State of the economy of the USSR after the end of the war. Topic: "The economy of the USSR after the Second World War Economic development of the USSR after the Second World War

Introduction

After the victory in the Great Patriotic War and the surrender of Japan, September 3, 1945 began completely new period in the life of the Soviet state. In 1945, the victory gave rise among the people to hopes for a better life, the weakening of the pressure of the totalitarian state on the individual, the elimination of its most odious costs. The potential for change in the political regime, economy, and culture was opened up. The Soviet Union was a victorious but completely destroyed country. In order to win the greatest war in history, it was necessary to suffer losses that exceeded the losses of the enemy and, in general, the losses of any nation in any war. It was only through the efforts of millions that it was possible to raise the destroyed cities and factories from the ruins, to restore the infrastructure. This period cannot but excite us - the citizens of today's Russia, because. the generation of our parents are the children of those difficult years.

The state of the economy of the USSR after the end of the war

All the main granaries - Ukraine, the North Caucasus, a significant part of the Volga region - were also in the flames of war. So much was destroyed that restoration could take many years, or even decades. The war turned out to be huge human and material losses for the USSR. It claimed almost 27 million human lives. 1,710 cities and urban-type settlements were destroyed, 70,000 villages and villages were destroyed, 31,850 plants and factories, 1,135 mines, and 65,000 km of railway lines were blown up and put out of action. The sown areas decreased by 36.8 million hectares. The country has lost about one third of its national wealth. In the context of the transition from war to peace, questions arose about the ways of further development of the country's economy, about its structure and management system. It was not only about the conversion of military production, but also about the expediency of maintaining the existing model of the economy. In many ways, it was formed in the emergency situation of the thirties. The war further strengthened this "extraordinary" nature of the economy and left an imprint on its structure and system of organization. The war years revealed the strong features of the existing economic model, and in particular, very high mobilization capabilities, the ability to short time to organize the mass production of high-quality weapons and provide the army and the military-industrial complex with the necessary resources by overstraining other sectors of the economy. But the war also emphasized with all its force the weaknesses of the Soviet economy: high specific gravity manual labor, low productivity and quality of non-military products. What was tolerable in peacetime, before the war, now required a radical solution. The question was whether it was necessary to return to the pre-war model of the economy with its hypertrophied military sectors, the strictest centralization, unlimited planning in determining the activities of each enterprise, the complete absence of any elements of market exchange, and strict control over the work of the administration. The post-war period required a restructuring of the type of work government agencies to solve two contradictory tasks: the conversion of the huge military-industrial complex that took shape during the war, with the aim of the fastest modernization of the economy; the creation of two fundamentally new weapons systems that guarantee the security of the country - nuclear weapons and invulnerable means of their delivery (ballistic missiles). The work of a large number of departments began to be combined into intersectoral targeted programs. It was a qualitatively new type of state administration, although it was not so much the structure of bodies that changed, but rather the functions. These changes are less noticeable than structural ones, but the state is a system, and the process in it is no less important than the structure.

The conversion of the military industry was carried out quickly, raising the technical level of civilian industries (and thus allowing then to move on to the creation of new military industries). The People's Commissariat of Ammunition was rebuilt into the People's Commissariat of Agricultural Engineering. The People's Commissariat for mortar weapons in the People's Commissariat for Mechanical Engineering and Instrumentation, the People's Commissariat for the Tank Industry in the People's Commissariat for Transport Engineering, etc. (in 1946 the people's commissariats began to be called ministries).

As a result of mass evacuation of industry to the east and destruction during the occupation and hostilities in the European part, 32,000 industrial enterprises changed a lot economical geography countries. Immediately after the war, a corresponding reorganization of the management system began - along with the sectoral principle, they began to introduce the territorial principle into it. The point was to bring government bodies closer to enterprises, for which the ministries were disaggregated: during the war there were 25 of them, and in 1947 it became 34. For example, coal mining was now managed by the People's Commissariat of the Coal Industry western regions and the People's Commissariat of the coal industry of the eastern regions. Similarly, the People's Commissariat was divided oil industry. On this wave, among economic managers, economists began to appear striving to reorganize the system of economic management, to soften those aspects of it that held back the initiative and independence of enterprises, and in particular, to weaken the fetters of over-centralization. Analyzing the current economic system, individual scientists and industrialists proposed to carry out transformations in the spirit of the NEP: with the prevailing domination public sector officially allow the private sector, covering primarily the service sector, small-scale production. The mixed economy naturally used market relations. An explanation for such sentiments can be sought in the situation that developed during the war. The economy of the country during the war, the way of life of the population, the organization of the work of local authorities acquired peculiar features. With the transfer of the work of the main branches of industry to meet the needs of the front, the output of civilian products was sharply reduced, providing for the life of the population, supplying it with the most necessary goods and services, local authorities began to deal mainly with organizing small-scale production, involving handicraftsmen and artisans in the production of necessary goods. As a result, handicraft industry developed, private trade revived, and not only in food products, but in manufactured goods. Only a small part of the population was covered by centralized supply.

The war taught many leaders of all levels to a certain independence and initiative. After the war, local authorities made attempts to expand the production of goods for the population not only at small handicraft workshops, but also at large factories directly subordinated to the central ministries. Council of Ministers Russian Federation along with management Leningrad region in 1947, a fair was organized in the city, at which enterprises not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other republics, sold materials they did not need. The fair opened the possibility of establishing independent economic ties between industrial enterprises, bypassing the center. To a certain extent, it contributed to the expansion of the scope of market relations (several years later, the organizers of this fair paid with their lives for their initiative). Hopes for transformations in the field of economic management turned out to be unrealizable.

From the end of the 1940s, a course was taken to strengthen the former administrative-command methods of leadership, to further develop the existing model of the economy. To understand the reasons for such a decision, one must keep in mind the dual purpose of Russian industry. Its high mobilization capabilities during the war years were largely due to the fact that the economy from the very beginning was focused on working in wartime conditions. All the factories that were created in the prewar years had both a civilian profile and a military one. Thus, the question of the model of the economy must necessarily touch upon this key aspect as well. It was necessary to decide whether the economy would be truly civilian or, as before, remains a two-faced Janus: peaceful in words and military in essence.

Stalin's position became decisive - all attempts at change in this area ran into his imperial ambitions. As a result, the Soviet economy returned to the militaristic model with all its inherent shortcomings. Also during this period, the question arose: what is the Soviet system of economy (it was called socialism, but this is a purely conventional concept that does not answer the question). Until the end of the war, life set such clear and urgent tasks that there was no great need for theory. Now it was necessary to understand the meaning of the plan, goods, money and the market in the economy of the USSR.

Feeling that the question was complex and that there was no ready answer in Marxism, Stalin delayed the publication of a textbook on the political economy of socialism as long as he could. In 1952 he published important work « Economic problems socialism in the USSR”, where he carefully, without entering into polemics with Marxism, gave an understanding of the Soviet economy as a non-market economy of a civilization different from the West (“capitalism”). No other interpretation was possible.

