The genius of the developers of the Stalinist economy was that they were able to regulate the concept of above-plan work for most types of collective activity. And we developed a system of material and moral incentives for this work.
Together with the creation of small businesses, in the form of artels, all this gave a colossal economic result.

The growth of the USSR economy in percent, relative to the initial hundred that the country had in 1929.

The table shows that under Stalin, the country developed, the population of the USSR grew rich, 10 times faster than in Western countries.

Method of increasing labor efficiency - MPE.
At the end of the 30s, this method began to be widely introduced in all spheres of the national economy of the USSR, ensuring unprecedented rates of development of the country in the post-war period.
The initiator of the development of a breakthrough method of increasing labor efficiency - MPE, most likely, was L.P. Beria. (Achievements of Beria:). He, being the party leader of Georgia in the 30s, transformed it, in just a few years, from a very backward one into one of the most economically developed and prosperous republics of the USSR.
The essence of the proposed method was to divide any collective activity into planned and extra-planned.
Planned activity consists of performing a certain amount of work within a given time frame. For planned activities, the employee receives a monthly or weekly salary, the amount of which depends on his qualifications and work experience in his specialty. Part of the salary is given in the form of quarterly and annual bonuses, which ensures that employees are interested in fulfilling the plan (if the plan is not fulfilled, the entire team loses the bonus).
Management usually has the opportunity to vary the size of the bonus, rewarding the hardworking and punishing the careless, but this has little effect on the efficiency of the team.
All over the world, employees are engaged exclusively in planned activities. But in this case, the employee does not have the opportunity to demonstrate his abilities. Only sometimes can a smart boss accidentally notice these abilities and promote an employee up the career ladder. But more often, any departure from the limits of the work defined by the plan is not encouraged, but punished.
The genius of the developers of MPE was that they were able to regulate the concept of above-plan work for most types of collective activities and develop a system of material and moral rewards for this work, devoid of subjectivity.
MPE allowed each employee to realize their creative potential(from each according to ability), and receive an appropriate reward for this(to each according to his work) and in general, to feel like an individual, a respected person. Other members of the team also received their share of the remuneration, which eliminated the envy and labor conflicts that were characteristic of the Stakhanov movement.

1. In design bureaus.
All work of design organizations was carried out according to orders from the relevant ministries. The assignment that accompanied the order indicated the planned indicators of both the project and the facility being designed. Such indicators were: the timing of the project, the cost of the project (without the salary fund), the cost of the designed object, as well as the main technical characteristics of the object.
At the same time, the assignment provided a bonus scale for exceeding planned indicators. For reducing design time, reducing the cost of a project or design object, improving the most important parameters of an object, specific bonus values ​​were indicated in rubles.
Each order had a bonus fund exclusively for over-plan work in the amount of 2% of the project cost. Unspent money from this fund was returned to the Customer after completion of the project.
For some particularly important orders, the premium scale could include cars, apartments and government awards, which were also not always in demand.
For each project, the management of the organization appointed a manager, who, as a rule, did not hold an administrative position.
The project manager recruited a temporary team to carry out the project from employees of one or more divisions of the organization with the consent of the heads of these divisions. Sometimes this team could also include employees of other organizations participating in the project. The project manager appointed one of the team members as his deputy. During the process of working on the project, the manager could exclude any member from the team.
Each team member, regardless of position, initially received 1 point, characterizing the share of his participation in the work on the project. The manager received an additional 5 points, and his deputy - 3. During the work process, the manager could add from one to three points to any project participant, depending on their contribution to the project. This was done openly and the reasons were explained to the entire team.
Rationalization proposals that ensure above-plan project performance were assessed at 3 points, and applications for inventions - at 5 points. The authors divided these points among themselves by mutual agreement.
By the time the project was completed, each participant knew the amount of bonuses due to him, depending on the number of points scored and the total amount of the excess bonus for the project in accordance with the bonus scales known to everyone.
The amount of the bonus was finally approved at a meeting of the state commission accepting the project, and literally the next day all project participants received the money due to them.
In the case of large budget projects carried out over several years, the cost of one point could be tens of thousands of rubles (tens of thousands of modern dollars). Therefore, all members of the team had great respect for the people who ensured the receipt of such high bonuses - the project leaders, which created an excellent moral climate.
Troublers and lazy people were either initially not included in the temporary team, or were excluded from it during the work on the project. Persons who scored a large number of points in various projects quickly moved up the career ladder, that is, the MPE was an excellent personnel selection mechanism.

2. In industry.
In order for MPE to start working in industry, an original approach was used. The planned indicators of enterprises annually included a clause on reducing the cost of production by a certain number of percent due to improved technology.
To stimulate this work, a special bonus fund was created, similar to the two percent fund for design organizations. And then the same scheme was used. Temporary teams with the same scores were created, whose task was to reduce the cost of certain products. At the same time, the members of these teams also performed the main work.
The results were summed up at the end of the year and bonuses were paid at the same time. The enterprise was given the right, for at least a year, to sell products with a lower cost at the old price and from this money to form an above-plan bonus fund.
As a result, labor productivity in the USSR in those years grew faster than in any other countries. The effectiveness of the use of MPE at manufacturing enterprises is illustrated by the following table, showing how the cost of weapons produced during the war decreased, when, it would seem, there was no opportunity, in addition to intense production, to also improve technological processes (data taken from the book by A.B. Martrosyan “ 200 myths about Stalin").


In general, the cost of various types of weapons during the 4 war years decreased by more than 2 times. But most of the samples were put into service several years before the start of the war, and the Mosin rifle had been produced since 1891.

3. At the research institute.
In scientific activity there are no quantitative criteria for assessing the effectiveness of research performed. Therefore, additional research carried out on orders from various enterprises or one’s own department was considered above-plan work performed at the research institute.
In these additional research projects, unlike the main ones, there was always a salary fund. This fund was managed by the head of the research work, appointed by the administration of the institute. As in previous cases, a temporary team was created to carry out research work and points were assigned, which the head of the research work could increase for individual performers as the work progressed.
In accordance with the scores, money was paid monthly to team members from the corresponding research fund. These payments were formalized as an increase to the basic salary. But very often it turned out that the bonus significantly exceeded the basic salary, especially since all members of the team, except the head of the research work and his deputy, initially received the same points regardless of their positions, academic degrees and titles.
This produced an interesting psychological effect. For those employees who had not been part of any temporary team for a long time, it was unbearable to see that their colleagues received significantly more monthly than they did. As a result, they, as a rule, quit, thereby improving the quality level of the research institute's employees.

4. In universities.
In universities, pedagogical activity was considered the main one, and scientific activity was considered as above-planned. All research work in universities was carried out according to the same MPE rules as additional research work in research or academic institutes.

5. Teachers and medical workers.
It was not possible to apply MPE for teachers and medical workers, most likely because their activities are not collective. However, the concept of over-planned work turned out to be applicable to these categories as well.
Teachers' salaries were set based on an 18-hour workload per week. But with a large number of students, a workload of 24 hours or even 30 hours a week was allowed with a corresponding increase in salary. In addition, bonuses were provided for additional work, for example, classroom management.
Doctors and medical staff could work an additional number of hours at one and a half or even two times the rate. Therefore, as follows from the research of the Central Statistics Service, the income in the families of doctors was one and a half times higher than in the families of workers, and high school teachers had the same income as that of engineering and technical workers in industry.

6. In artels.
In artels, in addition to the regular wage fund, there was a bonus fund, for the formation of which 20% of the profit was allocated.
This fund was distributed among the artel workers in accordance with labor participation scores. The values ​​of these points were determined on the recommendation of the chairman of the artel at general meetings of all shareholders. The monthly income of artel members, even with minimal labor participation, was, as a rule, 1.5 - 2 times higher than the basic salary.
But at the same time, all the artel workers, including the selected boss, also involved in a specific production, worked voluntarily with maximum intensity and with irregular working hours.
The income of each artel worker depended not only on the quantity of products produced, but also on the quality and variety of assortment.

Advantages of MPE.
The main feature of MPE was that its use not only increased the creative activity of a large number of people, but also revealed talents, but the psychology of all members of the team, as well as relationships in the team, also changed.
Any member of the team realized his importance for the overall process and readily performed any part of the work, even if this work did not correspond to his status.
Mutual goodwill and the desire to help each other were completely typical features.
In essence, each member of the team considered himself an individual, and not a cog in a complex mechanism.
The relationship between superiors and subordinates also changed. Instead of orders and instructions, the boss tried to explain to each subordinate what role the work that was entrusted to him played in the overall cause.
As collectives emerged and a new psychology was formed, the material incentives themselves faded into the background and were no longer the main driving force. The developers of MPE were counting on just such an effect.
After the cancellation of the MPE, the moral climate in the team remained for a long time, even in the absence of external incentives.
A characteristic feature was the complete lack of subordination and friendly relations between all employees. People worked with great enthusiasm simply because the work was interesting.
They say that everything ingenious should be simple. MPE was a shining example of such ingenious simplicity.
Temporary teams, points that objectively determine the labor participation of each employee in the work of the team and a relatively small bonus fund - that’s the whole essence of MPE.
And what was the effect! Perhaps the main result of MPE should be considered the transformation of a large number of ordinary people into bright creative individuals capable of making independent decisions. It was thanks to these people that the country continued to develop even after the abolition of the MPE until the early 60s.
And then their abilities turned out to be unclaimed in the suffocating atmosphere that had developed by that time, the main motto of which was "keep your head down".

