time, the authorities did not give an exact definition of who is considered to be kulaks. Often, middle peasants and even poor people who were unwanted for some reason were considered kulaks. To assist local authorities, 25 thousand urban communists (twenty-five thousand people) were sent to the village. In many areas, especially in Ukraine, the Caucasus and Central Asia, the peasantry resisted mass dispossession. The extermination of livestock, the ruin of the village through continuous dispossession, and the complete disorganization of the work of collective farms led in 1932-1933. to unprecedented hunger. Despite the scale of the famine, 18 million centners of grain were exported abroad to obtain foreign currency for the needs of industrialization. March 2, 1930 Stalin's article "Dizziness from Success" was published in Pravda. He placed all the blame for the current situation on the executors, local workers, declaring that “collective farms cannot be established by force.” After this article, Stalin began to be perceived by the majority of peasants as a people's protector. The policy of complete collectivization led to catastrophic results: in 1929-1934. gross grain production decreased by 10%, the number of large cattle and horses for 1929-1932. decreased by one third, pigs - 2 times, sheep - 2.5 times. However, Stalin celebrated his victory: despite the reduction in grain production, government supplies doubled. Collectivization not only created the conditions for pumping funds from villages to cities for the needs of industrialization, but also fulfilled an important political and ideological task by destroying the last island of a market economy - privately owned peasant farming.
The completed civil war led to the final establishment of the party monopoly of the RCP(b) and the dominance of a single Marxist-Leninist ideology with its principles of class struggle. The dictatorship of the party was established, which led to the establishment of undemocratic orders in the country. The party in these years was a strictly centralized organization, in which much depended on its leader, who became Stalin, who was distinguished by despotism and the desire for absolute power. In the 20s the entire matter of appointing leading personnel in the country and placing them at various levels of the nomenklatura was concentrated in Stalin’s hands. An integral part of the Stalinist political regime of the 30s. Terror and repression appeared. An important goal was the desire to thicken the atmosphere of general distrust and suspicion in the country, to convince the masses of the need to establish complete, total control of the state and party over all aspects of public life. Only under these conditions was it possible that the dictatorship of the party and Stalin personally could develop and strengthen. At the XVII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1934, Stalin received the smallest number of votes in the elections to the Central Committee (the results were then falsified by the counting commission). Later, Stalin dealt with all his opponents, including 1108 people. of the 1966 delegates to the congress were also repressed. Stalin's repressions fell on foreign communists, social democrats, and representatives of other anti-fascist forces who sought political asylum in the USSR. Terror could not but affect all republics of the USSR. Party, Soviet, economic personnel, and representatives of the intelligentsia were repressed. Entire nations were declared guilty of treason.
Command-administrative management system- this is centralized government management, which forces all enterprises to fulfill planned directives (mandatory tasks) using orders and other non-economic methods.
Prerequisites for the formation of administrative command system
This form of state system initially affected only the economic sphere, but its effectiveness in the eyes of the Bolsheviks, over time, contributed to its introduction into the social structure of society.
The basis for the formation of the command system was the exceptional dominant role of the Communist Party, the power ambitions of the top of the CPSU (b) and complete absence resistance from opposition forces. Hiding behind the instructions of Lenin and the distorted dogmas of Marxism, the party leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) created an isolated state, which could only be called socialist in theory.
To control the population, a system of punitive bodies of the NKVD was introduced, whose representatives cleansed society of “enemies of socialism,” a category into which every third citizen fell.
The command-administrative system has created an economy whose main purpose is to maintain and maintain power structures. Any comparison with a market economy shows that this type of economy is absolutely uncompetitive
Main stages in the development of the Soviet command and administrative system
During the historically short period of the existence of the USSR, they tried various shapes organization of the state economy and even attempts were made to combine socialism with the market. Economic failures eventually forced the Soviet leadership in the mid-80s. begin a rather radical departure from orthodox Marxism as part of the policy of perestroika.
Therefore, the path that the Soviet economy took before the start of perestroika is instructive for economic theory experience 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.
On 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” (as market relations, instruments and mechanisms were usually called in Marxist theory - money, prices, credit, etc.). d.). In their place came relations of natural exchange between enterprises and free provision many goods and services to the population (food rations, free travel on public transport, etc.). Most banks and other financial institutions were closed. Agricultural products were forcibly confiscated from peasants, who received low-quality industrial goods from the city in exchange. Private trade, especially “speculation” (reselling goods for the purpose of generating income) was punished very harshly.