The country began to restore the economy in the year of the war, when in 1943. A special party and government resolution was adopted "On urgent measures to restore the economy in areas liberated from German occupation." By the end of the war, the colossal efforts of the Soviet people in these areas managed to restore industrial production to a third of the 1940 level. The liberated areas in 1944 produced more than half of the nationwide grain procurements, a quarter of livestock and poultry, and about a third of dairy products. However, as the central task of restoration, the country faced it only after the end of the war. At the end of May 1945 State Committee The defense decided to transfer part of the defense enterprises to the production of goods for the population. Somewhat later, a law was passed on the demobilization of thirteen ages of army personnel. These resolutions marked the beginning of the transition of the Soviet Union to peaceful construction. In September 1945, the GKO was abolished. All functions of governing the country were concentrated in the hands of the Council of People's Commissars (in March 1946 it was transformed into the Council of Ministers of the USSR). Measures were taken to restore normal work in enterprises and institutions. Mandatory overtime work was abolished, the 8-hour working day and annual paid holidays were restored. The budget for the third and fourth quarters of 1945 and for 1946 was considered. Appropriations for military needs were reduced and spending on the development of civilian sectors of the economy increased. The restructuring of the national economy and social life in relation to peacetime conditions was completed mainly in 1946. In March 1946, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved a plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1946-1950. The main task five year plan was to restore the areas of the country that were occupied, to reach the pre-war level of development of industry and agriculture, and then surpass them. The plan provided for the priority development of heavy and defense industries. Significant financial resources, material and labor resources. It was planned to develop new coal regions, expand the metallurgical base in the east of the country. One of the conditions for the fulfillment of planned targets was the maximum use of scientific and technological progress. The year 1946 was the most difficult in the post-war development of industry.

To switch enterprises to the production of civilian products, the production technology was changed, new equipment was created, and retraining of personnel was carried out. In accordance with the five-year plan, restoration work began in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. The coal industry of Donbass was revived. Zaporizhstal was restored, Dneproges was put into operation. At the same time, construction of new and reconstruction of existing plants and factories was carried out. Over 6,200 industrial enterprises were restored and rebuilt during the five years. 1 Particular attention was paid to the development of metallurgy, mechanical engineering, fuel and energy and military-industrial complexes. The foundations of nuclear energy and the radio-electronic industry were laid. New industry giants emerged in the Urals, in Siberia, in the republics of Transcaucasia and Central Asia (Ust-Kamenogorsk lead-zinc plant, Kutaisi automobile plant). The country's first long-distance gas pipeline Saratov - Moscow was put into operation. The Rybinsk and Sukhumi hydroelectric power plants began to operate.

Enterprises were equipped with new technology. The mechanization of labor-intensive processes in ferrous metallurgy and the coal industry has increased. The electrification of production continued. By the end of the five-year plan, the electric power of labor in industry exceeded the level of 1940 by one and a half times. A large amount of industrial work was carried out in the republics and regions included in the USSR on the eve of the Second World War. In the western regions of Ukraine, in the Baltic republics, new industries were created, in particular, gas and automobile, metalworking and electrical engineering. The peat industry and electric power industry have been developed in Western Belarus. Work on the restoration of industry was basically completed in 1948. But at individual metallurgical enterprises, they continued even in the early 50s. The mass industrial heroism of the Soviet people, expressed in numerous labor initiatives (the introduction of high-speed methods of work, the movement for metal savings and high product quality, the movement of multi-machine operators, etc.), contributed to the successful fulfillment of planned targets. By the end of the five-year plan, the level industrial production 73% higher than pre-war. However, the priority development of heavy industry, the redistribution in its favor of funds from the light and food industries led to a further deformation of the industrial structure towards an increase in the production of group A products. The restoration of industry and transport, new industrial construction led to an increase in the size of the working class. After the war, the country was in ruins, and the question arose of choosing a path economic development. The alternative could be market reforms, but the existing political system was not ready for this step. The directive economy still retained the mobilization character that was inherent in it during the years of the first five-year plans and during the war years. Millions of people were sent in an organized manner to the restoration of the Dneproges, the metallurgical plants of Krivoy Rog, the mines of Donbass, as well as the construction of new factories, hydroelectric power stations, etc. The development of the USSR economy rested on its excessive centralization. All economic issues, large and small, were decided only in the center, and local economic bodies were strictly limited in solving any cases. The main material and financial resources needed to fulfill the planned targets were distributed through a large number of bureaucratic instances. Departmental disunity, mismanagement and confusion led to constant downtime in production, storming, huge material costs, absurd transportation from end to end of an immense country. The Soviet Union received reparations from Germany in the amount of 4.3 billion dollars. Industrial equipment, including even entire factory complexes, was exported to the Soviet Union as reparations from Germany and other defeated countries. However, the Soviet economy was never able to properly dispose of this wealth due to general mismanagement, and valuable equipment, machine tools, etc. gradually turned into scrap metal. 1.5 million German and 0.5 million Japanese prisoners of war worked in the USSR. In addition, the GULAI system during this period contained approximately 8-9 million prisoners, whose work was practically unpaid. The division of the world into two hostile camps had negative consequences for the country's economy. From 1945 to 1950, foreign trade turnover with Western countries decreased by 35%, which had a noticeable effect on the Soviet economy, which was deprived of new equipment and advanced technologies. That is why in the mid-1950s. The Soviet Union faced the need for profound socio-economic and political changes. Since the path of progressive political changes was blocked, narrowed down to possible (and even not very serious) amendments to liberalization, the most constructive ideas that appeared in the first post-war years were not about politics, but about the economy. The Central Committee of the CPSU (b) considered various proposals of economists in this regard. Among them is the manuscript “Postwar domestic economy”, owned by S.D. Alexander. The essence of his proposals was as follows: - the transformation of state enterprises into joint-stock or share partnerships, in which the workers and employees themselves act as shareholders, and the authorized elected council of shareholders manages; - decentralization of the supply of raw materials and materials to enterprises by creating district and regional industrial supplies instead of supplies under the people's commissariats and central administrations; - abolition of the state system. procurement of agricultural products, granting collective farms and state farms the right to freely sell on the market; - reform monetary system taking into account the gold parity; - liquidation of state trade and transfer of its functions to trade cooperatives and share partnerships. These ideas can be seen as the foundations of a new economic model, built on the principles of the market and the partial denationalization of the economy - very bold and progressive for that time. True, the ideas of S.D. Alexander had to share the fate of other radical projects, they were classified as "harmful" and decommissioned into the "archive". The Center, despite the well-known hesitations, in matters of principle relating to the foundations of building economic and political models of development, remained firmly committed to the previous course. Therefore, the center was receptive only to those ideas that did not affect the foundations of the supporting structure, i.e. did not encroach on the exclusive role of the state in matters of governance, financial support, control and did not contradict the main postulates of ideology. The first attempt to reform the command-administrative system is closely connected with the end in March 1953 of the Stalinist period in the history of the USSR, when the country's administration was concentrated in the hands of three politicians: Chairman of the Council of Ministers G.M. Malenkov, Minister of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria and Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N.S. Khrushchev. A struggle broke out between them for sole power, during which each of them counted on the support of the party-state nomenklatura. This new layer of Soviet society (secretaries of the Central Committee of the republican communist parties, regional committees, regional committees, etc.) was ready to support one of these leaders of the country, provided that he was given greater independence in solving local issues and, most importantly, guarantees of personal security, an end to political “purges” and repression.