Under Stalin, small business flourished!
What kind of legacy did Comrade Stalin leave to the country? in the form of the business sector of the economy(as a small business)?
More than 114,000 (one hundred and fourteen thousand!) workshops and enterprises in various fields - from the food industry to metalworking and from jewelry to the chemical industry. They employed about 2 million people, who produced almost 6% of the gross industrial output of the USSR, and artels and industrial cooperation produced 40% of furniture, 70% of metal utensils, more than a third of all knitwear, and almost all children's toys.
In the business sector there were about a hundred design bureaus, 22 experimental laboratories and even two research institutes.
Moreover, this sector had its own non-state pension system! Not to mention the fact that the artels provided their members with loans for the purchase of livestock, tools and equipment, and construction of housing.
And the artels produced not only the simplest, but also such necessary things in everyday life - in the post-war years in the Russian outback, up to 40% of all items in the house (dishes, shoes, furniture, etc.) were made by the artel workers.
The first Soviet tube receivers (1930), the first radio sets in the USSR (1935), and the first televisions with a cathode ray tube (1939) were produced by the Leningrad artel "Progress-Radio".
The Leningrad artel “Carpenter-Builder”, having started in 1923 with sleighs, wheels, clamps and coffins, by 1955 changed its name to “Radio Operator” - it already had a large-scale production of furniture and radio equipment.
The Yakut artel "Metallist", created in 1941, by the mid-50s had a powerful factory production base.
The Vologda artel “Red Partisan”, having started production of resin-resin in 1934, by the same time produced three and a half thousand tons of it, becoming a large-scale production.
The Gatchina artel "Jupiter", which had been producing haberdashery items since 1924, in 1944, immediately after the liberation of Gatchina, made nails, locks, lanterns, shovels, which were urgently needed in the destroyed city; by the early 50s, it was producing aluminum dishes, washing machines, drilling machines and the press."
In Leningrad, some bakeries not only supplied their products to state bakeries, but also delivered hot bread, a variety of rolls and pastries directly to the apartments of city residents with a small markup.
Industrial cooperation enterprises operated under much more favorable conditions than modern small enterprises.
Lending to artels was carried out not by banks, but by district, interdistrict or industry unions of industrial cooperation (SUC) from special credit funds with an interest rate of no more than 3%. In some cases, the loan was issued at zero interest.
To obtain a loan, the newly formed artel did not require any collateral - the entire risk of bankruptcy of the artel fell on the SEC.
The artels received equipment and materials necessary for production from the SEC at state prices. Applications from the SPK were submitted to the USSR State Planning Committee, which allocated the appropriate funds, including for materials purchased for foreign currency.
The sale of products produced by the artels was also carried out through the SEC. At the same time, the price of products from industrial cooperation enterprises could exceed state prices by no more than 10%.
For small cooperatives, the SPK could, for an appropriate fee, take over accounting, cash management and transport services...
The leading employees of the SPK at any level were selected, as a rule, from artel workers or SPK employees of lower levels. The remuneration of these employees was carried out in the same way as in the artels.
Along with regular salaries, there was a bonus fund, distributed in accordance with labor participation scores.
The higher the profit of the artels, a significant part of which was transferred to the SEC, the larger the bonus fund for SEC employees. This was a significant incentive to fully support the activities of artels and increase their number.
SPK actively carried out housing construction. The artisans bought ready-made individual houses with the help of a 15-year loan received from the SEC at 3% per annum without a down payment. Apartment buildings were the property of the SPK.
Apartments in these buildings were purchased by the artel workers, just like in ordinary housing cooperatives, but without a down payment.
The industrial cooperation had its own network of sanatoriums and holiday homes with free vouchers for artel workers.
The industrial cooperation had its own pension system, which did not replace, but supplemented state pensions.

How Khrushchev destroyed labor efficiency.
It did not take much effort to eliminate the MPE, which occurred in 1956. It’s just that when financing R&D and R&D, any wage funds, both bonus and regular, were abolished. And the bonus scales, temporary teams and points immediately lost their meaning.
And for manufacturing enterprises, cost reduction was excluded from the planned indicators, and accordingly, the possibility of creating a bonus fund for improving technology disappeared, and there was no longer any incentive for this improvement.
At the same time, limits were introduced on the amount of rewards for innovation proposals and inventions.
In 1960, a food crisis began in the USSR, caused by purely subjective factors. Leningrad, Moscow, as well as the capitals of the union republics, were affected by this crisis to a lesser extent than other cities in the country.
In addition to flour, the following items disappeared from sale: buckwheat, millet and semolina, egg noodles, braided buns called “challah”, as well as crispy “French” rolls, Vologda and chocolate butter, baked and chocolate milk, all types of semi-finished meat products, carbonade and boiled pork, crucian carp and mirror carp.
Over time, flour, cereals, and semi-finished meat products reappeared on sale. And most of the products listed above are not available in stores at the present time, due to the loss of recipes, or completely different products are produced under old names (this applies to almost all modern sausages, including the famous doctor's).
This is how the famous children's writer E. Nosov, author of books about Dunno, described this crisis. “Contrary to the optimistic growth charts of milk production and weight gain that had not yet faded and were not washed away by the rains, meat and everything meat began to disappear from store shelves. Then everything dairy. In a matter of days, even limp processed cheese was crushed. Millet and buckwheat disappeared somewhere, as it turned out later for entire decades. It came down to noodles and pasta“...
In the fall of 1963, bakeries stopped the planned baking of loaves and rolls, and confectionery shops closed. White bread was issued according to stamped certificates only to some sick people and preschoolers.
In bread stores, restrictions were placed on the sale of bread per person and only loaves of grayish bread were sold, which was prepared with an admixture of peas.”
The fact is that most of the USSR food industry, including flour grinding and bread baking, belonged to industrial cooperation.
State bakeries were located only in large cities and produced a very limited range of bread products. The rest of the bread products were produced by private bakeries in the form of artels, supplying these products to ordinary state stores.
A similar situation was with meat, dairy and fish products. By the way, the production of fish, sea animals and seafood was also mainly carried out by artels.
The bulk of livestock and poultry meat, milk, eggs, as well as buckwheat and millet (millet) was supplied not from collective farms, but from collective farmers’ plots and served as the main source of income for the rural population.
A significant part of public catering enterprises, especially in the Baltic states, Central Asia and the Caucasus, were part of the fishing cooperation system.
In 1959, the size of household plots was sharply reduced. Collective farmers are forced to sell their livestock to collective farms, where they die en masse due to the lack of both feed and personnel to provide adequate care for the animals. As a result, the production of meat and especially milk is reduced.
In 1960, mass nationalization of industrial cooperative enterprises began, including in the food industry.
All property of artels, including premises, equipment, commodity and cash reserves, is transferred free of charge to the state.
The leadership of the artels, chosen by the labor collective, is replaced by party appointees.
The income of workers is now, as in other state-owned enterprises, determined by salary or tariff rates and supplemented by quarterly and annual bonuses.
After nationalization, the working day of former artel workers was reduced to 8 hours in accordance with labor legislation.
In addition, people who were absolutely useless for production appeared with relatively large salaries in the person of newly appointed bosses.
The material interest in product quality disappeared, and the defect rate immediately increased. As a result, the volume of production decreased sharply, with the same number of enterprises and number of employees. And flour mills could no longer produce the same volumes of flour with sufficient grain reserves.
The only way out of this situation was to increase the number of workers at food industry enterprises. The additional financial resources necessary for this were obtained by increasing prices for food products by an average of 1.5 times, which automatically led to a decrease in the living standards of the population.
Prices for industrial goods rose even more, but without explicit declarations. Well, the income of former artel workers fell by more than 2 times.
The liquidation of industrial cooperation inevitably led to a reduction in the range and quality of products produced by nationalized enterprises. It is much easier to produce one type of product instead of ten, especially if the planned indicators indicate abstract pieces or kilograms.

The overwhelming majority of citizens of modern Russia, from liberals to communists, are convinced that the population of the USSR has always lived much worse than in Western countries.
No one suspects that it was under Stalin, and only thanks to Stalin, that the Soviet people, in the middle of the last century, lived much better materially and morally than in any other country of that time. And better than in the modern USA, not to mention modern Russia.
And then Khrushchev came. And after 1960, the inhabitants of the USSR, unnoticed by themselves, found themselves in a completely different country, and after a while they forgot how they lived before.
It was in this new country that all those negative features that are considered organically inherent in the socialist system appeared.
It was this pseudo-socialist country, completely different from the former Soviet Union, that collapsed under the weight of accumulated problems in 1991, and Gorbachev accelerated this process, acting in the style of Khrushchev.

There is a misconception that the Stalinist economic model is not a market one. This misconception comes from Marxists, who consider socialism to be a special system not subject to market laws. But, as it turned out, it is impossible to circumvent the law of supply and demand. Then, in the early 90s, we rushed in the other direction and began to build a “market economy.” This misconception served to spread the liberal dogma of the “inefficiency of the state economy.” Most likely, it came from Mises, who viewed the economy as a system for exchanging information about prices. But producing something according to plan does not mean canceling the price (perhaps it would be correctly expressed as the ratio of the possibility of future cost reduction, future growth or minimization of future costs to current costs) of the produced product and refusal to exchange information about prices, i.e. . market, in Mises' understanding. The most important thing that the Stalinist economy, in the sense of Mises, was able to do was to see real values, invest them in prices, organize the exchange of information about them, satisfy the main need for guns, tanks and airplanes and emerge from the Great Patriotic War as a winner. We can contrast the Stalinist economy with the situation in the modern market, where false values ​​dominate, incorrect, distorted prices, as Mises would put it, circulate and, as a result, money is washed out of the real sector of the economy into the financial sector, inflating a financial bubble, the ultimate goal of which is to burst.

From these considerations we can also conclude that communism is impossible as a state of society in which all resources are free, because The production of any resource requires costs. We must know this information, and also disseminate information about the value of the resource, so that we can concentrate society's efforts on the areas that matter most to it. The compromise model of the Stalinist economy is easy to describe by modern economic theory. It is not an exact reflection of the Stalinist economy, but it inherits features that are important for our time. Compared to the liberal model, it treats monopolies differently. If the liberal model prohibits them so that market actors cannot set monopoly prices, then the Stalinist model nationalizes them. In this case, monopolies also do not set monopoly prices for their goods and services, but at the same time society retains enormous economies of scale, which are lost with a liberal decision to destroy the monopoly. What is an efficient society if not a society that performs its functions with minimal costs? Thus, the Stalinist economic model is more effective than the liberal one.