“War communism,” combined with the Civil War, resulted in an economic disaster that threatened Soviet power.
Under these conditions, on Lenin’s initiative, the “New Economic Policy” (NEP) was proclaimed in 1921, which became the beginning of the second stage in the development of the Soviet economy.
By introducing the NEP, the Soviet leadership did not abandon orthodox Marxist ideas, but postponed the implementation of socialist principles until a certain stabilization of the economy was achieved. Therefore, trade, small and medium-sized private production, hiring of workers, market pricing, exchanges, banks, foreign concessions and other market mechanisms and institutions were allowed. At the same time, the state retained the “commanding heights,” that is, complete control over heavy industry. The NEP really contributed to the revival of the economy, the development of industry (mainly light industry), the growth of agriculture and a slight rise in the living standards of the people.
A remarkable achievement of the economic leaders of those years was the stabilization of finances on the basis of monetary reform and the introduction into circulation of hard currency - the chervonets, which was quoted on foreign markets along with the currencies of leading Western countries.
However, the NEP did not last long - until the end of the 20s. 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 stage has begun- the period of Stalinist dictatorship, which lasted from the late 20s. until 1953, the Stalinist system in its most complete form embodied the essential features of socialism as a special economic model - total domination of the state and planning of all economic activities. 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 strong army. Therefore, during the Stalinist period, the basis of the Soviet economy became the powerful military industry. Agriculture was subjected to forced collectivization, that is, in fact, nationalization and transformation into part of the command-administrative economy.
Market relations, naturally, did not find a place in the Stalinist system. In particular, money did not perform the functions that are inherent in it in a market economy. The only exceptions were wages and the sphere of consumption - the purchase of goods and services by the population, but even here the ability of money to act as a means of circulation was limited due to the absence of many goods in open trade and the spread of all kinds of forms of non-market distribution of goods and services. In other spheres of the economy, money and related financial and pricing instruments (prices, credit, etc.) played an exclusively control and accounting role. They served to measure production when issuing plan targets and reporting according to the plan, to measure the total social product and other economic indicators, as well as for additional control over the movement of material resources.
Throughout the Stalinist period (naturally, with the exception of the war years), the Soviet economy maintained very high growth rates. Huge structural changes have occurred in the economy - many modern industries have been created practically from scratch. During these years, the savings rate, i.e. that share of national income that goes not for consumption, but for investment, officially amounted to 25-27% (and in fact even more) and was the highest in the world.
The rapid development of the economy was also ensured by the presence of practically inexhaustible reserves natural resources, the use of slave labor of millions of Gulag prisoners and the brutal exploitation of the urban and especially rural population. Modern researchers note that the main law of the Stalinist economy was to maximize the growth rate of heavy industry by maximizing the consumption of all types of resources: labor, capital investments, raw materials, fixed assets, land. The nature of the Stalinist model is extremely high resource intensity. Therefore, it can “work”, as a rule, only in large countries rich in raw materials, for example, in the USSR and China, and in other states it is usually supported by force from the outside.
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 fourth stage- a period of mature socialism and relative stability - which lasted until the mid-80s.
This period was characterized by the departure of the Soviet leadership from the most odious manifestations of Stalinism - mass repressions, brutal exploitation of the population, closeness from the outside world, etc. By the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s. even the core of the socialist economy - command and administrative control over production and distribution - began to weaken. But throughout the entire period, the Soviet economy retained the essential features established under Stalin.
From the mid-50s to the mid-60s, 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 50s and 60s. In the scientific press, a discussion began “on improving the methods of socialist planning,” at the center of which was the question of how to combine compliance with national interests with the initiative and relative independence of enterprises.
After the change of Soviet leadership in 1964, these discussions became the ideological basis for the economic reform that began in 1965 on the initiative of the new head of government A.N. Kosygina. 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 self-financing.
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. The enlarged nature of the planned targets was that, with the exception of the most important types of products, the targets were issued in value terms. This gave the company the opportunity to slightly vary product output within one product group, for example, to make a choice between the production of sports and recreational bicycles, depending on how easier it is to fulfill the bicycle production plan in terms of cost. One of the most important planned indicators was profit from product sales. An important role was played by the opportunity given to enterprises to retain part of their profits for bonuses to employees, as well as to independently sell above-plan products at increased prices.
The result of the policy of collectivization and industrialization of the economy was the formation of the administrative command apparatus of the Soviet state.