Subject to these conditions, the nomenklatura was ready to agree to reforms within certain limits, beyond which it could not and did not want to go. In the course of the reforms, it was necessary to reorganize or abolish the Gulag system, stimulate the development of the agrarian sector of the economy, carry out transformations in the social sphere, reduce the tension of constant “mobilization” in solving economic problems and in search of internal and external enemies. As a result of a difficult struggle on the political "Olympus", N.S., supported by the nomenclature, came to power. Khrushchev, who quickly pushed his rivals aside. In 1953, L. Beria was arrested and shot on the absurd charge of "collaborating with imperialist intelligence services" and "conspiring to restore the rule of the bourgeoisie." In January 1955, G. Malenkov submitted a forced resignation. In 1957, the “anti-party group” consisting of G. Malenkov, L. Kaganovich, V. Molotov and others was expelled from the top leadership. Khrushchev, being the first secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in 1958 also became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Political changes in the USSR needed to be reinforced by changes in the economy. Speaking in August 1953 at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, G.M. Malenkov clearly formulated the main directions economic policy: a sharp rise in the production of consumer goods, large investments in the light industry. Such a radical turn, it would seem, should forever change the fundamental guidelines for the development of the Soviet economy, which had been established in previous decades. But this, as the history of the country's development has shown, did not happen. After the war, various administrative reforms were carried out several times, but they did not introduce fundamental changes into the essence of the planning and administrative system.

In the mid-1950s, attempts were made to abandon the use of mobilization measures in solving economic problems. A few years later, it became clear that this task was unsolvable for the Soviet economy, since the economic incentives for development were incompatible with the command system. It was still necessary to organize masses of people to carry out various projects. Examples include calls to young people to participate in the development of virgin lands, in the construction of grandiose "buildings of communism" in Siberia and the Far East. As an example of a not very well-thought-out reform, one can cite an attempt to restructure administration along a territorial basis (1957). In the course of this reform, many branch union ministries were abolished, and territorial councils of the national economy (sovnarkhozes) appeared instead. Only the ministries in charge of military production, the Ministry of Defense, Foreign and Internal Affairs, and some others were not affected by this restructuring. Thus, an attempt was made to decentralize management. In total, 105 economic administrative regions were created in the country, including 70 in the RSFSR, 11 in Ukraine, 9 in Kazakhstan, 4 in Uzbekistan, and in the other republics - one economic council each. The functions of the State Planning Committee of the USSR remained only the general planning and coordination of territorial and sectoral plans, the distribution of the most important funds among the Union republics. The first results of the management reform were quite successful. So, already in 1958, i.e. a year after it began, the increase in national income amounted to 12.4% (compared with 7% in 1957). The scale of industrial specialization and intersectoral cooperation has increased, and the process of creating and introducing new technology into production has accelerated. But, according to experts, the effect obtained is not only the result of perestroika itself. The point is also that for some period the enterprises turned out to be “ownerless” (when the ministries were no longer actually functioning, and the economic councils had not yet been formed), and it was during this period that they began to work noticeably more productively, without feeling any leadership “from above”. But as soon as it took shape new system management, the previous negative phenomena in the economy began to intensify. Moreover, new features have appeared: parochialism, stricter administration, constantly growing “own”, local bureaucracy. And although outwardly the new, “sovnarkhozovskaya” management system differed significantly from the former, “ministerial” one, its essence remained the same. The former principle of distribution of raw materials and products was preserved, the same dictate of the supplier in relation to the consumer. Economic levers simply could not become decisive in the conditions of the absolute dominance of the command-administrative system.

All reorganizations, in the end, did not lead to noticeable success. Moreover, if in 1951-1955. industrial production increased by 85%, agricultural production - by 20.5%, and in 1956-1960 by 64.3 and 30%, respectively (moreover, the growth of agricultural production was mainly due to the development of new lands), then in 1961-1965 these figures began to decline and amounted to 51 and 11%.

So, centrifugal forces noticeably weakened the economic potential of the country, many economic councils were unable to solve major production problems. Already in 1959, the consolidation of economic councils began: the weaker ones began to join the more powerful ones (by analogy with the consolidation of collective farms). The centripetal tendency turned out to be stronger. Quite soon, the former hierarchical structure in the country's economy was restored. Scientists, economists and practitioners tried to develop new approaches to the country's economic development, especially in the field of long-term planning and forecasting, and the definition of strategic macroeconomic goals. But these developments were not designed for quick returns, so they were not given enough attention. The country's leadership needed real results at the present time, and therefore all forces were directed to endless adjustments to current plans. For example, a detailed plan for the fifth five-year plan (1951-1955) was never drawn up, and the Directives of the 19th Party Congress became the starting document that guided the work of the entire economy for five years. These were just the contours of a five-year plan, but there was no concrete plan. The same situation developed with the sixth five-year plan (1956-1960). Traditionally, so-called grassroots planning has been weak; planning at the enterprise level. Grassroots planning targets were often adjusted, so the plan turned into a purely nominal document, which is directly related only to the process of calculating wages and bonus payments, which depended on the percentage of fulfillment and overfulfillment of the plan. Since, as noted above, the plans were constantly being adjusted, the plans that were implemented (or more precisely, were not implemented) were not at all the plans that were adopted at the beginning of the planning period (year, five-year plan). Gosplan "bargained" with ministries, ministries - with enterprises about what plan they could carry out with the available resources. But the supply of resources under such a plan was still disrupted, and “bidding” began again in terms of the figures of the plan, in terms of the amount of supplies, etc. All this confirms the conclusion that the Soviet economy depended to a greater extent not on literate economic developments, but from political decisions that are constantly changing in directly opposite directions and leading most often to a dead end. Fruitless attempts were made in the country to improve the structure of the state apparatus, to endow ministers, heads of central departments, directors of enterprises with new rights or, conversely, to limit their powers, to separate existing planning bodies and create new ones, etc. There were many such “reforms” in the 1950s and 1960s, but none of them brought real improvement to the work command system. Basically, when determining the priorities of post-war economic development, when developing the fourth five-year plan - the recovery plan - the country's leadership actually returned to the pre-war model of economic development and pre-war methods of conducting economic policy. This means that the development of industry, primarily heavy industry, had to be carried out not only to the detriment of the interests of the agrarian economy and the sphere of consumption (i.e., as a result of the appropriate distribution of budgetary funds), but also largely at their expense, because. the pre-war policy of “transferring” funds from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector continued (hence, for example, the unprecedented increase in taxes on the peasantry in the post-war period)

The war turned out to be huge human and material losses for the USSR. It claimed almost 27 million human lives. 1,710 cities and urban-type settlements were destroyed, 70,000 villages and villages were destroyed, 31,850 plants and factories, 1,135 mines, and 65,000 km of railway lines were blown up and put out of action. The sown areas decreased by 36.8 million hectares. The country has lost about one third of its national wealth.