Monopolies are understood as natural monopolies - monopolies formed for economic reasons, in conditions of rising costs with increasing competition. The goal of state management of such monopolies is to maximize the amount of consumer satisfaction (in other words, to maximize production volumes, this also gives maximum economies of scale and minimum prices - everything is very harmonious). Costs include not only production costs, but also social ones. For example, of course, the monopoly on the production of atomic weapons is natural. The problem of monopolies also highlights the illogicality of the liberal mantra about the “inefficiency of the state economy.” Indeed, if efficiency is measured by commercial profit, then it is completely incomprehensible why, in the liberal model, we should ban monopolies that have the maximum possible profit and, therefore, according to the logic of liberals, lead to maximum efficiency?

It is interesting that modern economic theory has left traces of a positive attitude towards the Stalinist economic model. These traces can be found in the section of technological choice in economics, when it is decided that with a larger share of savings compared to the share of consumption, it is possible to increase the level of production possibilities in the future. Apparently, this decision should provide a theoretical justification for the unprecedented growth of the USSR economy, but, unfortunately, consideration of this issue is excluded from economic theory. Such a shift towards “accumulation” is impossible to imagine when industry is divided into thousands of small enterprises, and the financial market is divided among thousands of small banks, and all these entities are guided by their own petty, private interests. It turns out that the decision indicated in economic theory to move to a new level of production capabilities applies only to the Stalinist model of the economy. But how did the Stalinist economy solve the problem of shifting along the technological choice curve towards accumulation?

If we now ask the Central Bank of the Russian Federation about the possibility of stimulating the economy with cheap loans, we will receive an answer from it that this could lead to inflation. This is where the Central Bank's considerations end. In what case cheap loans lead to economic growth, and in what case they lead to inflation - our Central Bank does not know. Well, let's figure it out. Let's take the money circulation equation MV=PQ: the mass of money multiplied by the velocity of circulation must be equal to the volume of goods sold. Let us divide the increase in the money supply into two components. We will conditionally call the first component “speculative” (the first agents who receive the new money supply have an advantage over all the others, since they pay at still old, non-inflationary prices with less valuable money, i.e. speculate) - it does not go into investment and, therefore, does not go towards increasing the commodity mass. Let’s call the second “investment” - it goes towards investment and, therefore, goes towards increasing the mass of goods. The speculative component leads to inflation, the pure investment component leads to deflation, because with high-quality investment, the created mass of goods exceeds the amount of investment. Thus, if the speculative part exceeds the investment part, then inflation is observed in the economy. Indeed, if the Central Bank of the Russian Federation in modern conditions tries to stimulate the economy with cheap money, then all of it will go into speculation on the foreign exchange market, since its profitability currently exceeds the profitability of all possible investments. As a result, the economy will experience net inflation.

In the Stalinist economy, this could not happen in principle, since the investment component was separated into a separate non-cash closed loop, from which money could not enter cash circulation, but went exclusively to the development and maintenance of the means of production. At the same time, the investment money received from the state by enterprises was not a loan even at 0%, since no one had to return it. It was altruistic money. A separate investment cash flow and development planning have led to well-known results. Already during the first Soviet five-year plan, from 1929 to 1933, about 1,500 large industrial enterprises were built and entire industries that did not exist before were created: machine tool manufacturing, aviation, chemical, ferroalloy production, tractor manufacturing, automobile manufacturing and others.

The current situation in the foreign exchange market raises the question: what is freedom? Concentration of funds for the implementation of investment projects or the possibility of speculation? If the former, then in such an economic system the state must monopolize the currency trade, providing its citizens with an effective gateway for the free purchase of goods and services around the world for the national currency.

The destruction of the USSR occurred in the order of the destruction of the institutions that ensured its growth. Gorbachev allowed speculation and allowed money to flow from the investment circuit into cash. As a result, inflation began, speculators began to hold back goods and products, and the USSR collapsed for the same reasons as the Russian Empire as a result of the actions of inflation and speculators - there was no bread on the shelves.

Let us note that the model of the Stalinist economy involves nationalization only of large monopolies, without affecting small and medium-sized businesses. Indeed, Stalin's economy included simple and effective mechanisms for creating small and medium-sized enterprises. At the time of Joseph Vissarionovich’s death, there were 114,000 (one hundred and fourteen thousand!) workshops and enterprises in various fields in the USSR - from the food industry to metalworking and from jewelry to the chemical industry. They employed about two million people, who produced almost 6% of the gross industrial output of the USSR, and artels and industrial cooperation produced 40% of furniture, 70% of metal utensils, more than a third of all knitwear, and almost all children's toys. In the business sector there were about a hundred design bureaus, 22 experimental laboratories and even two research institutes. Moreover, this sector had its own non-state pension system! Not to mention the fact that the artels provided their members with loans for the purchase of livestock, tools and equipment, and construction of housing.

So how did the efficient Stalinist economy turn into an ineffective, universally criticized, command-and-administrative economy, which led to the collapse of the USSR? The economic model was superimposed on the political model of maintaining the stability of the state under strong external pressure. As I wrote in a previous post, the Stalinist economy grew out of the Civil War and was preparing to meet the Second World War. Under these conditions, a very strict attitude towards dissent has developed, and the stability of the system requires an open attitude towards it. The movement towards openness began with Khrushchev's “thaw”. Unfortunately for us, Khrushchev himself was a product of the Stalin era. He was possessed by the fear of responsibility for the repressions carried out under his leadership. For example, out of the total number of 9,579 military personnel repressed in 1937-1939, in the Kiev Military District alone, N.S. Khrushchev had a hand in the repression of 1,066 people. Probably, when he received the famous answer from Stalin to the request to take measures to expand them (“Stop, you fool!”), a chill ran through his body. And when Nikita Sergeevich came to power, he began to debunk Stalin, beloved by the people. To accomplish this, he had to offer something else in exchange for his love for Stalin. And he proposed - communism!

According to Marxist theory, communism should be built as a result of the development of productive forces. Marxism does not reveal how this development is expressed, and it is unknown why Khrushchev decided that by 1980 the productive forces would develop so much. As a result, the country followed a mythological path of development and did not achieve the main thing - intellectual openness, which ultimately led to disaster. With each new day, the words of the leadership diverged more and more from practice. In 1956, artels were officially banned and dispersed within several years. Over time, phenomena such as shortages and unfinished construction developed, attributed by modern economic theory as integral properties of a socialist economy. But they cannot arise with the normal goal of production management - meeting demand, but only with the propaganda goal - movement towards communism, accompanied by a steady decline in prices. Technological lag has developed. But Stalin’s hundreds of private design bureaus are the Soviet silicon valley, which the Americans created only in the 60s, after the USSR launched the first artificial Earth satellite.

8 years pass after Stalin’s death and it turns out that the CPSU, led by Khrushchev, has nothing to respond to the differences in West Berlin. The only solution is found - to fence off, build the Berlin Wall, heralding the beginning of the end of the USSR and the socialist bloc. Now the situation is reversed. An invisible wall of blocking views from Russia has been built by the Western media. European politicians are making a closed decision to counter “Russian propaganda.” Pro-Western users of social networks are closing their pages from pro-Russian ones - they simply have nothing to answer with logical arguments. Pro-Western friends do not answer direct questions. They all believe that in this way they are waging an information war. We all know well how this will end.

The 74 years of existence of the USSR (from 1917 to 1991) can be divided into several periods, which differ significantly from each other in a number of economic and political characteristics:

1. The period of “war communism” (1918-1921).
2. The period of the new economic policy, or NEP (1921-1928).
3. The period of industrialization and building the foundations of socialism (1928-1941).
4. The Great Patriotic War and post-war economic recovery (1941-1948).
5. A period of peaceful development based on the Stalinist economic model (1948-1956).
6. The first period of dismantling the Stalinist economic model (Khrushchev period: 1956-1964).
7. The second period of dismantling the Stalinist economic model (the period of preparation and implementation of the Kosygin reform: 1964-1969).
8. The period of the era of developed socialism (1969-1985).
9. The period of perestroika and active destruction of the remnants of the Stalinist economic model (1985-1991).

So, the first and second periods can be called the early economy of the USSR. The third through fifth periods refer to the Stalinist economy. And the sixth to ninth periods cover the late economy of the USSR. The latest model can also be called the post-Stalin economy. And in a broader historical aspect, it should be defined as a transitional economy - from a socialist model to a capitalist model. Some harsh critics in the West, who took the position of strict, “pure” socialism, called the post-Stalin period in the history of the USSR a period of creeping restoration of capitalism.

The Stalin period was the period of creating the foundations of the Stalinist economy, testing its strength during the war years and post-war reconstruction, peaceful construction. In total, the period of the Stalinist economy accounts for no more than 30 years. We can start counting the Stalinist economy not from 1928, but from a slightly earlier time - the mid-1920s, when in the party and state Stalin managed to achieve an advantage in the fight against the Trotskyists and the new opposition and began preparations for the collapse of the NEP and the implementation of industrialization.

The end of the period of the Stalinist economy did not literally occur at the time of Stalin’s death in March 1953. By inertia, the Stalinist model continued to function with minimal changes until 1956, when N.S. Khrushchev held the 20th Congress of the CPSU with the aim of debunking Stalin’s cult of personality. In fact, this congress marked the beginning of the dismantling and destruction of the Stalinist economy. This process of destruction continued for almost 36 years and ended in December 1991 with the collapse of the USSR.

After the death of I.V. Stalin left a legacy of a powerful economy, which, according to most indicators, ranked first in Europe and second in the world (after the USA). Six decades have passed since then. We have lost a significant part of the material and technical base during this time (especially over the last 20-25 years of destructive democratic “reforms”). But we also have another, perhaps even more valuable legacy - the experience of building the Stalinist economy. No one can steal this inheritance from us. And the opportunity to use it depends only on us.

In 1913, Russia's share of world industrial production was about 3.8%, by 1937 it reached 10%, and by the mid-1970s - 20%, and remained at this level until the start of "perestroika". The most dynamic were two periods of Soviet history: the 1930s and 1950s.