Prerequisites for the formation of an administrative-command system
This form of state system initially affected only the economic sphere, but its effectiveness in the eyes of the Bolsheviks, over time, contributed to its introduction into the social structure of society.
The basis for the formation of the command system was the exceptional dominant role of the Communist Party, the power ambitions of the top of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and the complete absence of resistance from opposition forces. Hiding behind the instructions of Lenin and the distorted dogmas of Marxism, the party leadership of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) created an isolated state, which could only be called socialist in theory.
To control the population, a system of punitive bodies of the NKVD was introduced, whose representatives cleansed society of “enemies of socialism,” a category into which every third citizen fell.
The administrative command system in action
Stalin's entourage consisted exclusively of proven people; “unreliable” elements had long been eliminated from government administration. The state apparatus, as well as Soviet society, were subordinate to the authority of the General Secretary, who was a kind of guarantor of the construction of a socialist society.
They trusted the leader and did not argue with his decisions. In turn, Stalin did not dare to openly illegal actions and covered all the crimes that he committed against the public and the state with a screen of very liberal, at first glance, normative legal acts.
The clearest example of this is the adoption of the USSR Constitution in 1936, in which the ordinary population was granted very broad rights and freedoms, but in fact the law consolidated the authority of Stalin and the limitlessness of his power.
To create a favorable mood among the masses, the Bolsheviks held festivals and holidays, at which propaganda agitation was always present. Piously believing in the “wise decisions of the party and Comrade Stalin,” the majority of the Soviet people did not notice the repressions by the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) and actively supported the party leadership.
Worker Policy
Industrialization, despite the lawless ways it was carried out, brought positive results for the country's economy. But the living and working conditions of enterprise workers were close to barracks conditions. In 1932, the Bolsheviks introduced a system of passports and work books.
This innovation greatly facilitated control over workers being late or violating labor discipline was considered sabotage and was punished by forced labor.
The command administrative system in its essence resembled serfdom, with the state itself acting as the landowner. The rationing system, which was in effect in the first half of the 30s, tied people to work in production, since this was the only way not to die of hunger.
After the victory of the October Revolution, the question arose in the Bolshevik Party about ways and methods of further development of the country. The socialist revolution could develop in a democratic or administrative-command way. This question - the question of development strategy - became the main one in the internal party struggle in the 20s. This struggle of ideas and views within the Bolshevik Party grew into a struggle for leadership and was reflected in the future fate of Soviet society. In the 30s in the country an administrative-command system was formed. She represented: political field– complete removal of the people from power and governance. The establishment of comprehensive totalitarian state power, the formation of bureaucratic centralized methods of managing society from the army to culture, etc., the curtailment of democracy, the Soviets as bodies of people's self-government become simply a fiction. Under the slogan of class struggle, the fight against dissent is being waged. A climate of fear and intimidation was created in the country, and constant denunciations and repression were practiced. About 12 million people were imprisoned in concentration camps annually, i.e. a fifth of all those employed at that time in the branches of material production. Entire peoples were declared enemies, expelled from their territories and resettled. Of the “punished peoples,” the Poles were the first to be exiled. Back in the mid-20s, Polish national areas in Belarus were liquidated, and in 1936 Poles were resettled from Ukraine to Kazakhstan. In 1937, 190 thousand Koreans and 8 thousand Chinese were taken from Buryatia, Khabarovsk, Primorsky territories, and Chita region to Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Before the war, Finns were evicted from Karelia and the Leningrad region. From the Volga region, Moscow, Voronezh, Tambov and others, 1 million Soviet Germans were evicted to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. In 1941, the peoples of the Baltic states were evicted. In 1944, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Kalmyks, Karachais, a total of about 650 thousand people, etc., were evicted from Crimea and the North Caucasus. This process continued after the war. The goal of Stalin's movements was to break society by changing the geography of people's residence, their status, occupations, and also to instill fear.
In foreign policy totalitarianism manifested itself in imposing their point of view on other peoples.
In economics- the multi-structure system was eliminated and the so-called unified public ownership of the means of production was established. In that situation, when the people were removed from power, from disposing of this property, this property became the property of the party-state bureaucracy, but not the people. Non-economic administrative-command methods of management were formed. Economic policy was based on stimulating the economy, on horse racing, the economy developed at the expense of the people. There was strict centralized planning of the entire economy. Accelerated industrialization was carried out at the expense of the peasantry. Forced collectivization was carried out in agriculture.