However, as the central task of restoration, the country faced it only after the end of the war.

Economic discussions 1945 - 1946

In August 1945, the government instructed the State Planning Commission (N. Voznesensky) to prepare a draft of the fourth five-year plan. During its discussion, proposals were made for some softening of the voluntarist pressure in the management of the economy, the reorganization of collective farms. The "democratic alternative" also manifested itself in the course of a closed discussion of the draft of the new Constitution of the USSR prepared in 1946. In it, in particular, along with recognition of the authority state property, the existence of small private farms of peasants and handicraftsmen, based on personal labor and excluding the exploitation of the labor of others, was allowed. During the discussion of this project by nomenklatura workers in the center and in the field, ideas were voiced about the need for decentralization economic life, granting greater rights to regions and people's commissariats. "From below" there were more and more calls for the liquidation of collective farms due to their inefficiency. As a rule, two arguments were cited to justify these positions: firstly, the relative weakening of state pressure on the manufacturer during the war years, which gave a positive result; secondly, a direct analogy was drawn with the recovery period after the civil war, when the revival of the economy began with the revival of the private sector, the decentralization of governance and the priority development of light and food industries.

However, these discussions were won by the point of view of Stalin, who at the beginning of 1946 announced the continuation of the course taken before the war to complete the construction of socialism and build communism. This also meant a return to the pre-war model of super-centralization in economic planning and management, and at the same time to those contradictions and disproportions between sectors of the economy that developed in the 1930s.

Industry development.

The restoration of industry took place in very difficult conditions. In the first post-war years, the work of the Soviet people was not much different from the military emergency. The constant shortage of food (the card system was abolished only in 1947), the most difficult working and living conditions, high level morbidity and mortality were explained to the population by the fact that the long-awaited peace had just come and life was about to get better. However, this did not happen.

After the monetary reform of 1947, with average salary about 500 rubles per month, the cost of a kilogram of bread was 3-4 rubles, a kilogram of meat - 28-32 rubles, butter - over 60 rubles, a dozen eggs - about 11 rubles. To buy a woolen suit, one had to pay three average monthly salaries. As before the war, from one to one and a half monthly salaries per year was spent on the purchase of compulsory government bonds. Many working-class families still lived in dugouts and barracks, and sometimes worked in the open air or in unheated premises, on old or worn-out equipment.

Nevertheless, some wartime restrictions were lifted: the 8-hour working day and annual holidays were reintroduced, and forced overtime was abolished. Restoration took place in conditions of a sharp increase in migration processes. Caused by the demobilization of the army (its number decreased from 11.4 million in 1945 to 2.9 million in 1948), the repatriation of Soviet citizens from Europe, the return of refugees and evacuees from the eastern regions of the country. Another difficulty in the development of industry was its conversion, which was completed mainly by 1947. Considerable funds were also spent on supporting the allied Eastern European countries.

Huge losses in the war turned into a shortage of labor, which, in turn, led to an increase in the turnover of personnel who were looking for more profitable terms labor.

To compensate for these costs, as before, it was necessary to increase the transfer of funds from the countryside to the city and the development of the labor activity of workers. One of the most famous initiatives of those years was the movement of "speed workers", initiated by the Leningrad turner G.S. Bortkevich, who completed a 13-day production rate on a lathe in February 1948 in one shift. The movement became massive. At some enterprises, attempts were made to introduce self-financing. But to consolidate these innovations were not

measures of material incentives were taken, on the contrary, with an increase in labor productivity, prices went down. It was beneficial for the administrative-command system to achieve high production results without additional investments.

For the first time in many years after the war, there was a tendency towards a wider use of scientific and technical developments in production, but it manifested itself mainly only at enterprises of the military-industrial complex (MIC), where, in the conditions of the beginning of the Cold War, the process of developing nuclear and thermonuclear weapons was going on. , new missile systems, new models of tank and aviation equipment.

Along with the priority development of the military-industrial complex, preference was also given to machine building, metallurgy, the fuel and energy industries, the development of which accounted for 88% of capital investments in industry. The light and food industries, as before, were financed on a residual basis (12%) and, naturally, did not satisfy even the minimum needs of the population.

In total, during the years of the 4th five-year plan (1946-1950), 6200 large enterprises. In 1950, according to official data, industrial production exceeded pre-war figures by 73%. True, reparations and products of joint Soviet-East German enterprises were also included here.

The main creator of these undoubted successes was the Soviet people. His incredible efforts and sacrifices, as well as the high mobilization capabilities of the directive model of the economy, seemingly impossible economic results were achieved. At the same time, the traditional policy of redistributing funds from the light and food industries, agriculture and the social sphere in favor of heavy industry also played its role. Reparations received from Germany (4.3 billion dollars) also provided significant assistance, providing up to half of the volume of industrial equipment installed in these years. In addition, the labor of almost 9 million Soviet prisoners and about 2 million German and Japanese prisoners of war, who also contributed to the post-war reconstruction, was free, but very effective.

Ministry of General and Vocational Education

Russian Federation

Ulyanovsk State Technical University

Department of National History and Culture

Topic: Economy of the USSR after World War II

Compiled by: Safronov V. A.

Head: Osipov S.V.

Manager's signature

abstract

Ulyanovsk 2003

Plan

Introduction

State of the economy of the USSR after the end of the war.
Recovery of industry, rearmament of the army.
Economic discussions 1945-1946
Monetary reform of 1947 and the development of domestic trade.
Problems and difficulties of the agricultural sector.
Disadvantages of administrative-command methods of managing the national economy.

Conclusion

Bibliography.

Introduction

After the victory in the Great Patriotic War and the surrender of Japan on September 3, 1945, a completely new stage began in the life of the Soviet state. In 1945, the Victory gave rise to the people's hopes for a better life, weakening the pressure of the totalitarian state on the individual. The potential for change in the political regime, economy, and culture was opened up.

The "democratic impulse" of the war, however, was opposed by the full force of the System created by Stalin. Its positions not only were not weakened during the war years, but seemed to be even stronger in the post-war period. Even the very victory in the war was identified in the mass consciousness with the victory of the totalitarian regime. Under these conditions, the struggle between the democratic and totalitarian tendencies became the leitmotif of social development.

The Soviet Union was a victorious but completely destroyed country. In order to win the greatest war in history, it was necessary to suffer losses that exceeded the losses of the enemy and, in general, the losses of any nation in any war. It was only through the efforts of millions that it was possible to raise the destroyed cities and factories from the ruins, to restore the infrastructure. This period cannot but excite us citizens of today's Russia.