The first period is industrialization, which was carried out under the conditions of a “mobilization economy”: in terms of the total volume of gross domestic product and industrial production of the USSR in the mid-1930s. came out on top in Europe and on second place in the world, behind only the United States and significantly surpassing Germany, Great Britain, and France. In less than three five-year plans, 364 new cities were built in the country, 9 thousand large enterprises were built and put into operation - a colossal figure - two enterprises a day!

Of course, the mobilization economy required sacrifices and the maximum use of all resources. But, nevertheless, on the eve of the war the standard of living of the people was significantly higher than at the start of the first five-year plan.

The statement of I.V. is widely known. Stalin that the USSR lagged behind industrialized countries by 50-100 years, history has given 10 years to overcome this lag, otherwise we will be crushed. These words, spoken in February 1931, are surprising in their historical accuracy: the discrepancy was only four months.

The second period is economic development based on the model that was formed after the war with the active participation of I.V. Stalin. This model, by inertia, continued to function for a number of years even after his death (until N.S. Khrushchev’s various “experiments” began). For 1951-1960 The gross domestic product of the USSR increased 2.5 times, with the volume of industrial production more than 3 times, and agricultural production by 60%. If in 1950 the level of industrial production of the USSR was 25% relative to the USA, then in 1960 it was already 50%. Uncle Sam was very nervous because he was “outright” losing the economic competition to the Soviet Union. The standard of living of Soviet people grew continuously. Although a significantly higher share of GDP was allocated to accumulation (investment) than in the United States and other Western countries.

An analysis of the same work, “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” (1952), shows that Stalin sought answers to many questions in the notorious “law of value.” It’s just that, according to Stalin, this law allegedly acquired other forms of manifestation under socialism and had a limited scope of action. But all this created internal contradictions. By the way, the head of the team of authors who prepared a textbook on political economy on Stalin’s instructions, academician K. Ostrovityanov, wrote in 1958: “It is difficult to name another economic problem that would cause so many disagreements and different points of view as the problem of commodity production and the operation of the law of value at socialism." Unfortunately, these epistemological contradictions after Stalin’s death imperceptibly transformed into real contradictions in the practice of economic construction in the USSR and created cracks in the foundation of the building of the Stalinist economy.

I am not alone in a very restrained assessment of the work “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR” (which is presented by some indefatigable admirers of Stalin as “brilliant”). I will turn again to M. Antonov: “Although Stalin made attempts to illuminate some issues of socialist production in a somewhat new way, in general this work did not and could not contain any breakthrough in theory, because it was based on the traditional understanding of Marxism-Leninism, which had already did not meet the needs of the coming era. According to Molotov, Stalin was still working on the second part of his work, which, after the death of the leader, disappeared into an unknown place, but one could hardly expect any breakthrough from it - for the same reasons.”

As a practical economist, Stalin achieved much more. In fact, it was thanks to his political will and art that it was possible to create such an economy, most of which was outside commodity-money relations, outside the action of the notorious law of value. In fact, this means that he managed to wrest the country from the suffocating embrace of capitalism. And this is his merit.

To understand the essence of the Stalinist economy, I will try to highlight the main features of the Stalinist economy. Here are the most important ones:

1) public ownership of the means of production;
2) the decisive role of the state in the economy;
3) the use of cooperative forms of farming and small-scale production in addition to state forms of farming;
4) centralized management;
5) directive planning;
6) a single national economic complex;
7) mobilization nature;
8) maximum self-sufficiency (especially in the period before the socialist camp appeared);
9) focus primarily on natural (physical) indicators (cost indicators play a supporting role);
10) abandonment of the profit indicator as the main cost indicator, focus on reducing production costs;
11) periodic reduction of retail prices;
12) limited nature of commodity-money relations;
13) single-level model of the banking system and a limited number of banks;
14) two-circuit system of internal monetary circulation (cash and non-cash circulation);
15) accelerated development of group of industries A (production of means of production) in relation to group of industries B (production of consumer goods);
16) special priority for the development of the defense industry as a guarantee of the country’s national security;
17) state monopoly of foreign trade and state currency monopoly;
18) refusal of competition, replacing it with socialist competition;
19) a combination of material and moral incentives for work;
20) the inadmissibility of unearned income and the concentration of excess material wealth in the hands of individual citizens;
21) ensuring the vital needs of all members of society and a steady increase in living standards, the social nature of appropriation, an organic combination of personal and public interests, etc.

Many of the listed characteristics are interconnected, as if flowing into each other. The significance of certain features changed over the three decades of the existence of the Stalinist economy. For example, the mobilization nature of the economy was especially pronounced during the years of industrialization and the Great Patriotic War. The principle (sign) of periodic reduction of retail prices did not work during the Great Patriotic War. Certain imbalances arose between the commodity and money supply, and there was a slight increase in prices for consumer goods, although very moderate by wartime standards. After the restoration of the Soviet economy from the late 1940s. mobilization signs weakened. The sign of maximum self-sufficiency of the Soviet economy has undergone changes since the late 1940s, when the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) arose and the USSR began to actively participate in the international socialist division of labor through the development of international specialization and cooperation of individual industries and enterprises. Some signs of the Stalinist economy were also visible beyond the chronological framework of its thirty-year existence. For example, the state monopoly of foreign trade, the state currency monopoly, the single-tier model of the banking system, and the double-circuit system of internal monetary circulation began to collapse only in the second half of the 1980s. Also, the most important feature of the Soviet economy remained the high priority for the development of the defense industry. It could not have been otherwise, since the West waged a continuous “cold war” against the USSR; since the mid-1980s this priority began to erode under the crafty slogan of carrying out the conversion of military production.

The essence of Stalin's economy

The essence of the Soviet model (1928-1960) can be reduced to the following most important features:

Public ownership of the means of production;
- the decisive role of the state in the economy;
- centralized management;
- directive planning;
- a single national economic complex;
- mobilization character;
- maximum self-sufficiency (especially in the period before the socialist camp appeared);
- focus primarily on natural (physical) indicators (cost indicators play a supporting role);
- limited nature of commodity-money relations;
- accelerated development of group of industries A (production of means of production) in relation to group of industries B (production of consumer goods);
- a combination of material and moral incentives for work;
- inadmissibility of unearned income and concentration of excess material wealth in the hands of individual citizens;
- ensuring the vital needs of all members of society and a steady increase in living standards, the social nature of appropriation, etc.

As for the accelerated development of group A of industries (production of means of production) in relation to group B of industries (production of consumer goods), this is not just a slogan of the “Great Breakthrough” period of the 1930s. This is an ongoing principle, given that we are not talking about an abstract “socialist economy”. We are talking about the specific economy of the USSR, which, according to Stalin, was (and in the foreseeable future will be) in a hostile capitalist environment - an environment that will seek to destroy the Soviet Union by both economic and military methods. Only a high level of development of group A of industries is able to ensure the effective struggle of the USSR against the hostile capitalist encirclement. Consistent consideration of this principle actually means that the Stalinist model is a model of a mobilization economy. It couldn't be any other way. Stalin absolutely correctly substantiated this by formulating the following geopolitical thesis: the main content of the modern era is the struggle between two socio-economic systems - socialist and capitalist.

“We are 50-100 years behind advanced countries.
We must make good this distance in ten years.
Either we do this, or we will be crushed..." .
I.V.Stalin
(February 4, 1931 I All-Union Conference of Socialist Industry Workers)

The Great Patriotic War occurred during the elderly years of I.V. Stalin’s life. In 1941 he was 62 years old. Knowing about the impending war against the USSR, J.V. Stalin did everything possible (and even more) to prepare the Soviet Union for this war as much as possible. Thanks to the economic system he created, the economy of the Soviet Union rose to its feet at a gigantic pace. The USSR State Planning Committee played a decisive role in this process.

J.V. Stalin understood that without planning it would be impossible to create any effective economy, therefore, by creating the State Planning Committee of the USSR and building an effective socialist economy, Stalin actually built a super-concern state, which in the post-war years became completely self-sufficient and provided itself with all the necessary products.

On the 131st Birthday of J.V. Stalin, we are bringing to the site material dedicated to the history of the creation of the pre-war economy of the USSR and its role in the Great Patriotic War.

We invite site visitors to independently compare the current state of affairs in the Russian economy with the situation that existed during the reign of I.V. Stalin. Compare the “successes” of the current leaders of Russia with the successes of the Stalinist Government of the USSR. And draw conclusions about the reasons for the so-called. “de-Stalinization” of Russian society, which was recently initiated by President Dmitry Medvedev.

The following material is a revised version of the article "The Great Economy of the Great War", which was published in the magazine "However" (from 05.05.2010, http://odnakoj.ru/exclusive/interline/velikaya_yekonomika_velikoj_vojnx/). Corrections were made to the article due to the fact that in its original version there were omissions, according to which the economy of the USSR developed, AS WELL, BY ITSELF, without the direct participation of J.V. Stalin. We believe that such a situation and attitude towards the activities of the outstanding leader of the USSR I.V. Stalin and towards him personally is unacceptable, therefore, taking responsibility ourselves, we have made appropriate additions to the text of the article in order to correct the injustice committed by the author and not give rise to “kaleidoscopic idiocy ” from readers, the meaning of which can be expressed in the well-known phrase: “... oil has risen in price.”
Dedicated bold The text font is IAS.

