3 - Interventions in industry: case studies

Summary

This chapter examines three areas of routine industrial activity where party organs showed a high level of involvement – the problem areas of supply procurement, quality control and conservation. Taken together, these three areas accounted for the vast bulk of routine party interventions in industrial decision-making.

All three types of activity were interrelated in that they were all responses to the entrenched tendency of the planned economy to run on the basis of the maximum achievement of quantitative plan targets. The tension which planners imposed on factories meant that the slightest perturbation in performance could cause breakdowns in the chain of supplies, and the pressure to achieve output targets meant that suppliers cut corners on quality and paid scant regard to the question of conservation.

From the 1960s onwards repeated efforts were made to expand the set of plan indicators governing managerial behaviour. These attempts proved unsuccessful, and planning by volume of production remained the standard procedure for Soviet industry. Deteriorating economic performance in the late 1970s left planners with even less room for manoeuvre. Party organs were encouraged to step into these areas of supplies and quality control, to try to break through the bureaucratic inertia of planners and managers. These political interventions into the routine functioning of Soviet industry produced some positive results at the margin, but did nothing to correct the structural flaws of the Soviet economy.