In the course of the work, I considered the material of various authors, not only the view of our historians, but also the work of foreign researchers.

The book of the English historian Geoffrey Hosking History of the Soviet Union. 1917-1991 is an objective review of the history of a once powerful state, a look beyond the barriers set in our minds. The work focuses on the socio-political aspect of society. The post-war period (1945-1953), according to the author, was the period of established totalitarianism, the time of Stalin's sole rule, when economics and politics were inseparable. This work is distinguished by simplicity of presentation and an abundance of facts.

Textbook History of the USSR (written in 1990 under the direction of V.P. Ostrovsky) - the first official tutorial the beginning of the era of perestroika, in which little-known events of our history, primarily Soviet history, were openly covered.

Monogram of Sergei Kara-Murza History of the Soviet state and law a fresh look at the development of the Soviet state. The work critically approaches the consideration of the life of the Soviet state in the post-war period. S. Kara-Murza, not without reason, has been living all these years as an inseparable whole, during which the country and society overcame the legacy of the war.

The textbook by Timoshina T.M. The economic history of Russia reveals the economic consequences of the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet state, shows the development of the national economy of the USSR after the Great Patriotic War, the processes taking place in the state and society in the period from 1945 to 1953.

1. The state of the economy of the USSR after the end of the war.

The victory over fascism went to the USSR at a high price. A military hurricane raged over the main regions of the most developed part of the Soviet Union for several years. Most of the industrial centers in the European part of the country were hit. All the main granaries of Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and a significant part of the Volga region were also in the flames of war. So much was destroyed that restoration could take many years, or even decades.

Introduction

Purpose of writing control work describe the international situation after the Second World War. Find out what was the relation of forces between the countries of the "capitalist" and "socialist" blocs in the international arena. Select the states that have adopted the Soviet model of economic and political development. The meaning of the term "cold war" should be clarified. Find out who initiated it. How did it affect the Korean War of 1950-1953? To reveal the essence of the "Marshall Plan" and the attitude of the Soviet leadership towards it. To reveal the content of plans for the restoration of the national economy after the Great Patriotic War. Formulate the main tasks of economic policy after the war. Understand what progress has been made in the development of industry. Find out how the monetary reform of 1947 affected the standard of living of Soviet people. To substantiate the reasons for the tightening of the political regime of I.V. Stalin in the post-war period. Pay attention to the "Leningrad case" and the "case of doctors." The meaning of the term "cosmopolitanism" should be clarified. To determine how the repressive policy was reflected in the spheres of science and culture.

International position. Cold War politics

As a result of the Great Patriotic War and World War II, the situation in the world changed radically. Germany and Japan were defeated and temporarily lost the role of the great powers of the country, the positions of England and France were significantly weakened. At the same time, the share of the United States grew immeasurably. During the war years, their industrial production not only did not decrease, but even increased by 47%. The USA controlled about 80% of the gold reserves of the capitalist world, they accounted for 46% of world industrial production.

The war marked the beginning of the collapse of the colonial system. Within a few years, such major countries like India, Indonesia, Burma, Pakistan, Ceylon, Egypt. In total, 25 states gained independence in the post-war decade.

The most important feature of the post-war period was the people's democratic revolutions in the countries of Eastern Europe and a number of Asian countries. In the course of the struggle against fascism, a united front of democratic forces was formed in these countries, in which the communist parties played the leading role. After the overthrow of the fascist and collaborationist governments, governments were created that included representatives of all anti-fascist parties and movements. They carried out a series of democratic reforms. AT economic area a mixed economy has developed - the coexistence of the state, state capitalist, cooperative and private sectors. In the political sphere, a multi-party parliamentary form of political power was created, in the presence of opposition parties, with the separation of powers. It was an attempt to transition to socialist transformations in its own way.

However, starting in 1947, these countries were imposed the Stalinist model of the political system, borrowed from the USSR. An extremely negative role in this was played by the Cominformburo, created in 1947 to replace the Comintern. A one-party system was established, usually through a merger of communist and social democratic parties. Opposition political parties were banned and their leaders were repressed. Transformations similar to those in the Soviet Union began - mass nationalization of enterprises, forced collectivization.

There has been a shift to the left in the political spectrum of European countries. Fascist and right-wing parties left the stage. The influence of the communists grew sharply. In 1945 - 1947. they were part of the governments of France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland. There has been a trend of rapprochement between the Communists and the Social Democrats. A system of modern democracy began to take shape.

The role of the Soviet Union, a country that made a decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism, grew immeasurably. Not a single international problem was solved without his participation.

After the war, the foundations were laid for the split of the world into two opposing camps, which determined the entire world practice for many years. During the World War, an alliance of great powers was formed - the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France. The presence of a common enemy made it possible to overcome differences and find compromises. The decisions of the Tehran (1943), Crimean (1945), Potsdam (1945) conferences were of a general democratic nature and could become the basis for a post-war peace settlement. The formation of the United Nations (1945) was also of great importance, the charter of which reflected the principles of peaceful existence, sovereignty and equality of all countries of the world. However, this unique chance to create a lasting peace for many generations remained unused. The Second World War was replaced by the Cold War.

The very term "cold war" was coined by US Secretary of State D. F. Dulles. Its essence is political, economic, ideological confrontation between the two systems, balancing on the brink of war.

It makes no sense to argue about who started the Cold War; arguments are being made by both sides. It is illogical and unreasonable to completely whitewash one side and place all the blame on the other. Already during the war with Germany, in some circles in the United States and in England, plans were seriously considered, having passed through Germany, to start a war with Russia. It is widely known that Germany negotiated a separate peace with the Western powers at the end of the war. The upcoming entry of Russia into the war with Japan, "allowing to save the lives of millions of American guys," tipped the scales and prevented these plans from being realized.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) was not so much a military operation as a political act in order to put pressure on the USSR.

The turn from cooperation with the Soviet Union to confrontation with it began after the death of President F. Roosevelt. It is customary to subsidize the beginning of the Cold War with a speech by W. Churchill in the American city of Fulton in March 1946, in which he called on the people of the United States to jointly fight against Soviet Russia and its agents, the communist parties.

The economic reasons for the change in US policy was that the US had grown immeasurably rich during the war years. With the end of the war, they were threatened by a crisis of overproduction. At the same time, the economies of European countries were destroyed, their markets were open to American goods, but there was nothing to pay for these goods. The United States was afraid to invest in the economies of these countries, since there was a strong influence of the left, and the environment for investment was unstable. In the United States, a plan was developed, called the Marshall. European countries help was offered to rebuild the shattered economy. Loans were given to buy American goods. The proceeds were not exported, but invested in the construction of enterprises in these countries. The Marshall Plan was adopted by 16 states Western Europe. The political condition for the assistance was the removal of communists from governments. In 1947, the Communists were withdrawn from the governments of Western European countries. Assistance was also offered to Eastern European countries. Poland and Czechoslovakia began negotiations, but under pressure from the USSR, they refused to help. At the same time, the United States tore up the Soviet-American agreement on loans and passed a law prohibiting exports to the USSR.

