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there is no agreement among analysts on when the soviet economic
system showed the first signs of stagnation and decay. some believe that the
origins of its general crisis go as far back as the mid-1950s; others think that
it entered the crisis stage in the late 1970s, still others, in the 1980s. one
thing is certain: in the final two decades of the soviet union抯 existence,
搒tate socialism?lost its earlier dynamism and vitality and became mired in a
drawn-out stagnation. |
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the protracted and creeping nature of the
soviet economic crisis may be explained by the country抯 huge
dimensions: its abundant natural resources could be thrown
indefinitely into the furnace of the wasteful command economy to
indefinitely into the furnace of the wasteful command economy to
keep it going. moreover, there were enough resources to enable the
state to provide a system of social guarantees, including full
employment, housing provision, free health care and education, and
old-age pensions. the system of social protection, in combination
with police control and ideological indoctrination, helped the
regime to forestall for some time any serious outbursts of popular
discontent.
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however, when the economy showed the first symptoms of decay, the
soviet system began to lose the very rationale it was based on.
economic growth, as the necessary condition for the creation of the
material base of the future communist society, was critical for
justifying the system. as long as the economy delivered high growth
rates, it commanded loyalty. but the declining economic performance
corroded peoples?belief in the ability of the system to create the
base for a society of material plenty. the inability to reverse this
base for a society of material plenty. the inability to reverse this
decline ultimately destroyed the system抯 legitimacy.
the
stalinist economic policies favored extensive growth, that is,
growth by increasing inputs of labor, raw materials, and investment
capital into building ever more factories and plants. with a large
pool of workers, seemingly endless supplies of oil, gas, coal and
other raw materials, ample land for cultivation, and capital
squeezed from the rural sector through collectivization, soviet
planners during the 1930s and 1940s treated inputs as virtually
inexhaustible. however, in the late 1950s and 1960s the ussr no
longer enjoyed excess labor, land, or capital resources waiting to
be exploited. new gains in production had to be achieved through
intensive growth, that is, by the more efficient use of existing
resources. economic growth now depended on increases in labor
productivity, automation, mechanization, and the application of new
technologies.
all this put pressures on khrushchev抯 and consecutive soviet
governments to shift away from the stalinist model of extensive
growth. after stalin抯 death and until the ussr抯 collapse the
soviet leadership for over thirty years was engaged in an almost
continuous process of reforming the stalinist system of socialist
central planning. the objective of the reform programs of all soviet
leaders from khrushchev to gorbachev was to make the economy more
efficient and receptive to technological innovation and more
responsive to consumer wants, while retaining its socialist
character. all the reform programs moved in the direction of
administrative decentralization. the reforms made by khrushchev and
brezhnev came to naught, because they left the essential features of
the stalinist economic system in place. only under gorbachev did the
reforms make some timid steps toward privatization and marketization
of the economy.
