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The article examines trade and food situation in Kazan during the first five-year plan based on the analysis of written and visual sources created by American economist Frank Whitson Fetter (1899–1991) during his six-week visit in 1930. As a professional economist, Fetter used a wide variety of tools to study the economic situation in the Soviet Union: participant observation, interviews, photography, and filming. He visited Kazan cooperatives and markets daily and recorded field data in his notebooks. Based on them, Fetter made detailed records in his journal. Currently, a significant part of the collected materials, including more than 300 photographs, is kept at David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University (USA). Particular attention in Fetter’s materials is paid to the Kazan trade situation (the behavior of sellers and buyers, queues, range of goods, price dynamics, interruptions in government supply, sanitary condition of private markets and establishments of the state cooperative trading network) and consumers’ status (their salaries, rationing system, food, availability and quality of clothing and footwear). Fetter witnessed the growing shortage of goods and the growing discontent of Kazan citizens during a radical change in the economic system of the USSR. The article reveals his view of the situation and provides photographs taken by him.

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This study explores the history of the emergence of the gold mining sector in the mining industry of Yakutia during the early stages of the Soviet-style economy. Despite the longstanding presence of artisanal gold mining in Yakutia, the industrial development of gold in the republic was not considered until the mid1922. The establishment of the Yakut ASSR played a crucial role in shaping the real prospects for gold mining development. The management structure, including the People’s Commissariat of Trade and Industry under the republican government with industrial and mining departments, successfully coordinated activities such as organizing expeditions to survey deposits, developing work plans, recruiting personnel, and addressing supply issues in mining areas. It is concluded that through the coordinated efforts of the Yakut ASSR government, the state trust “Aldanzoloto” of local significance was established within a short period, showcasing the competence of the autonomous republic in organizing the creation of the foundations of mining production. Valuable experience accumulated over three years laid the groundwork for the seamless integration of Yakutia’s gold mining industry into the unified economic system of the USSR.

The Sources and Mechanisms of Financing the Social Infrastructure of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant in the 1950s-1980s. This study examines the sources and mechanisms of financing the social infrastructure of the Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant, a large Soviet industrial enterprise, during the period of 1950s-1980s. The research is based on archival documents from the plant and its trade union organization, which are stored in the United State Archive of the Chelyabinsk Region. It was found that the plant had a significant amount of assets, including housing and a network of social, cultural, and sports facilities. Financing the social infra-structure of Soviet enterprises was a complex system that involved multiple independent sources. The plant made direct payments from its economic stimulation funds, covered the maintenance costs of various facilities transferred to the trade union organization, and covered losses from the housing and communal services system. In addition, funding for these facilities also came from the state budget, social insurance budget, trade union organization budget, targeted subsidies from the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions, revenues from self-supporting cultural and sports institutions, and others. The Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant was required to allocate up to 10 % of its profits towards maintaining its social infra-structure, while other sources of funding con-tributed comparable amounts.

The information about the International Scientific Conference “The Phenomenon of the Multinational Soviet Union: History, heritage and social memory” held on October 14–15, 2022 is presented. The participants discussed a wide range of theoretical and methodological, historical, economic, philosophical, legal, cultural, linguistic problems of education, formation, disintegration of a single state and its consequences. The presented reports reflectthe unique historical experience of the formation and functioning of the Soviet Union as a state-civilization, which requires further reflection and study.

The Collapse of the Planned Economy – and Other Widespread Misconceptions of the Transitions in Russia and Eastern Europe According to the prevailing view, the Soviet planned economy collapsed around 1990; it was a failure, because a planned economy cannot work. Comparing this common view, as it appears in numerous quotations from special and general sources, with basic empirical evidence reveals deep discrepancies. This also applies to other common conceptions regarding the transition in Russia and Eastern Europe e.g. environmental problems, agricultural crisis, poverty and inequality. The command economies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union did not collapse; they were dismantled, and until then they functioned and delivered growth rates comparable to those of western countries. The transition after 1989 was driven by marketliberalistic enthusiasm as a short cut to imitation of western prosperity and entailed a refusal of economic planning in the East and in the West. A more realistic evaluation of the planned economy is important for how we politically and economically address our two great challenges, the global environment, and the global distribution.