Information and analytical service of WFP KPE (IAS KPE)

The Great Economy of the Great War

Despite the terrible losses, the economic system of the USSR created by I.V. Stalin managed to ensure Victory

Direct damage damage caused by the Great Patriotic War to the USSR economy, equaled almost one third of the country's total national wealth, nevertheless, the national economy survived. And not only did it survive. In the pre-war and especially during the war years, the leadership of the USSR, personally I.V. Stalin, made decisive economic decisions, developed and implemented innovative (in many ways unprecedented) approaches to the implementation of set goals and pressing production tasks. It was thanks to such innovative approaches that the basis for the post-war economic and innovative breakthrough of the Soviet Union was formed.

photo "ITAR TASS"

Since its founding in 1924, the head of state, J.V. Stalin, sought to make the Soviet Union a self-sufficient, economically independent country. This approach contributed to the state pursuing an independent foreign and domestic policy and made it possible to negotiate with any partners and on any issues on an equal basis, strengthened defense capability, and increased the material and cultural level of the population. Industrialization played a decisive role in achieving these goals. It was on this that the main efforts were directed in the pre-war years, efforts and resources were spent. At the same time, the leadership of the USSR managed to achieve significant results. So, if in 1928 production of means of production (industry of group “A”) in the USSR accounted for 39,5% gross output of all industry ( GDP), That in 1940 this figure has already reached 61,2% .

We did everything we could

From 1925 to 1938, through the efforts of the Soviet leadership led by Stalin, the whole a number of advanced sectors of the economy that produced technically complex products (including those of defense significance). Old enterprises also received further development (reconstructed and expanded). Their worn-out and outdated material and technical production base was changed. At the same time, it was not just that others were installed in place of some machines. We tried to introduce everything that was most modern and innovative at that time (conveyors, production lines with a minimum number of manual operations), and increased the power supply of production. For example, at the Stalingrad "Barricades" plant, for the first time in the USSR, a conveyor system and the world's first automatic line of modular machines and semi-automatic machines were launched.

Having set themselves the goal of industrial development of the eastern regions of the country and the union republics, the Soviet leadership “replicated” these enterprises, that is, duplicated equipment and attracted some experienced workers (mainly engineering and technical level) to organize and set up production in a new location. At individual civilian enterprises, reserve capacities were created for the production of military products. In these specialized areas and workshops in the pre-war years, workers developed technology and mastered the production of military products.

During the years of the first five-year plans, and especially the pre-war period, Stalin initiated the exploration and industrial development of the gigantic mineral deposits that the country had. At the same time, the extracted resources were not only widely used in production, but also accumulated.

Thanks to the use of the Soviet planned economic system, it was possible, firstly, the most optimal from the point of view of various costs, and secondly, the most profitable from the point of view of achieving results not only locate significant production facilities, but also create entire industrial areas. In 1938-1940 In the USSR State Planning Committee, specialists from this department compiled reviews of the implementation of plans for the economic regions of the Union, plans for the elimination of irrational and excessively long-distance transportation. Regional balances (fuel and energy, material, production capacity, transport) were developed and analyzed, plans were drawn up for the cooperation of supplies on a territorial level, and large regional complex schemes were studied.

Knowing about the coming war, J.V. Stalin understood that without a strong industry, the USSR would not be able to resist the West, whose entire production potential was placed under the unified control of A. Hitler. Setting themselves large-scale goals of transforming the country into an advanced, industrialized power, the state leadership accelerated the transition to a predominantly urbanized way of life (not only in large cities, but also in rural areas, given that more than 65% of the population lived there) with the creation of a modern system of social infrastructure (education, personnel training, healthcare, radio installation, telephone installation, etc.) that meets the requirements of industrially organized labor.

All this allowed the USSR to ensure high rates of economic development in the pre-war years.

In 1940 compared to 1913 gross industrial output ( GDP) was increased by 12 times, electricity production - by 24, oil production - by 3, iron production - by 3.5, steel - by 4.3 times, production of machine tools of all types - by 35 times, including metal-cutting ones - by 32 times.

By June 1941, the country's automobile fleet had grown to 1 million 100 thousand cars.
In 1940 collective farms and state farms to the state 36.4 million tons of grain were delivered. This made it possible not only to fully meet the country’s internal needs, but also to create the necessary reserves. At the same time, grain production was significantly expanded in the east of the country (Urals, Siberia, Far East) and in Kazakhstan.

Thanks to a well-structured economic system, the defense industry grew rapidly. The growth rate of military production during the Second Five-Year Plan was 286%, compared to 120% growth in industrial production as a whole. Average annual growth rate of the defense industry for 1938-1940. amounted to 141.5% instead of 127.3% provided for by the third five-year plan.

As a result, by the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union had become a country capable of producing any type of industrial product available to humanity at that time.

Eastern Industrial District

photo "ITAR TASS"

Stalin's idea of ​​creating an eastern industrial region was driven by several objectives.

• Firstly, manufacturing and high-tech industries sought to bring them as close as possible to sources of raw materials and energy.
  

• Secondly, due to the comprehensive development of new geographical areas of the country, centers of industrial development and bases for further movement to the east were formed.
  

• Third, backup enterprises were built here, and the potential was also formed for the possible deployment of evacuated facilities from territory that could become a theater of military operations or be occupied by enemy troops. At the same time, the maximum removal of economic facilities beyond the radius of action of a potential enemy’s bomber aircraft was also taken into account.

  In the third five-year plan in the eastern regions of the USSR according to plans with 97 enterprises were tripled, including 38 mechanical engineering. In 1938-1941. Eastern Siberia received 3,5% union capital investments, Western Siberia - 4%, Far East - 7.6%. The Urals and Western Siberia took first place in the USSR in the production of aluminum, magnesium, copper, nickel, and zinc; Far East, Eastern Siberia - for the production of rare metals.

  In 1936 only The Ural-Kuznetsk complex gave near 1/3 of iron and steel smelting and rolled products production, 1/4 iron ore mining, almost 1/3 of coal production and about 10% of mechanical engineering products.

  By June 1941, on the territory of the most populated and economically developed part of Siberia, there were more than 3,100 large industrial enterprises, and The Ural energy system was turned into the most powerful in the country.

  In addition to the two railway exits from the Center to the Urals and Siberia, shorter lines were laid through Kazan - Sverdlovsk and through Orenburg - Orsk. A new exit from the Urals to the Trans-Siberian Railway was built: from Sverdlovsk to Kurgan and to Kazakhstan through Troitsk and Orsk.

  The placement of backup enterprises in the east of the country in the third five-year plan, the commissioning of some of them, the creation of construction groundwork for others, as well as the formation of an energy, raw materials, communication and socially developed base allowed Stalin and the leadership of the USSR at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War not only to use data capacity for military production, but also to deploy in these places and put into operation related enterprises relocated from the western regions, thereby expanding and strengthening the economic and military capabilities of the USSR.

  
  

Scale of economic losses

Despite all the measures taken, the creation and development of other industrial regions (in the Saratov and Stalingrad regions alone there were over a thousand industrial enterprises), on the eve of the war the Central, Northwestern and Southwestern industrial regions remained the basis of the country's industry and agricultural production. For example, districts of the Center with a population of 26.4% in the USSR (1939) produced 38,3% gross output of the Union ( GDP).

It was them that the country lost at the beginning of the war.
As a result of the occupation of the USSR (1941-1944), the territory was lost on which 45% of the population lived, 63% of coal was mined, 68% of cast iron, 50% of steel and 60% of aluminum, 38% of grain, 84% of sugar, etc. d.

As a result of hostilities and occupation, 1,710 cities and towns (60% of their total number), over 70 thousand villages and villages, about 32 thousand industrial enterprises were completely or partially destroyed (the invaders destroyed production facilities for smelting 60% of the pre-war volume of steel , 70% of coal production, 40% of oil and gas production, etc.), 65 thousand kilometers of railways, 25 million people lost their homes.

The aggressors caused enormous damage to the agriculture of the Soviet Union. 100 thousand collective and state farms were ruined, 7 million horses, 17 million heads of cattle, 20 million pigs, 27 million heads of sheep and goats were slaughtered or stolen to Germany.

No economy in the world could withstand such losses. How did we manage not only to survive and win, but also to create the preconditions for subsequent unprecedented economic growth?

During the war years

photo RIA Novosti

It should be noted that although I.V. Stalin knew about the approaching war, he never imagined that the war would start so soon. Several years were not enough for the USSR to be fully prepared for war. Therefore, economic mobilization and the transfer of the country's economic life to a military footing were carried out under enemy attacks. In the conditions of negative developments in the operational situation, it was necessary to evacuate a huge amount of equipment, equipment and people, unprecedented in history, to the eastern regions of the country and the Central Asian republics. Only The Ural industrial region hosted about 700 large industrial enterprises.

Huge role The USSR State Planning Committee played a role both in the successful evacuation and the speedy establishment of production, minimizing labor and resource costs for its production, reducing costs, and in the active restoration process that began in 1943.

Based on historical documents of that time, we can confidently say that plants and factories were not taken out into open fields, equipment was not dumped into ravines, and people were not thrown to the mercy of fate.

Accounting in the field of industry was carried out during the war in the form of urgent censuses according to operational programs. For 1941-1945 105 urgent censuses were carried out and results were reported to the government. Thus, the Central Statistical Office of the USSR State Planning Committee conducted a census of industrial enterprises and buildings intended to house evacuated factories, institutions and organizations. In the eastern regions of the country, the location of existing enterprises relative to railway stations, water piers, highways, the number of access roads, the distance to the nearest power plant, the capacity of enterprises for the production of main products, bottlenecks, the number of employees, and the volume of gross output were specified. A relatively detailed description was given of each building and the possibilities for using production space. Based on these data, recommendations, instructions, orders and allocations were given to the people's commissariats, individual objects, local leadership, responsible persons were appointed, and all this was strictly controlled.

In the restoration process, a truly innovative, integrated approach, not used before in any country in the world, was used. The State Planning Committee switched to developing quarterly and especially monthly plans, taking into account the rapidly changing situation at the fronts. Wherein restoration began literally behind the backs of the active army. It took place right up to the front-line areas, which not only contributed to the accelerated revival of the country’s economy and national economy, but was also of great importance for providing the front with everything necessary as quickly and cost-effectively as possible.

Similar Stalinist approaches, namely optimization and innovation, ultimately yielded results, making 1943 a turning point in economic development. This is eloquently evidenced by the data in Table 1.

As can be seen from the table, the revenues of the country's state budget, despite the colossal losses, in 1943 exceeded the revenues of one of the most successful years in Soviet pre-war history, 1940.