The ideological justification of the Cold War was the Truman Doctrine, put forward by the President of the United States in 1947. According to this doctrine, the conflict between Western democracy and communism is irreconcilable. The tasks of the United States are the fight against communism throughout the world, the "containment of communism", "the throwing back of communism into the borders of the USSR." American responsibility for the events taking place all over the world was proclaimed, all these events were viewed through the prism of confrontation between communism and Western democracy, the USSR and the USA.

The monopoly possession of the atomic bomb allowed the United States, as they believed, to dictate its will to the world. In 1945, the development of plans for an atomic strike on the USSR began. The Pincher (1946), Broiler (1947), and Dropshot (1949) plans were consistently developed. American historians, without denying such plans, say that it was only about operational military plans that are drawn up in any country in case of war. But after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the existence of such plans could not but cause a sharp response from the Soviet Union.

In 1946, a strategic military command was created in the United States, which controlled aircraft carrying atomic weapons. In 1948 atomic bombers were stationed in Great Britain and West Germany. The Soviet Union was surrounded by a network of American military bases. In 1949 there were more than 300 of them.

The United States pursued a policy of creating military-political blocs against the USSR. In 1949, the North Atlantic bloc (NATO) was created. A course was taken to restore the military potential of Germany. In 1949, in violation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, the Federal Republic of Germany was created from three zones of occupation - British, American and French, which joined NATO the same year.

The Soviet Union also pursued a policy of confrontation. The actions of the USSR in the international arena were by no means always thought out, and its policy cannot be called completely peaceful. Thus, the beginning of the Cold War was to some extent provoked by the policy of the USSR towards Poland. The Soviet Union did not agree to the creation of general elections in Poland, refused to return the eastern Polish lands received under the pact with Germany. I. Stalin in his entire foreign policy also proceeded from the concept of splitting the world into two camps - into the camp of imperialism led by the United States and the camp of socialism led by the USSR - and viewed all events in the world through the prism of the confrontation between these two camps.

So, at a secret meeting in the Kremlin in January 1951. JV Stalin declared that it was possible to "establish socialism throughout Europe" within the "next four years" and that the foreign and domestic policy of the communist-led "people's democratic" countries should be subordinated to this goal. “We had our own hopes,” N.S. Khrushchev later recalled, “just as Russia emerged from the First World War, carried out a revolution and established Soviet power, Europe, too, having survived the catastrophe of the Second World War, may perhaps become Soviet. Everyone would then follow the path from capitalism to socialism. Stalin was convinced that post-war Germany would stage a revolution and create a proletarian state ... We all believed in this. We had the same hopes for France and Italy."

Ministry of General and Vocational Education

Russian Federation

Ulyanovsk State Technical University

Department of National History and Culture

ESSAY

Topic: "The economy of the USSR after the Second World War"

Compiled by: Safronov V. A.

Head: Osipov S.V.

Manager's signature

abstract

Ulyanovsk 2003

Plan

Introduction

State of the economy of the USSR after the end of the war.

Recovery of industry, rearmament of the army.

Economic discussions 1945-1946

Monetary reform of 1947 and the development of domestic trade.

Problems and difficulties of the agricultural sector.

Disadvantages of administrative-command methods of managing the national economy.

Conclusion

Bibliography.

Introduction

In the course of my work, I considered the material of various authors - not only the view of our historians, but also the work of foreign researchers.

The book of the English historian Geoffrey Hosking "History of the Soviet Union. 1917-1991" is an objective review of the history of the once powerful state, a look beyond the barriers set in our minds. The work focuses on the socio-political aspect of society. The post-war period (1945-1953), according to the author, was the period of established totalitarianism, the time of Stalin's sole rule, when economics and politics were inseparable. This work is distinguished by simplicity of presentation and an abundance of facts.

The textbook "History of the USSR" (written in 1990 under the direction of V.P. Ostrovsky) is the first official textbook of the beginning of the era of "perestroika" in which little-known events of our history, primarily Soviet, were openly covered.

Monogram of Sergei Kara-Murza "History of the Soviet state and law" a fresh look at the development of the Soviet state. The work critically approaches the consideration of the life of the Soviet state in the post-war period. S. Kara-Murza, not without reason, considers all these years an inseparable whole, during which the country and society overcame the legacy of the war.

Timoshina's textbook "Economic History of Russia" reveals the economic consequences of the Great Patriotic War for the Soviet state, shows the development of the national economy of the USSR after the Great Patriotic War, the processes taking place in the state and society in the period from 1945 to 1953.

1. The state of the economy of the USSR after the end of the war.

The victory over fascism went to the USSR at a high price. A military hurricane raged over the main regions of the most developed part of the Soviet Union for several years. Most of the industrial centers in the European part of the country were hit. All the main granaries - Ukraine, the North Caucasus, a significant part of the Volga region - were also in the flames of war. So much was destroyed that restoration could take many years, or even decades.

In the context of the transition from war to peace, questions arose about the ways of further development of the country's economy, about its structure and management system. It was not only about the conversion of military production, but also about the expediency of maintaining the existing model of the economy. In many ways, it was formed in the emergency situation of the thirties. The war further strengthened this "extraordinary" nature of the economy and left an imprint on its structure and system of organization. The war years revealed the strong features of the existing economic model, and in particular, very high mobilization capabilities, the ability to quickly establish mass production of high-quality weapons and provide the army and military-industrial complex with the necessary resources by overstraining other sectors of the economy. But the war also emphasized with all its force the weaknesses of the Soviet economy: the high proportion of manual labor, the low productivity and quality of non-military products. What was tolerable in peacetime, before the war, now required a radical solution.

The post-war period demanded a reorganization of the type of work of state bodies to solve two contradictory tasks: the conversion of the huge military-industrial complex that took shape during the war, in order to modernize the economy as quickly as possible; the creation of two fundamentally new weapons systems that guarantee the security of the country - nuclear weapons and invulnerable means of their delivery (ballistic missiles). The work of a large number of departments began to be combined into intersectoral targeted programs. It was a qualitatively new type of state administration, although it was not so much the structure of bodies that changed, but rather the functions. These changes are less noticeable than structural ones, but the state is a system, and the process in it is no less important than the structure.

As a result of the mass evacuation of industry to the east and the destruction of 32,000 industrial enterprises during the occupation and hostilities in the European part, the country's economic geography has changed dramatically. Immediately after the war, a corresponding reorganization of the management system began - along with the sectoral principle, they began to introduce the territorial principle into it. The point was to bring the management bodies closer to the enterprises, for the sake of which the ministries were disaggregated: during the war there were 25 of them, and in 1947 there were 34. For example, the People's Commissariat of the coal industry of the western regions and the People's Commissariat of the coal industry of the eastern regions began to manage coal mining. Similarly, the People's Commissariat of the oil industry was divided.