Gorbachev's 1997 television ad for Pizza Hut, which opened its first restaurants in the Soviet Union in 1990 through a joint venture between parent company PepsiCo, Inc. and the Moscow city soviet, is an important part of his popular image in the West, reflecting the role that capitalist consumerism is often presumed to have played in the Soviet system's collapse. Yet, as this article shows, such joint ventures were supposed to increase the Soviet Union's role not as a consumer, but as a producer, by showcasing the benefits of international economic cooperation with it. Joint ventures won Gorbachev powerful allies, including the CEO of Pepsi, Donald H. Kendall, who advocated for removing American trade restrictions that stood in the way of the Soviet Union assuming a larger function in world trade. As Gorbachev's economic reforms began to fail, however, the long line in front of Pizza Hut also came to symbolize communism's failure to deliver prosperity. Gorbachev used the difficulties of foreign companies like Pizza Hut as proof of why the Soviet Union should be given Western aid, to no avail. Ultimately, the policy of joint ventures was a failure and Pizza Hut's presence in the post-Soviet Russian market was short lived: it left during the 1998 ruble crisis only to return under Putin in the early 2000s, only to leave once again after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the difficulties of the Soviet-party leadership in the Chechen Autonomous Region in implementing the first five-year plans. The study of this problem is caused by the fact that modern Russia is experiencing a new round of modernization processes, and today the experience of previous generations is important so as not to repeat their mistakes. The subject of this study is of continuous interest among scientists who consider the present as a direct continuation of the past. Given the fact that the North Caucasus has a special place in the recent history of Russia in the last two decades, therefore, a deep study of the trends and contradictions of socio-economic development in Chechnya in the 1928–1937 allows identifying the historical origins and causes of modern problems in this region, which are a direct consequence of the accumulated contradictions in historical development. The policy of industrialization by the Soviet leadership was considered as a decisive factor in creating the material and technical base of socialism and ensuring the country’s defense potential. The industrial jump was caused primarily by the foreign policy aspect, so the leadership emphasized that to delay the pace means to lag behind. Industrialization for the Chechen Autonomous Region meant the creation of industrial production, because here it was almost absent, the main population was employed in agriculture. The city of Grozny with its factories was an independent region. In 1928, the Soviet leadership began to implement the directives of the first congress. The directives of the XV Party Congress emphasized the need for special attention to the issues of economic recovery and culture of backward national outskirts, which was the Chechen Autonomous Region by the beginning of the first five-year plans.

According to the prevailing view, the Soviet planned economy collapsed around 1990; it was a failure, because a planned economy cannot work. Comparing this common view, as it appears in numerous quotations from special and general sources, with basic empirical evidence reveals deep discrepancies. This also applies to other common conceptions regarding the transition in Russia and Eastern Europe e.g. environmental problems, agricultural crisis, poverty and inequality. The command economies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union did not collapse; they were dismantled, and until then they functioned and delivered growth rates comparable to those of western countries. The transition after 1989 was driven by marketliberalistic enthusiasm as a short cut to imitation of western prosperity and entailed a refusal of economic planning in the East and in the West. A more realistic evaluation of the planned economy is important for how we politically and economically address our two great challenges, the global environment, and the global distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on documents from former Soviet archives and specialized literature published by Russian researchers, this article traces the efforts made by Mikhail Gorbachev to restore the Soviet economy by imposing a series of reforms. In the first years after acceding to power, the reforms were not significantly different from those attempted by his predecessors. The major differences would appear later, when, towards the end of the 1980s, under the pressure of financial crisis, Gorbachev sought to reach an agreement with the US regarding the nuclear arsenal. In parallel, the economic reforms moved away from centralized planning and explored the principles of the free market. In this context, M.S. Gorbachev and his team turned their attention to the massive imbalances concerning military spending, which alleviation conditioned the success of perestroika. Therefore, the leaders in Kremlin resorted to radical measures, such as the asymmetric reduction of military contingents. What they did not understand was that the Soviet economic system could not be reformed. It had to be completely changed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction. The article reveals motives of attracting foreign entrepreneurs to Soviet economy, difficulties with hiring local labor force in concessions, contradictions and solutions between Soviet organizations and concessioners. Relations between foreign entrepreneurs and Soviet government agencies as well as Soviet engineers and workers were regulated by the law. Methods and materials. The author uses the comparative historical method in the work, which makes it possible to compare the number of foreign and domestic labor in concession enterprises, to show the need of attracting foreign specialists to concession and state enterprises, to reveal the cooperation of foreign entrepreneurs with the Soviet state. Sources from The State Archive of the Russian Federation, The Russian State Archive of Economics and The Russian State Archive of Social and Political History were identified for the study. Regulatory acts of state significance (decrees, concession agreements) reflecting the policy of the state in relation to the economic activity of private capitalists; records management documentation (circulars, official correspondence, reporting documentation) covering the real state of affairs at concession enterprises allow to show the peculiarities of relations between Soviet state institutions and foreign entrepreneurs. Analysis. Sometimes concessioners did not meet the governmental requirements in labor force attraction, which caused mutual claims. The author also analyses hiring foreign professionals in Soviet state enterprises because of their important contribution to the Soviet economy recovery and development. Foreign professionals were involved in the production process organization and local labor force education at Kuznetskiy coalfield minery, Stalingrad tractor factory and other state enterprises. Concessions were equipped with brand-new techniques and technologies and were also involved in the local labor force education. Results. The article analyzes the reasons of early cancellation of contracts by foreign professionals and workers and their mass departure from the USSR in the 1930s – 1940s. For example, prosecution and custody for industrial accidents were among of such reasons. Despite this, new foreign engineers were forbidden to enter Sakhalin island by Soviet authorities. The article focuses on the correlation between the deterioration of the international situation from the middle 1930s and existence of Japanese concessions in the USSR until the middle 1940s.The author pays a lot of attention to investigate the issue of obeying to the Soviet labor law by concessioners using unpublished archived documents.