The restoration of enterprises was carried out at a pace that continues to amaze foreigners to this day.

A typical example is the Dnieper Metallurgical Plant (Dneprodzerzhinsk). In August 1941, the plant workers and the most valuable equipment were evacuated. Retreating, Nazi troops completely destroyed the plant. After the liberation of Dneprodzerzhinsk in October 1943, restoration work began, and the first steel was issued on November 21, and the first rolled product on December 12, 1943! By the end of 1944, the plant already operated two blast furnaces, five open-hearth furnaces, and three rolling mills.

Despite incredible difficulties, during the war years, Soviet specialists achieved significant success in the field of import substitution, technical solutions, discoveries and innovative approaches to labor organization.

For example, the production of many previously imported medical products was established. A new method for producing high-octane aviation gasoline has been developed. A powerful turbine unit has been created to produce liquid oxygen. New automatic machines have been improved and invented, new alloys and polymers have been produced.

During the restoration of Azovstal, for the first time in world practice, the blast furnace was moved into place without dismantling.

Design solutions for the restoration of destroyed cities and enterprises using lightweight structures and local materials were proposed by the Academy of Architecture. It’s simply impossible to list everything.

They didn’t forget about science. In the hardestIn 1942, the expenses of the USSR Academy of Sciences under state budgetary allocations amounted to 85 million rubles. Such colossal funds at that time spent on the Academy of Sciences were justified, since the scientists did not “cut” the budget and titles with positions, as they do today, but worked conscientiously for the economy of the USSR. In 1943, academic doctoral and postgraduate studies grew to 997 people (418 doctoral students and 579 graduate students).

Scientists and designers came to the workshops.

Vyacheslav Paramonov in his work "Dynamics of industry of the RSFSR in 1941-1945.", in particular, writes: “In June 1941, teams of machine tool builders were sent to enterprises of other departments to help transfer the machine park to mass production of new products. Thus, the Experimental Research Institute of Metal-Cutting Machine Tools designed special equipment for the most labor-intensive operations, for example, a line of 15 machines for processing the hulls of the KV tank. The designers found an original solution to such a problem as productive processing of especially heavy tank parts. At aviation industry factories, design teams were created, attached to those workshops to which the drawings they developed were transferred. As a result, it became possible to conduct ongoing technical consultations, review and simplify the production process, and reduce technological routes for the movement of parts. Special scientific institutes and design departments were created in Tankograd (Ural). ...High-speed design methods were mastered: the designer, technologist, and toolmaker did not work sequentially, as was customary before, but all together, in parallel. The designer’s work ended only with the completion of production preparation, which made it possible to master types of military products within one to three months instead of a year or more in pre-war times.”

Finance and trade

RIA News"

The monetary system demonstrated its viability during the war years. And here integrated approaches were used. For example, long-term construction was ensured, as they say now, with “long-term money.” Loans were provided to evacuated and recovering enterprises on preferential terms. Economic facilities damaged during the war were provided with deferments on pre-war loans. Military costs were partially covered by emissions. With timely financing and strict control over executive discipline, the circulation of goods and money practically did not fail.

Throughout the war, the state managed to maintain fixed prices for essential goods, as well as low tariffs for utilities. Wherein wages were not frozen, but increased. In just a year and a half ( April 1942 - October 1943) its increase was 27%. When calculating money, a differentiated approach was used. For example, in May 1945 year, the average salary of metalworkers in the tank industry was higher than the average for this profession by 25%. Gap between industries with maximum and minimum wages tripled at the end of the war, whereas in the pre-war years it was 85%. Actively a bonus system was used, especially for rationalization and high labor productivity (victory in socialist competition). All this contributed to increasing people’s material interest in the results of their labor. Despite the card system, which operated in all warring countries, money circulation played an important stimulating role in the USSR. There were commercial and cooperative stores, restaurants, and markets where you could buy almost everything. In general the stability of retail prices for basic goods in the USSR during the war has no precedent in world wars.

Among other things, in order to improve the food supply for residents of cities and industrial areas, by the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of November 4, 1942, enterprises and institutions land was allocated to provide workers and employees with plots for individual gardening. The plots were assigned for 5-7 years, and the administration was prohibited from redistributing them during this period. Income received from these plots was not subject to agricultural tax. In 1944, 16.5 million people had individual plots (a total of 1 million 600 thousand hectares).

Another interesting economic indicator during the war was foreign trade.

In moments of the heaviest fighting and the absence of the main industrial and agricultural regions, the leadership of the USSR managed to establish active trade with foreign countries and reach a surplus foreign trade balance in 1945, while exceeding pre-war indicators (Table 2).

The Soviet Union's most significant foreign trade relations during the war were with the Mongolian People's Republic, Iran, China, Australia, New Zealand, India, Ceylon and some other countries. In 1944-1945, trade agreements were concluded with a number of Eastern European countries, Sweden and Finland. But throughout almost the entire war, the USSR had especially large and determining foreign economic relations with the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition.

In this regard, special mention should be made of the so-called Lend-Lease (the system in place during the war for the United States to loan or lease equipment, ammunition, strategic raw materials, food, and various goods and services to its allies). Supplies to the USSR were also carried out by Great Britain. However, these relations were by no means based on a disinterested allied basis. In the form of reverse Lend-Lease, the Soviet Union sent to the United States 300 thousand tons of chrome ore, 32 thousand tons of manganese ore, a large amount of platinum, gold, and timber. To the UK - silver, apatite concentrate, potassium chloride, lumber, flax, cotton, furs and much more. Here is how US Secretary of Commerce John Jones assesses this relationship: “With deliveries from the USSR, we not only returned our money, but also made a profit, which was far from a frequent occurrence in trade relations regulated by our state.”. American historian J. Herring put it even more specifically: « Lend-Lease was not...the most selfless act in human history. … It was an act of calculated selfishness, and the Americans were always clear about the benefits they could derive from it.”

Post-war recovery

According to the American economist Walt Whitman Rostow, the period in the history of Soviet society from 1929 to 1950 can be defined as the stage of achieving technological maturity, the movement towards a state when it “successfully and fully” applied a new technology for that time to the bulk of its resources.

Indeed, after the war, the Soviet Union developed at a pace unprecedented for a devastated and bloodless country. Thanks to the state system created by Stalin, many organizational, technological and innovative foundations made during the Second World War found their further development.

For example, the war greatly contributed to the accelerated development of new processing capacities in the natural resource base of the eastern regions of the country. There, thanks to the evacuation and the subsequent creation of branches, advanced academic science developed in the form of academic campuses and Siberian scientific centers.

At the final stage of the war and in the post-war period, the Soviet Union, for the first time in the world, began to implement long-term scientific and technological development programs, which provided for the concentration of national forces and assets in the most promising areas. The long-term plan for fundamental scientific research and development in a number of its areas, approved in the early 50s by the country's leadership, looked decades ahead, setting goals for Soviet science that seemed simply fantastic at that time. Largely thanks to these plans, already in the 1960s, the development of the Spiral reusable aerospace system project began. And on November 15, 1988, the Buran spacecraft made its first and, unfortunately, only flight. The flight took place without a crew, in fully automatic mode using an on-board computer and on-board software. The United States was able to make such a flight only in April of this year. As they say, not even 22 years have passed.

According to the UN, by the end of the 1950s, the USSR was already ahead of Italy in terms of labor productivity and reaching the level of Great Britain. During that period, the Soviet Union developed at the fastest pace in the world, surpassing even the growth dynamics of modern China. His annual growth rates at that time were 9-10%, five times the US growth rate.

In 1946, the industry of the USSR reached the pre-war level (1940), in 1948 it exceeded it by 18%, and in 1950 - by 73%..

Unclaimed experience

At the present stage, according to RAS estimates, 82% of the value of Russian GDP is natural rent, 12% - depreciation of industrial enterprises created in Soviet times, and only 6 % - directly productive labor. Consequently, 94% of domestic income is generated from natural resources and eating away the previous heritage.

At the same time, according to some data, India, with its staggering poverty, earns about $40 billion a year from computer software products - five times more than Russia from the sale of its most high-tech products - weapons (in 2009 to the Russian Federation through " Rosoboronexport sold military products worth $7.4 billion). The Russian Ministry of Defense, without any hesitation, says that the domestic defense-industrial complex is not able to independently produce individual samples of military equipment and components for them, and therefore it intends to expand the volume of purchases abroad. We are talking, in particular, about the purchase of ships, unmanned aerial vehicles, armor and a number of other materials.

Against the background of war and post-war indicators, these results of reforms and statements that the Soviet economy was inefficient are simply ridiculous. It should be noted that the inefficiency of the USSR economy began to “manifest itself” in the post-Stalin period, during the “thaw” of Khrushchev, when agriculture was undermined and during the “Brezhnev stagnation”, when the partyocracy of the CPSU became clan-like and disposed of the USSR economy as it pleased, without developing it in any way. her, which ultimately resulted in Gorbachev’s “perestroika” and Yeltsin’s “democratization.” Those. It was not the economic model as a whole that turned out to be ineffective, but the forms and methods of its modernization and renewal at the new historical stage. Moreover, in 1952, in his last work, “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR,” which can rightfully be considered Stalin’s testament, I.V. Stalin condemned Marxism and set the task for Soviet scientists to creatively develop it in order to further avoid the mistakes inherent in him. This circumstance allows us to conclude that Stalin was never a “Marxist”. He only used the terminology of “Marxism” because he had no other terminology.

Today, more than ever, the successful experience of our recent past, where there was a place for innovation, organizational creativity and a high level of labor productivity, is relevant, therefore, in order to again raise Russia to such a high level, to make the “modernization breakthrough” that President Dm speaks of .Medvedev, in practice, in all spheres of social life, one must be guided by the knowledge of the COB.

Based on materials from the article by V. Bondar “The Great Economy of the Great War”,
“However” dated May 5, 2010

In the materials of the KOB, the book examines in detail the issue of the creation by I.V. Stalin of a superconcern state - the USSR. We recommend that anyone interested in the life and work of J.V. Stalin refer to this work by the VP of the USSR.