On this wave, among economic managers, economists began to appear striving to reorganize the system of economic management, to soften those aspects of it that held back the initiative and independence of enterprises, and in particular, to weaken the fetters of over-centralization.

An explanation for such sentiments can be sought in the situation that developed during the war. The economy of the country during the war, the way of life of the population, the organization of the work of local authorities acquired peculiar features. With the transfer of the work of the main branches of industry to meet the needs of the front, the output of civilian products was sharply reduced, providing for the life of the population, supplying it with the most necessary goods and services, local authorities began to deal mainly with organizing small-scale production, involving handicraftsmen and artisans in the production of necessary goods. As a result, handicraft industry developed, private trade revived, and not only in food products, but in manufactured goods. Only a small part of the population was covered by centralized supply.

The war taught many leaders of all levels to a certain independence and initiative. After the war, local authorities made attempts to expand the production of goods for the population not only at small handicraft workshops, but also at large factories directly subordinated to the central ministries. The Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation, together with the leadership of the Leningrad Region, organized a fair in the city in 1947, at which enterprises not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other republics, sold materials they did not need. The fair opened the possibility of establishing independent economic ties between industrial enterprises bypassing the center. To a certain extent, it contributed to the expansion of the scope of market relations (several years later, the organizers of this fair paid with their lives for their initiative).

Hopes for transformations in the field of economic management turned out to be unrealizable. From the end of the 1940s, a course was taken to strengthen the former administrative-command methods of leadership, to further develop the existing model of the economy.

Also during this period, the question arose: what is the Soviet system of economy (it was called socialism, but this is a purely conventional concept that does not answer the question). Until the end of the war, life set such clear and urgent tasks that there was no great need for theory. Now it was necessary to understand the meaning of the plan, goods, money and the market in the economy of the USSR.

However, as the central task of restoration, the country faced it only after the end of the war.

At the end of May 1945, the State Defense Committee decided to transfer part of the defense enterprises to the production of goods for the population. Somewhat later, a law was passed on the demobilization of thirteen ages of army personnel. These resolutions marked the beginning of the transition of the Soviet Union to peaceful construction. In September 1945, the GKO was abolished. All functions of governing the country were concentrated in the hands of the Council of People's Commissars (in March 1946 it was transformed into the Council of Ministers of the USSR).

Measures were taken to restore normal work in enterprises and institutions. Mandatory overtime work was abolished, the 8-hour working day and annual paid holidays were restored. The budget for the third and fourth quarters of 1945 and for 1946 was considered. Appropriations for military needs were reduced and spending on the development of civilian sectors of the economy increased. The restructuring of the national economy and social life in relation to peacetime conditions was completed mainly in 1946. In March 1946, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved a plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1946-1950. The main objective of the five-year plan was to restore the areas of the country that had been occupied, to reach the pre-war level of development of industry and agriculture, and then to surpass them. The plan provided for the priority development of heavy and defense industries. Significant financial resources, material and labor resources were directed here. It was planned to develop new coal regions, expand the metallurgical base in the east of the country. One of the conditions for the fulfillment of planned targets was the maximum use of scientific and technological progress.

The year 1946 was the most difficult in the post-war development of industry. To switch enterprises to the production of civilian products, the production technology was changed, new equipment was created, and retraining of personnel was carried out. In accordance with the five-year plan, restoration work began in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. The coal industry of Donbass was revived. Zaporizhstal was restored, Dneproges was put into operation. At the same time, construction of new and reconstruction of existing plants and factories was carried out. Over 6,200 industrial enterprises were restored and rebuilt during the five years. 1 Particular attention was paid to the development of metallurgy, mechanical engineering, fuel and energy and military-industrial complexes. The foundations of nuclear energy and the radio-electronic industry were laid. New industry giants emerged in the Urals, in Siberia, in the republics of Transcaucasia and Central Asia (Ust-Kamenogorsk lead-zinc plant, Kutaisi automobile plant). The country's first long-distance gas pipeline Saratov-Moscow was put into operation. The Rybinsk and Sukhumi hydroelectric power stations began to operate.

Work on the restoration of industry was basically completed in 1948. But at individual metallurgical enterprises, they continued even in the early 50s. The mass industrial heroism of the Soviet people, expressed in numerous labor initiatives (the introduction of high-speed methods of work, the movement for metal savings and high product quality, the movement of multi-machine operators, etc.), contributed to the successful fulfillment of planned targets. By the end of the five-year plan, the level of industrial production exceeded the pre-war level by 73%. However, the priority development of heavy industry, the redistribution in its favor of funds from the light and food industries led to a further deformation of the industrial structure towards an increase in the production of group A products.

The restoration of industry and transport, new industrial construction led to an increase in the size of the working class.

After the war, the country was in ruins, and the question arose of choosing the path of economic development. The alternative could be market reforms, but the existing political system was not ready for this step. The directive economy still retained the mobilization character that was inherent in it during the years of the first five-year plans and during the war years. Millions of people were sent in an organized manner to the restoration of the Dneproges, the metallurgical plants of Krivoy Rog, the mines of Donbass, as well as the construction of new factories, hydroelectric power stations, etc.

The development of the USSR economy rested on its excessive centralization. All economic issues, large and small, were decided only in the center, and local economic bodies were strictly limited in resolving any cases. The main material and financial resources needed to fulfill the planned targets were distributed through a large number of bureaucratic instances. Departmental disunity, mismanagement and confusion led to constant downtime in production, storming, huge material costs, absurd transportation from one end of the vast country.

The Soviet Union received reparations from Germany in the amount of 4.3 billion dollars. Industrial equipment, including even entire factory complexes, was exported to the Soviet Union as reparations from Germany and other defeated countries. However, the Soviet economy was never able to properly dispose of this wealth due to general mismanagement, and valuable equipment, machine tools, etc. gradually turned into scrap metal. 1.5 million German and 0.5 million Japanese prisoners of war worked in the USSR. In addition, the GULAG system during this period contained approximately 8-9 million prisoners, whose work was practically unpaid.

The division of the world into two hostile camps had negative consequences for the country's economy. From 1945 to 1950, foreign trade turnover with Western countries decreased by 35%, which had a noticeable effect on the Soviet economy, which was deprived of new equipment and advanced technologies. That is why in the mid-1950s. The Soviet Union faced the need for profound socio-economic and political changes. Since the path of progressive political changes was blocked, narrowed down to possible (and even not very serious) amendments to liberalization, the most constructive ideas that appeared in the first post-war years were not about politics, but about the economy. The Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks considered various proposals of economists in this regard. Among them is the manuscript “Post-war domestic economy”, owned by S.D. Alexander. The gist of his proposals was as follows:

the transformation of state enterprises into joint-stock or share partnerships, in which the workers and employees themselves act as shareholders, and the authorized elected council of shareholders manages;

decentralization of the supply of enterprises with raw materials and materials through the creation of district and regional industrial supplies instead of supplies under the people's commissariats and central administrations;

the abolition of the system of state procurement of agricultural products, granting collective and state farms the right to freely sell on the market;

reform of the monetary system, taking into account the gold parity;

liquidation of state trade and transfer of its functions to trade cooperatives and share partnerships.