In the social sphere– massive repressions were carried out against people, the standard of living of the Soviet people was low. Real incomes declined in the first 10 years of industrialization, and the quality of life deteriorated, especially in the countryside. The rapid growth of monetary incomes, caused by the exorbitant issue of money, was offset by an even faster rise in prices; In cities and on construction sites, a card supply system spread.
In the village, where there was no rationing, every bad harvest year caused terrible famine, mortality increased, and natural population growth slowed down. The Soviet Union became a country with a shrinking population.
In ideology– a cult of the leader, a regime of personal power was formed, a class approach to ideology, culture, and the suppression of free personality were in effect.
The long years of existence of such a system created a type of social psychology adequate to this system, a specific system life values and priorities. Shifts in mass consciousness are, according to some historians, the most difficult legacy of the administrative-command system to overcome.
Could a different society be built? There are 2 points of view on this problem. Some historians say that if not for Stalin, such a system would not have existed. The second point of view is that there could not be another society in the Soviet country, that the administrative-command system most fully corresponded to the level of development of the country, to the type of political thinking that is called barracks-communist, authoritarian. The lecture will discuss this issue in detail.
It is necessary to highlight objective conditions, which gave rise to the administrative-command system. There was a hostile external environment. The Soviet country had to build socialism alone; there was no experience in carrying out socialist transformations. The country was economically backward and experienced major political upheavals - revolution, civil war, which undoubtedly affected society. The working class, which was supposed to become the support of the new government, was small; the peasant population predominated. The country needed to quickly reach the level of advanced developed countries.
But the most important factor there was a lack of strong democratic traditions in Russia. Under tsarism, the population could not develop democratic skills. People had no idea about democracy, the value of democracy, the need for democracy. Society was at a breaking point, it was not civilized enough, i.e. was culturally and socially backward. Old traditions have collapsed, and new ones have not yet been formed. All this predetermined the enormous role of the state, the need to concentrate all power in the hands of the state.
These objective conditions could be changed or mitigated subjective factor– the party, its leaders. In the Bolshevik Party, as a result of the struggle for power, the best cadres were destroyed. In the 1920s, there was a sharp increase in the number of party members due to the influx of new members with minimal political experience and theoretical knowledge. It was they who supported Stalin and his version of socialism. These ideas about socialism most fully corresponded to the ideas of the masses. It was a simplified version, fast and understandable.
It is this version of socialism – the administrative-command system – that was created in the Soviet country. When assessing this society, it is necessary to keep in mind that there is a point of view: it was the administrative-command system that ensured the progress of the USSR, the country became industrial, and a developed scientific and technical potential was formed. Another point of view is that this system slowed down the progress of the country, it came at a high cost to society, at the cost of a huge number of lost human lives and broken destinies, and the country’s problems could have been solved differently.
CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS
April 7, 1930–Decree on the expansion of the system of labor camps transferred to the Main Directorate of Camps (GULAG) within the OGPU.
January 12, 1933–Decision of the Central Committee to hold a section of the party (as a result, its number is reduced by more than 1 million people).
January 26-February 10, 1934-XVII Party Congress. During the secret vote, a significant portion of the delegates voted against Stalin for the new composition of the Central Committee.
January 1936-The beginning of a new purge in the party, accompanied by mass arrests.
August 19-24, 1936– an open political trial of prominent party figures G.E. Zinoviev, L.B. Kamenev and others, which ended with the execution of all the defendants.
October 1936–Cleaning in the NKVD apparatus.
May-June 1937–Purge of army command staff and republican party leadership.
1937-1938– Mass repressions against the command staff of the USSR Armed Forces. More than 40 thousand commanders were repressed. Two thirds of the senior command was destroyed.
DICTIONARY OF PERSONALIES
Beria Lavrenty Pavlovich (1899-1953)– former People's Commissar (Minister) of Internal Affairs of the USSR, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, member of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee. In July 1953, the Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee for criminal, anti-party and anti-state actions removed him from the Central Committee and expelled him from the party. Shot. Bears direct responsibility for the mass repressions of the late 30s - early 50s.
Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich (1895-1940)- Soviet party statesman. Since 1935 - Chairman of the Party Control Committee under the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and at the same time Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. In 1936-1938. - People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the USSR. General Commissioner of State Security (1937), one of the main perpetrators of repression (“Yezhovshchina”). In 1939 he was arrested and executed.