The relationship between small business and poverty is inadequately substantiated, despite being an important economic and social nexus. We test the direct impact of small business on poverty, and of poverty on small business. Using panel data across 115 post-Soviet cities in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, we examine early (1995–2002) and later (2003–08) transition periods. The findings show small business can reduce urban poverty during transition, and that higher poverty in cities impedes small business. We also find that changes in regional institutional context, knowledge and locational characteristics can facilitate or hamper both small business and poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A literary criticism of the book "Red Plenty" by Francis Spufford is presented. It outlines the characters and examines the planned economy in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev era, the book, published in 2010, frames historical events through fictional portrayals of real people and realistic depictions of fictitious characters, defying classification even by its author . It alternates between broad historical overviews and short fictional narratives.

"Civilization" is surely among those concepts that are the most widely used in world political discourse but taken least seriously by contemporary social science. We argue for jettisoning this concept's Huntingtonian baggage, which has led scholarship into a dead end, and developing a new body of theory on a different foundation, one grounded strongly in recent nonprimordial theories of identity and micro-level research into how ordinary people actually understand the civilizational appeals made by their elites. In what we believe to be the first systematic survey-based study of individual-level civilizational identification, we establish proof-of-concept by asking a question: What influences individuals' primary identification of their own country with particular civilizational alternatives offered up by their elites? Pooling survey data gathered in Russia from 2013–2014, we confirm that civilizational identity reflects the influence of situational considerations and social construction processes. Whether individuals see Russia as part of purported "European," "Eurasian," or "Asian" civilizations depends heavily on gendered and nongendered socialization during the USSR period and factors as contingent as perceived economic performance. Results also confirm our expectation that Huntingtonian concepts fit poorly with real-world patterns of civilizational identification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Soviet Union after the Second World War can serve as a prime example of how victory 'locks in' a political system. In a mirror image of Wolfgang Schivelbusch's argument of how 'cultures of defeat' encourage social and political innovation, the Soviet 'culture of victory' reaffirmed a dictatorial system of government and a command economy based on collectivized agriculture and centrally planned industry. At the same time, however, the war also engendered changes, which played themselves out somewhat subterraneously at first. They include a complex system of veterans' privileges, a growing welfare state, a more routinized administration, and an economy where individual and family farming played a major role in the provisioning not only of the rural, but also of the urban population. Moreover, counter-narratives and counter-memories of this war could never be completely silenced by the bombastic war cult and would break forth at the end of the Soviet century. Finally, the economic and human costs of this victory were such that they formed a constant dark underbelly to the celebration of the 'Great Victory'. This article surveys these contradictory legacies of the war and the ways in which they helped shape late Soviet society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the origin and development of Soviet dependence on oil and gas. We show that the country's dependence on oil (and gas) exports is largely explained by its relatively low domestic consumption compared to more economically developed countries and conclude that the institutions that took shape within the Soviet planned economy were poorly adapted for neutralizing the negative consequences of its oil and gas dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article briefly analyzes the historiography of use of the war spoils by the Soviet Union history during the Great Patriotic War. It is noted that, despite the great interest of historians, publicists and journalists, many aspects of the problem are still almost unknown. Among the unstudied side of the history of trophies – the activities of the State Defense Committee on organizing the collection of war trophies, sorting and further transmission to the troops or structures serving the needs of the front. Scientific novelty of article consists in the introduction of the information of documents stored in the Russian state archive of sociopolitical history into scientific circulation. For the first time the authors analyze the content of the decisions and orders of the State Defense Committee on the organization of work of various Soviet and military authorities on the use of trophies in the interests of the national economy. The article traces the dynamics of the use of trophies depending on the situation at the front. It is noted that for the first time the State Defense Committee decided to take control under the use of trophies in January 1942. Since that time, the State Defense Committee supervised the collection and distribution of trophies until the end of the Great Patriotic war, and also after its completion. In this article the activities of the State Defense Committee is considered in the period from January 1942 through May 1945. Collection of trophies was carried out not only in the USSR but also on the territories of Germany, Austria, Finland, Poland, Hungary and Romania. The authors conclude that trophies played a significant role in the development of the Soviet economy during the Great Patriotic war.