Stalin's unbuilt economy. When liberals say that the Stalinist economy was built and within its framework the USSR bought grain from the West, they are lying. Grain began to be purchased only under Khrushchev, who destroyed what Stalin had built. Therefore, Stalin’s economy is “Terra incognita”. First, the difficult pre-war five-year plans, the relatively short peace before the war. Then terrible destruction and deprivation. Recovery. Annual price reductions. Gold ruble, refusal to trade for the dollar. And then Stalin was poisoned and his economy was destroyed.

The material of retired captain 1st rank, member of the Military Scientific Society of the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation, Sevastopol resident Vladimir Leonidovich Khramov, will help us understand what it was like - the Stalinist economy.

"Apologetics of Economic Stalinism

Dedicated to the Stalinist economic system.

There are more than enough modern teachings about how to do the right thing in those long-gone times. At the same time, it seems to go without saying that some stupid and narrow-minded people took part in making those long-standing decisions. It is also not customary to take into account the fact that those long-standing Soviet managers, led by I.V. Stalin, during the first five-year plans created and implemented a unique “Stalinist economic system”, the effectiveness of which was confirmed by the Great Victory over Nazi Germany and subsequent scientific and industrial achievements of the Soviet people.

The highest competence of Soviet managers is confirmed by the powerful scientific and production potential created under their leadership. The quality and reliability of his main brainchild - Soviet strategic weapons, are to this day the only and reliable guarantee of our state sovereignty. Therefore, for an “introduction to the topic”, a better understanding of the structure of the Soviet Union and the logic of Soviet managerial behavior, it is necessary to realize the presence of a number of features that fundamentally distinguish Russia (USSR) from other states.

ORIGINAL PROBLEMS OF RUSSIA

Our entire Motherland is a continuous overlay of negative factors on top of each other, wherever you look there is not a single bright spot. And the fact that the greatest of states was created on 1/6 of the earth’s land, half of which was in the permafrost zone, and the rest in areas of eternal raids from outside, is a fact quite unnatural...

For these reasons, there have always been two main problems in Russia:

Increased energy consumption of life activity (domestic and industrial human activity) - energy costs for the production of any product or service in our territories are 1.5 - 2 times higher than the corresponding indicators in Western countries only due to the cold climate. At the same time, increased transport and other infrastructure costs caused by our vast distances further increase this ratio.
Chronic lack of human resources necessary for the maintenance and development of social, economic, defense and other infrastructures under the influence of the mentioned negative factors.

It is quite obvious that the conditions for any type of material production in Russia are always initially worse than in the West, and this factor manifested itself with particular force during the development of capitalist relations. The essence of capitalism is the extraction of profit from the labor of hired workers in the interests of capitalists, owners of the means of production. The driving force of capitalist production is competition, in which those capitalists who can produce the same product at the lowest cost win. A loss, as a rule, is followed by degradation and loss of production. Thus, in an open capitalist market, the increased cost of our production, for objective reasons, makes our products uncompetitive and leads to degradation and collapse of the domestic economy.

SOVIET STATE CAPITALISM

Before the First World War, the tsarist government was the first in the world in terms of external debt. Among developed countries, besides Russia, only Japan had external public debt, the size of which was 2.6 times less than Russia’s. The total public debt of Russia on the eve of the October Revolution was 41.6 billion rubles, including external debt - 14.86 billion rubles. It is not without reason that one of the first decrees of the Soviet government was the “Decree on the Cancellation of State Loans” of January 21 (February 3), 1918, according to which all internal and external LOANS concluded by previous governments before December 1, 1917 were cancelled. The socialist model of capitalism operated on the basis of a social form of ownership of the means of production. A prerequisite for the functioning of this economic model was the closure of the domestic market from external competition - by decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of April 22, 1918, foreign trade was nationalized (a state monopoly was established).

Our production also developed due to profit from the labor of workers hired by the state, and capitalist competition took the form of socialist competition. The difference was that the profit, which we called “profitability,” was used in the interests of the entire society, and losing in social competition no longer meant the destruction of production, but only caused a reduction in bonus payments. In conditions of high energy costs and a shortage of labor resources, planned state capitalism, as a system of production relations, first of all, solved the problem of optimizing all types of activities to ensure the vital needs of the population and the country's sovereignty.

State planning bodies distributed available material and labor resources, first of all, to accomplish priority tasks. The priorities were:

Military-industrial complex (weapons and military equipment);

Fuel and energy complex (coal-oil-gas production, electric power industry);

Transport complex (railway, air and water transport);

Social complex (health care, education, housing, vital food and industrial goods).

STALIN'S ECONOMIC SYSTEM

(DOUBLE-CIRCUIT MONEY CIRCULATION MODEL)

In 1930-32 of the last century, as a result of the Credit Reform in the USSR, the “Stalinist economic system” was finally formed, the basis of which was a unique two-circuit model of monetary circulation:

In one of its circuits the circulation of non-cash money (rubles) was carried out;

In the other circuit - cash (rubles).

If we omit individual accounting and banking subtleties, then the essence of the two-circuit system is as follows:

Mandatory, basic conditions for the existence and functioning of the double-circuit model of monetary circulation are:

Absolute inadmissibility of turning (converting) non-cash money into cash;

The most severe state monopoly on foreign trade.

In non-cash rubles, production activity indicators were planned, resources were distributed, and mutual settlements between enterprises and organizations were carried out. The “total amount of payments” to individuals (salaries, pensions, scholarships, etc.) was planned in cash rubles. The “total amount of payments” was the monetary equivalent of all creative work performed in the state, one part of which was paid directly to its performers, and the other part was withdrawn through the tax service and paid to “state employees” (officials, military, pensioners, students, etc. ). The “total amount of payments” always corresponded to the “total total price” of consumer goods and services available in the country intended for sale to the population.

The “total total price,” in turn, was formed from its two main components:

The total price of “social”, vital goods and services (health care, education, housing, vital food and industrial goods, fuel, electricity, transport and housing services).

The total price for “prestigious” goods and services that are not vital (passenger cars, complex household appliances, crystal, carpets, jewelry).

The “highlight” of the two-circuit model was that the state set “optimal” retail prices for consumer goods and services, which did not depend on the cost of their production and reflected the principle of social and economic feasibility:

Prices for “social” goods and services were set much lower than their cost or made them completely free;
-Prices for “prestigious” goods and services, accordingly, were set much higher than their cost in such a way as to compensate for losses from lower prices for “social” goods and services as part of the “total total price”.

To justify and maintain high retail prices for “prestigious” goods, they were produced in volumes that supported their constant shortage and excessive demand. For example, the cost of a VAZ 2101 passenger car was 1,950 rubles, and its retail price was 5,500 rubles. Thus, by purchasing this car, the employee contributed 3,550 rubles free of charge to the state treasury, but this money did not disappear anywhere during Soviet times, but was redistributed to pay workers producing cheap or free social goods and services, including:

Cheap transport and housing and communal services;

Cheap gasoline, electricity and vital food and industrial goods;

Free healthcare, education and housing.

Thus:

The main task of the functioning of the non-cash money circulation circuit was to organize the optimal, planned development of all sectors of the national economy, providing for the vital needs of the population and ensuring the sovereignty of the country.

The main objectives of the functioning of the cash circulation circuit were:

Fair distribution of vital goods and services among the population of the USSR.
-Material incentives for the fulfillment of established targets, high quality and discipline of work.
-There were queues in organizations and enterprises for the purchase of prestigious goods and housing. The leaders of production were among the first to receive these benefits, while the laggards and undisciplined people were among the last.

Maintaining an optimal balance of supply and demand in the domestic market for goods and services at a level that excludes inflationary processes.
The system was very fair - no one was forced to buy “prestigious” goods, everyone, on the contrary, did it with enthusiasm and pleasure, and the overpayment made upon their purchase was returned to everyone as part of a package of social goods and services.

Note: It should be noted that the category of such goods also included tobacco and vodka (!), the demand for which, at any inflated prices, never fell, even with their absolute abundance. These goods were the object of a state monopoly - wages to the military and other government officials were paid from the profits from their sales. Taking into account the volume of its turnover and cost, these products were extremely profitable. Especially vodka. According to some data, the cost of 1 liter of vodka was about 27 kopecks, while its retail price, on average, was about 8 rubles per liter.

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW STAGE OF WORLD HISTORY

Two significant events in the final phase of World War II marked the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in world history:

On September 8, 1944, regular bombardment of London by German V-2 guided ballistic missiles began;

Thus, on our planet, capable industrial designs of fundamentally new guided means of delivering warheads over long distances, as well as fundamentally new warheads of enormous destructive power, were created and used (still separately from each other). The combination of these two qualities in one form - a guided ballistic launch vehicle of a nuclear charge could provide its owner with unprecedented military-strategic capabilities, as well as guarantee security from any external threat. This weapon had great prospects for development, both in achieving unlimited reach of targets and in increasing the power of the delivered charge. It was this factor that aggravated the post-war international situation to the limit, as it served as the impetus for the start of the nuclear missile arms race.

The arms race is an objective, self-sustaining process, developing according to the logic of “confrontation between armor and projectile”, when a potential enemy is forced to respond to the creation of a more advanced weapon of destruction by creating a corresponding effective means of defense (and vice versa) and so on ad infinitum. Given that the parties have “absolute” nuclear missile weapons, such behavior of the race participants is quite understandable. Everyone fears that as soon as the ratio of their combat capabilities reaches a level where one side can be guaranteed to destroy the other side with impunity or with acceptable damage to itself, it, at its own discretion, can do this at any time convenient for itself.

THE LOGIC OF THE ARMS RACE

It was the “Stalinist economic system” that provided the conditions for preparing the Soviet economy for the inevitable war. The Soviet Union won the Great Patriotic War, but as a result of the strategic arms race that unfolded immediately after its completion, they found themselves in a difficult economic situation. Half the country lay in ruins and there was a chronic shortage of labor resources (in the war the country lost 27 million of its most capable population), and the entire Western world stood against us.

