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Political Implications of Recent Soviet Economic Reorganizations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

William B. Ballis
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Extract

Current literature on recent Soviet industrial and agricultural reorganizations emphasizes the economic rather than the political significance of the reforms. Because economists have written on these developments more than political scientists, the importance of politics and the political meaning of these changes have not been adequately recognized. This article does not purport to minimize the economic significance of these reforms; it will examine some of the political factors which hitherto have been overlooked or de-emphasized.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , April 1961 , pp. 153 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1961

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References

* Revised version of a paper delivered to the Conference on Soviet and Communist Studies of the American Political Science Association, New York City, September 1960.

1 See Davies, R. W., “The Decentralization of Industry,” Soviet Studies, IX (04, 1958), 354–67Google Scholar; Granick, David, “Organization Model of Soviet Industrial Planning,” Journal of Political Economy, LXVII (04, 1959), 109–130CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoeffding, Oleg, “Soviet Industrial Reorganization of 1957,” American Economic Review, XLIX (05, 1959), 50–83Google Scholar; Laskovsky, Nicholas, “Reflections on Soviet Industrial Reorganization,” American Slavic and East European Review, XVII (02, 1958), 47–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paul E. Lydolph, “The Soviet Reorganization of Industry,” Ibid., XVII (October, 1958), 292–301; Alec Nove, “The Politics of Economic Rationality,” Social Research, XXV (Summer, 1958), 127–144.

2 See Volin, Lazar, “Reforms in Agriculture,” Problems of Communism, VIII (1959, No. 1), 35–42Google Scholar.

3 Pravda, Feb. 9, 1955.

4 Lowenthal, Richard, “The Permanent Revolution on Again,” Problems of Communism, VI (1957, No. 5), 2Google Scholar.

8 Alec Nove, “The Soviet Industrial Reorganization,” Ibid., VI (1957, No. 6), 24.

6 Lowenthal, , op. cit., 4Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., 6.

8 Pravda, Feb. 4, 1959. For the political background of the controversy, see Fainsod, Merle. “What Happened to ‘Collective leadership’,” Problems of Communism, VII (1959, No. 4), 1–10Google Scholar, and Armstrong, John A., “Soviet Domestic Politics,” Mid-West Journal of Political Science, II, 345–56Google Scholar.

8 Tucker, Robert C., “Field Observations on Soviet Local Government,” The American Slavic and East European Review, XVIII (1959), 534–5Google Scholar.

10 Poplujko, A., “The Sovnarkhoz Chairmen,” Bulletin, Institute for the Study of the USSR, V (1958, No. 5), 14Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 15.

12 Ibid., 16.

13 Tucker, , op. cit., 526Google Scholar.

14 Pravda, September 1, 1958

15 Mosely, Philip E., “Khrushchev's New Economic Gambit,” Foreign Affairs, XXXVI (July, 1958), 562Google Scholar. For an excellent history of the sovnarkhozy reform, see Swearer, Howard R., “Khrushchev's Revolution in Industrial Management,” World Politics, XII (October, 1959), 52–53Google Scholar. For a more extensive discussion in Russian on the relationship between the Sovnarkhozy and Soviet organs, see Pravovye Voprosy Organizatsii i Deiatelnosti Sovnarkhozov (Moscow, 1959), pp. 57–89Google Scholar.

16 Mosely, , op. cit., 564Google Scholar.

17 While not a political implication of the sovnarkhozy reform, an argument that may be advanced for it is the value of the economic dispersal of the management of industry in case of strategic attack upon the country.

18 Pravda, July 3, 1957.

19 Ibid., February 9, 1955.

20 Laird, Roy D., Collective Farming in Russia, A Political Study of the Soviet Kolkhozy (Lawrence, Kansas, 1958)Google Scholar.

21 Mitrany, David, Marx Against the Peasant (London, 1951)Google Scholar.

22 Khrushchev's speech of September 3, 1953, extract in Laird, Roy D., “Decontrols or New Controls?,” Problems of Communism, VI (1957, No. 4 ), 27–28Google Scholar.

23 Pravda, January 25, 1958.

24 Ibid., March 28, 1958.

25 Stalin, J., Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR (Moscow, 1952), pp. 101–2Google Scholar.

26 Achminov, Herman, “The Theoretical Foundation of the Transition to Communism and the Nationalization of the Kolkhozes,” Bulletin, Institute for the Study of the USSR, V (1958, No. 3), 15Google Scholar.

27 Ibid. See also the recent brochure, Roy D. Laird, Darwin E. Sharp and Ruth Sturtevant, The Rise and Fall of the MTS as an Instrument of Soviet Rule (Lawrence, Kansas, 1960), pp. 85 ff. for similar points.

28 Kucherov, Samuel, “The Future of the Soviet Collective Farm,” The American Slavic and East European Review, XIX (1960), 201Google Scholar.

28 See for example, Budagova, E., “The Problem of the Withering Away of the Collective Farmer's Personal Farm Plot,” Problems of Economics, II (04, 1960), 28–31, 63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Lisichkin, G., “A Hectare of Land” Literaturnaya Gazeta, April 7, 1960, p. 2, Current Digest of Soviet Press, XII, No. 16, 13Google Scholar.