The article examines the Soviet Union military mobilization system during World War II. Topics discussed include implementation of wartime laws in the realm of labor, the centralized distribution of the labor force as a characteristics of the Soviet economy and the system of coerced labor during the Gulag economy.

This essay focuses on the career of N. V. Solov'ev, a prominent Stalin-era official and little-known victim of the 1949 Leningrad Affair. When treated as a case study, Solov'ev's life and times illustrate a variety of important things about Stalinism as a whole. Most obviously, Solov'ev's rapid ascent into the party nomenklatura during the interwar years exemplifies the dramatic trajectory that many in party service enjoyed during this period. Once in office, Solov'ev promptly embraced the Stalinist political culture that had promoted him there, at times even emulating the general secretary himself. Finally, Solov'ev's postwar disgrace and ruin reveal much about the broader functioning of this political system, particularly in regard to Joseph Stalin's concerns about the USSR's emergent party elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay reviews the characteristic features of the Soviet 'shadow economy' by examining the activities of a major construction enterprise headed by N. M. Pavlenko from 1948 to 1952. This was the largest currently known private illegal enterprise of the Stalinist period. Pavlenko's organisation built dozens of roads and railways under contract to state entities. Based on newly accessible archival documents, the methods of Pavlenko's organisational activity and the reasons for its lengthy existence are considered. The author argues that, regardless of its extraordinary scale, Pavlenko's enterprise was in fact typical of the Stalinist 'shadow economy', and that future archival research would probably reveal that this shadow economy was far more significant than has been understood to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay attempts to understand the history and politics of Soviet grain and demographic statistics, and to show how they were used by the government. It covers the period from Lenin until Stalin's death. Distortions arose because of over-ambitious planning. Attempts to correct these distortions in 1932 failed because of the cover-up of the famine. Also the results of the census of 1937 were rejected, but the repeat census of 1939 did provide more realistic indicators. For grain, distortions remained to the end of the Stalin period and even increased. The essay argues that the basic statistics available in the archives are reliable and that distortions arose in the reworking of these statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Vladimir Lenin found it necessary to depend upon and support technical and managerial specialists who had been trained in pre-revolutionary educational institutions, the Bolsheviks were never comfortable with this dependency. Under Iosif Stalin, the specialists were vilified, persecuted, marginalized, and eventually replaced by highly specialized technical personnel trained in Soviet educational institutions. This article examines the attitudes toward specialists held by leading members of the Workers' Opposition, a group of communist trade union leaders who promoted the economic management role of workers through their trade unions. In Western secondary literature, the stance of the Workers' Opposition toward specialists is sometimes misunderstood or oversimplified. In correcting such errors, I will show that Stalin's motivations for repression directed against engineers and technicians during the First Five-Year Plan should be sought elsewhere than in the attempt to expand the role and prominence of workers in the party bureaucracy and industrial administration of the new Soviet state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a Western response to Akmal Gafurov's article "From Feudal to Industrial Economies: Lessons From the Soviets and Chinese," where economic development in Russia is viewed through the lens of his paradigm of administrative (A), economic (E), and moral (M) motives for production. The A-, E-, and M-motives are considered as social motives related to three social spheres: governance, economy, and culture respectively. An individual or instinctual (I) motive is introduced as an additional motive that should be considered by political economists to help understand the distinction between foraging and productive behavior. Anderson then provides a brief interpretation of economic development in the Soviet Union, China, oil-rich countries, and the West to show the value of Gaforov's approach to political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hie article discusses Soviet record production and export strategies to the West in the 1950s as part of the cultural Cold War. While the treaty framework for cultural exchange between the Soviet Union and Western States enabled Soviet musicians to perform for Western