Not falling behind in the race was a matter of life, so the whole country was forced to adapt to its needs. And the “Stalinist economic system” again confirmed its highest efficiency. It is precisely thanks to its unique properties that the country was able to handle the greatest scientific and technical projects and the enormous economic costs necessary to create new types of weapons. Entire industrial sectors and scientific areas had to be created literally from scratch - so in the first half of the 50s, two specialized ministries were created, “tailored” to nuclear missile issues:

06.26.1953 - Ministry of Medium Engineering (MSM) - a specialized industry that was engaged in the development and production of nuclear warheads;

04/02/1955 - Ministry of General Engineering (MOM) - a specialized industry that was engaged in the development and production of rocket and space technology. The nuclear missile race also caused a sharp increase in the country's demand for aluminum and the capacity of existing aluminum plants was clearly not enough. Aluminum is the main metal from whose alloys rockets, airplanes and spacecraft are made, as well as some types of lightweight armor coating, which is in demand in conditions of the use of nuclear weapons. Thus, in connection with the beginning of the mass use of aluminum alloys, the organization of its mass production began to be a priority state task. The specificity of aluminum production is that it is very energy-intensive - to produce 1000 kg of rough aluminum it is necessary to spend about 17 thousand kWh of electricity, therefore, first of all, it was necessary to create powerful sources of electricity.

The country tensed up, “tightened its belt” and in the center of Siberia the following were built:

Powerful hydroelectric power plants (HPP):

Bratsk hydroelectric power station (4500 MW) - in 1954-67;

Krasnoyarsk hydroelectric power station (6000 MW) - in 1956-71;

Sayano-Shushenskaya HPP (6400 MW) - in 1963-85

Large aluminum smelters:

Bratsk Aluminum Plant - in 1956 - 66;

Krasnoyarsk Aluminum Plant - in 1959 - 64;

Sayan Aluminum Plant - in 1975 - 85

Due to the urgency of the ongoing tasks to create strategic nuclear missile weapons, the issue of ensuring their implementation with the necessary material and labor resources has become especially acute. There were no free people and they could only be removed from other, less important areas at that time - that is why shipbuilding programs were curtailed, massive reductions in the Armed Forces and other similar events were carried out. Some of the industries and scientific areas, for objective reasons, pulled ahead, some lagged behind, but the inexorable laws of the arms race dictated their conditions.

There was no time and it was impossible to wait for the moment of proportional development of all industries and directions, sufficient to create an ideal weapon. At least some kind of deterrent weapon was needed now and immediately - and it was created from what was available, relying on already achieved (not always perfect) scientific, design and technological capabilities. Thus, the arms race is, first of all, a race of the real economic, organizational, scientific and technological capabilities of the racing states...

COLLEGIALITY AS THE BASIS FOR MAKING ANY DECISIONS ON MILITARY-TECHNICAL ISSUES

The need to create strategic weapons entailed a multiple complication of the designs and technologies used, and therefore, the main distinguishing feature of this new stage was a proportional increase in co-executors of defense work at all levels:

At the top level, dozens of organizations and enterprises - co-executors representing various ministries and departments - are involved in the creation and production of specific types of strategic weapons.

At the lower level - in the creation and production of even an insignificant design element of a specific sample B and VT, as a rule, a significant number of various narrow specialists from various departments (designers, technologists, chemists, etc.) are involved.

Thus, the creation and production of strategic naval weapons is a very complex joint work of numerous teams representing various industries and departments (rocket scientists, nuclear scientists, shipbuilders, metallurgists, various military specialists, etc.). This feature of the creation of new weapons has caused an objective need to develop mechanisms for making joint decisions that take into account a mutually acceptable balance of the capabilities of numerous co-executors of this work and the interests of the Customer (USSR Defense Ministry). Since joint collective work was impossible without such a mechanism, one was worked out, created and ideally spelled out in numerous regulatory documents.

In general terms, a joint decision is any organizational and technical document that defines the methods and procedure for solving any technical, organizational or financial problem, sealed with the consenting signatures of interested parties. The established mechanism for making joint decisions on military-technical issues was mandatory for any level of competence - starting from solving an intra-shop problem of an enterprise that manufactures military equipment (at the level of a military representative) and ending with decisions at the national level, by which the strategic desires of military leaders were brought into line with real-life capabilities branches of Soviet industry.

From the first post-war years, under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, units were created and operated in various forms to coordinate the work of the defense industry. Finally, on December 6, 1957, the Commission on Military-Industrial Issues was created under the Presidium of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. It was the main collegial body of the country, which coordinated the activities of the military-industrial complex until the end of the Soviet period. The main and most effective form of making collegial decisions on military-technical issues was the Council of Chief Designers, which was introduced into permanent practice back in 1947 by S.P. Korolev.

This body was created under the General Designer and under his chairmanship. The SGK consisted of the Chief Designers of the complex's composite products and carried out interdepartmental coordination and technical coordination of the work of all enterprises and co-executing organizations. The decisions of the State Control Commission became binding on all bodies. Issues regarding the types of military equipment being accepted for service were finally settled during the work of interdepartmental commissions (IMC). Any decision at the government level has always been based on dozens of joint decisions at lower levels, which were made by qualified specialists on the components of the general problem. And each of these numerous decisions had its own truth and logic. As a rule, this was the only possible and optimal solution for that period of time, based on numerous objective factors and taking into account the interests and capabilities of all parties involved, some of which simply cannot be seen or understood “at a glance” from our present time...

When trying to evaluate the activities of predecessors using text documents, one must keep in mind that the adoption of those distant organizational and military-technical decisions was influenced by many “self-evident” considerations and factors characteristic of that time, which were equally understood and meant by all “signatories” , but, due to their obviousness, they were not even mentioned in the documents. It is always necessary to remember that not every thought taken from the context of a historical period can be understood at another time without additional explanation.

THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET FINANCIAL SYSTEM AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE STATE

As already mentioned, the double-circuit financial system was created in the 30s of the last century by smart people, led by I.V. Stalin, and this was the only possible option for the further development of the Soviet economy, providing for the vital needs of the population and the sovereignty of the country. These people proved their professionalism and high business qualities even during the years of the Revolution and the Civil War, and during the difficult years of the first five-year plans and the Great Patriotic War, they provided the necessary technical and organizational conditions for Victory over Nazi Germany.

The life resource of these people, unfortunately, was not limitless - I.V. Stalin passed away in 1953, A.N. Kosygin in 1980, L.I. Brezhnev in 1982, D.F. Ustinov in 1984 , in 1984 - Yu.V. Andropov, in 1985 - K.U. Chernenko. These were also those Soviet leaders who understood how the unique mechanism of the Soviet economy worked and what absolutely could not be touched in it.

In 1985, a person who was formed as a personality in post-Stalin times, during the “undercover” struggle and party-apparatus intrigues, took over the highest party and state post of the Soviet Union - this was the beginning of the end of the Soviet economy and state.

It all started with a thoughtless fight against alcoholism...

According to the memoirs of the former chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee N. Baibakov: “According to the 1985 plan, adopted before the anti-alcohol regulations, it was planned to receive 60 billion rubles from the sale of alcoholic beverages. arrived". This was precisely the cash that was used to pay salaries to the military and other government officials. After the implementation of anti-alcohol regulations, the state treasury received 38 billion rubles in 1986 and 35 billion rubles in 1987. Then the collapse of economic ties with the CMEA countries began, from where the retail trade network received consumer goods worth about 27 billion rubles in 1985. In 1987, they were received in the amount of 9.8 billion rubles. For these items alone (vodka and imports), an excess of cash rubles amounting to more than 40 billion rubles was formed on the domestic market, not covered by goods...

In 1987, the basic foundations of the Soviet economy were finally destroyed:

- The “Law on State Enterprise (Association)” of 1987 opened the contours of non-cash money - their conversion into cash was allowed;

The state monopoly of foreign trade was actually abolished - from January 1, 1987, such a right was given to 20 ministries and 70 large enterprises.

Then things started to happen - there was a shortage of goods, prices went up and inflation began. In 1989, mass strikes of miners began... Quite predictably, August 1991 came, when the actions of the overgrown and unshaven people of the capital destroyed the last foundations of the Soviet state, created in the interests of all working people...

Note: The notorious “oil needle,” which the “democrats” love to talk about, did not have any decisive influence on the destruction of the domestic consumer market, since only consumer goods from capitalist countries were purchased with petrodollars, the share of which in the total volume of consumer imports was is small - about 17% (the decrease in their volume in the total volume of the consumer market in 1985-87 amounted to approximately from 6 to 2 billion rubles). In settlements with the CMEA countries, where the bulk of consumer imports came from, the internal collective currency of the CMEA, the “transferable ruble,” was used.

MAIN CONCLUSIONS:

The October Revolution of 1917 occurred due to the impossibility of further economic development of Russia in the conditions of an open capitalist market. Its final result was the creation, the only possible for our further existence, of the “Stalinist economic system”, based on a double-circuit model of monetary circulation, with the obligatory condition of closing the domestic market from external competition. This economic model confirmed its effectiveness in the pre-war five-year plans, during the Great Patriotic War and during the era of the nuclear missile arms race.

From the heights of modern historical experience, we can safely say that it is the presence of nuclear missile weapons in a state that is the most important component of the system for ensuring its real sovereignty. And now there is no longer any doubt that the military-political leadership of the USSR in those distant years, at least, was not mistaken in concentrating all available resources on the creation and development of this particular type of weapon. It is this type of weapons, inherited from the USSR, that is currently the only guarantor of Russia’s state sovereignty.

There were no objective reasons or prerequisites for the destruction of the Soviet state system. The cause of the death of the USSR is the forcible bringing of the Soviet economic system into a non-working state.

In an open capitalist market, Russia has no economic future. The further sovereign existence of our Motherland can only be ensured by its return to the basic principles of the Stalinist economic system (by the way, the technology for returning to the Stalinist economic model can be previously “tested” in Novorossiya).