Stalin (Dzhugashvili) Joseph Vissarionovich (pseudonym - Koba) (1878-1953)- Soviet politician and statesman. In the Social Democratic movement since 1898. After 1903 he joined the Bolsheviks. In 1917-1922. - People's Commissar for Nationalities, at the same time in 1919-1922. - People's Commissar state control, Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, since 1918 - member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic. In 1922-1953. General Secretary of the Party Central Committee. In the 1920s during the struggle for leadership in the party and state, he led the party and established a totalitarian regime in the country. At the 20th Party Congress (1956), Stalin's personality cult was exposed.
DICTIONARY OF TERMS AND CONCEPTS
GULAG– Main Directorate of Camps of the NKVD (MVD) of the USSR. Used to refer to the system of concentration camps that existed under Stalin.
Dictatorship (lat.- unlimited power)- all-encompassing political, economic, ideological power exercised certain group people led by their leader. It is characterized by the absence of separation of powers, the suppression of democracy and the rule of law, the introduction of terror, and the establishment of an authoritarian regime of personal power.
Industrialization– transition from manual labor to machine labor in all sectors of the economy. The process of creating large-scale machine production in industry and other sectors of the economy. In the USSR it was carried out from the late 20s. based on the priority of heavy industry in order to overcome the gap with the West, create the material and technical base of socialism, and strengthen defense capabilities. Unlike other countries of the world, industrialization in the USSR began with heavy industry and was carried out by limiting the consumption of the entire population, expropriating the remaining funds of private city owners and robbing the peasantry.
Collectivization– the policy of forced transformation of agriculture in the late 20s - 30s. on the basis of “dekulakization” and the establishment of collective forms of farming (collective farms) with the socialization of a significant part of peasant property. The masses of wealthy peasants (kulaks), middle peasants and part of the poor (“sub-kulaks”) were subjected to repression. By decree of the President of the USSR of August 13, 1990, the repressions carried out during the collectivization period were declared illegal.
Cult of personality- admiration for someone, veneration, exaltation. In the USSR, the period from 1929 to 1953. defined as the personality cult of J.V. Stalin. A dictatorial regime was established, democracy was eliminated, and during his lifetime Stalin was credited with a decisive influence on the course of historical development.
"New Opposition"- a group in the CPSU (b), formed in 1925 by G. E. Zinoviev and L. B. Kamenev. She made a proposal at the 15th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) to remove I.V. Stalin from the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee and to focus the national economy on agricultural exports and industrial imports. The congress condemned this speech. Later, almost all members of the group were repressed.
Repression (lat.– suppression)- a punitive measure, punishment applied by punitive authorities.
Totalitarianism (lat.- whole, complete) - state power exercising complete (total) control over all aspects of society under an authoritarian leadership regime.
The socialist doctrine found the most consistent and stable 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 numerous authoritarian countries modern world, where state control is limited to the political sphere /6, p.265/.
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, remuneration of workers, sales conditions and all other economic criteria, as a rule, did not influence the decisions of enterprise directors and other economic 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. /18, p.211/.
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 large enterprises- to save unit costs. It all turned out amazing high degree 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 planned tasks 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 /20, p.31/.
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 your own plot of land, but this was officially viewed as temporary concessions and really 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.
In addition, the socialist economy cannot be reduced to the Soviet system. National economy socialist countries of Eastern and Central Europe differed from the Soviet one, in particular, in the smaller share of giant enterprises, the higher development of the consumer sector and the presence of private entrepreneurship in small-scale production, the service sector and agriculture. For example, in Poland Agriculture was not subject to forced collectivization at all and remained private. But the furthest away from the Soviet model was Yugoslavia, where an attempt was made to build “self-governing socialism.” In the Yugoslav system, enterprises were, at least formally, owned not by the state, but by labor collectives. This determined greater flexibility, independence of enterprises and even the presence of elements of competition, but the Yugoslav socialist model ultimately turned out to be unviable /15, p.245/.
By the mid-1980s, the Soviet economy was faced with the complete exhaustion of opportunities to increase production through the additional involvement of natural and labor resources, as well as with a drop in income from energy exports. Particularly alarming for the Soviet leadership was the growing lag behind the West in the scientific, technical and military fields. The USSR lost its position as the second economic power in the world, giving way to Japan. Under these conditions, the need for deep reforms in the USSR became obvious to everyone.