audiences and thus increased the demand for Russian and Soviet music on the global market, the Soviet economy was neither able to provide records of a sufficient quality for foreign trade nor to satisfy national demand fueled by the regime's shift towards consumerism after Stalin's death. The dependency on Western companies as transmitters of Russian and Soviet music became the subject of various discussions between the Central Committee, the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Foreign Trade. By analysing these discussions the article reveals changing attitudes within top state and party structures towards the necessity of technical modernization and the participation of the Soviet Union in the global music market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1964, when CIA officials held the agency's first news conference since its founding, Director John McCone hoped for a public relations triumph. Instead, the event backfired as the news media and others roundly rejected a public role for the secretive agency. While the CIA boasted a public affairs office soon after its founding in 1947, that office was charged with providing friendly reporters with unattributed background information. The goal of McCone's decision to hold a news conference was to feature the agency's "analytical brains" in part to distract the public from the CIA's other, more problematic mission, covert operations. Unlike the FBI, which thrived in the realm of public relations around its domestic criminal justice activities, the CIA had no non-secret mission to promote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chris Miller's book is a historian's account of Mikhail Gorbachev's efforts to save the Soviet economy. Miller focuses on the question of why Gorbachev did not follow Deng Xiaoping and did not manage to reform the economy. Miller argues that it was not for the lack of understanding (Gorbachev did invest in learning China's approach to reform and did understand it well), nor for the lack of trying. In fact, Gorbachev did try to implement Deng's agricultural and industrial enterprise reforms. However, Gorbachev's reforms were blocked by powerful vested interests. An inability to tackle the agricultural and industrial lobbies eventually resulted in the bankruptcy and collapse of the Soviet Union. While I generally agree with the political economy argument, I discuss a number of alternative explanations. I also discuss sources of Gorbachev's weak state capacity and offer an evaluation of Gorbachev's and post-Gorbachev reform efforts and mistakes based on the political economy research carried out in the last twenty-five years. (JEL D72, O57, P21, P23, P24, P26) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American continuous wide strip rolling mill halved the cost, improved the quality and markedly increased the size of steel sheets after 1926. These mills diffused rapidly in the USA to supply a growing market for autobodies, canstock and consumer goods. European steelmakers adopted this radical, large scale technology during the late 1930's. Pre-war adopters in Europe briefly interpreted strip mill technology to meet political priorities, market circumstances and local technical preferences. The UK steel industry bought standard mill designs directly from two US suppliers. Soviet and German adoption was shaped by political regimes of the time. The German mill was the product of local innovation and espionage. In France, Renault developed small scale technology. Marshall Aid made post-war adopters conform to US technological norms, with the Cold War influencing the location of strip mills in Europe after 1948. The wide strip mill contributed to the Americanisation of European industry after World War II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the effect of prospective secessions on economic integration and growth by examining the break‐up of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Firstly, I show theoretically how regional elites had an incentive to restrict domestic trade once secession from the Union became possible. Secondly, I show empirically that the increased likelihood of secessions by the Union's member republics strongly cut domestic trade. Thirdly, I show how this explains the severity of the Soviet output fall. These patterns persist once I instrument for prospective secessions with nationalist agendas that are exogenous to trade or growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the economic and political conditions in the Soviet Union. Signs of economic, social and moral crisis; Manifestation of ethnic-religious tension; Political alienation; Developments in the Soviet Union in 1985; Annual economic growth rate; Status of marriage and divorce; Soviet alcohol consumption; Campaign against alcohol abuse; Restrictions on literary and artistic expressions. INSETS: Alcohol, work, and the war between men and women: excerpts...;Yevgeny Yevtushenko on writing, censorship, and life in the....