These ideas can be considered as the foundations of a new economic model built on the principles of the market and the partial denationalization of the economy - very bold and progressive for that time. True, the ideas of S.D. Alexander had to share the fate of other radical projects, they were classified as "harmful" and decommissioned into the "archive".

The Center, despite the well-known hesitations, in matters of principle relating to the foundations of building economic and political models of development, remained firmly committed to the previous course. Therefore, the center was receptive only to those ideas that did not affect the foundations of the supporting structure, i.e. did not encroach on the exclusive role of the state in matters of management, financial support, control and did not contradict the main postulates of ideology.

Political changes in the USSR needed to be reinforced by changes in the economy. Speaking in August 1953 at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, G.M. Malenkov clearly formulated the main directions of economic policy: a sharp rise in the production of consumer goods, large investments in the light industry. Such a radical turn, it would seem, should forever change the fundamental guidelines for the development of the Soviet economy, which had been established in previous decades.

But this, as the history of the country's development has shown, did not happen. After the war, various administrative reforms were carried out several times, but they did not introduce fundamental changes into the essence of the planning and administrative system. In the mid-1950s, attempts were made to abandon the use of mobilization measures in solving economic problems. A few years later, it became clear that this task was unsolvable for the Soviet economy, since the economic incentives for development were incompatible with the command system. It was still necessary to organize masses of people to carry out various projects. Examples include calls to young people to participate in the development of virgin lands, in the construction of grandiose "buildings of communism" in Siberia and the Far East.

As an example of a not very well-thought-out reform, one can cite an attempt to restructure administration along a territorial basis (1957). In the course of this reform, many branch union ministries were abolished, and territorial councils of the national economy (sovnarkhozes) appeared instead. Only the ministries in charge of military production, the Ministry of Defense, Foreign and Internal Affairs, and some others were not affected by this restructuring. Thus, an attempt was made to decentralize management.

In total, 105 economic administrative regions were created in the country, including 70 in the RSFSR, 11 in Ukraine, 9 in Kazakhstan, 4 in Uzbekistan, and in the other republics - one economic council each. The functions of the State Planning Committee of the USSR remained only the general planning and coordination of territorial and sectoral plans, the distribution of the most important funds among the Union republics.

The first results of the management reform were quite successful. So, already in 1958, i.e. a year after it began, the increase in national income amounted to 12.4% (compared with 7% in 1957). The scale of industrial specialization and intersectoral cooperation has increased, and the process of creating and introducing new technology into production has accelerated. But, according to experts, the effect obtained is not only the result of perestroika itself. The point is also that for some period the enterprises turned out to be “ownerless” (when the ministries were no longer actually functioning, and the economic councils had not yet been formed), and it was during this period that they began to work noticeably more productively, without feeling any leadership “from above”. But as soon as a new management system was established, the previous negative phenomena in the economy began to intensify. Moreover, new features have appeared: parochialism, stricter administration, constantly growing “own”, local bureaucracy.

All reorganizations, in the end, did not lead to noticeable success. Moreover, if in 1951-1955. industrial production increased by 85%, agricultural - by 20.5%, and in 1956-1960 by 64.3 and 30%, respectively (moreover, the growth of agricultural production was mainly due to the development of new lands), then in 1961-1965 these figures began to decline and amounted to 51 and 11% 1 .

Traditionally, so-called grassroots planning has been weak; planning at the enterprise level. Grassroots planning targets were often adjusted, so the plan turned into a purely nominal document, directly related only to the process of calculating wages and bonus payments, which depended on the percentage of fulfillment and overfulfillment of the plan.

Since, as noted above, the plans were constantly being adjusted, the plans that were implemented (or more precisely, were not implemented) were not at all the plans that were adopted at the beginning of the planning period (year, five-year plan). Gosplan "bargained" with ministries, ministries - with enterprises about what plan they could carry out with the available resources. But the supply of resources under such a plan was still disrupted, and “bidding” began again in terms of the figures of the plan, in terms of the amount of supplies, etc.

All this confirms the conclusion that the Soviet economy depended to a greater extent not on competent economic developments, but on political decisions that constantly change in opposite directions and most often lead to a dead end. Fruitless attempts were made in the country to improve the structure of the state apparatus, to endow ministers, heads of central departments, directors of enterprises with new rights or, conversely, to limit their powers, to separate existing planning bodies and create new ones, etc. There were many such “reforms” in the 1950s and 1960s, but none of them brought real improvement to the operation of the command system.

Basically, when determining the priorities of post-war economic development, when developing the fourth five-year plan - the recovery plan - the country's leadership actually returned to the pre-war model of economic development and pre-war methods of conducting economic policy. This means that the development of industry, primarily heavy industry, had to be carried out not only to the detriment of the interests of the agrarian economy and the sphere of consumption (that is, as a result of an appropriate distribution of budget funds).

2. Restoration of industry, rearmament of the army.

In the first post-war years, the work of the Soviet people differed little from the military emergency. The constant shortage of food (the card system was canceled only in 1947), the most difficult working and living conditions, the high level of morbidity and mortality explained to the population that the long-awaited peace had just come and life was about to get better. However, this did not happen.

After the monetary reform of 1947, with an average salary of about 500 rubles a month, the cost of a kilogram of bread was 3-4 rubles, a kilogram of meat - 28-32 rubles, butter - over 60 rubles, a dozen eggs - about 11 rubles. To buy a woolen suit, one had to pay three average monthly salaries. As before the war, from one to one and a half monthly salaries per year was spent on the purchase of compulsory government bonds. Many working-class families still lived in dugouts and barracks, and sometimes worked in the open air or in unheated premises, on old or worn-out equipment. Nevertheless, some wartime restrictions were lifted: the 8-hour working day and annual holidays were reintroduced, and forced overtime was abolished. Restoration took place in conditions of a sharp increase in migration processes. Caused by the demobilization of the army (its number decreased from 11.4 million in 1945 to 2.9 million in 1948), the repatriation of Soviet citizens from Europe, the return of refugees and evacuees from the eastern regions of the country. Another difficulty in the development of industry was its conversion, which was completed mainly by 1947.

Huge losses in the war turned into a shortage of labor, which, in turn, led to an increase in the turnover of personnel who were looking for more favorable working conditions. At some enterprises, attempts were made to introduce self-financing. But to consolidate these innovations, no material incentives were taken; on the contrary, with an increase in labor productivity, prices went down. It was beneficial for the administrative-command system to achieve high production results without additional investments.

In total, during the years of the 4th five-year plan (1946-1950), 6,200 large enterprises were restored and rebuilt. In 1950, according to official data, industrial production exceeded pre-war figures by 73% (and in the new union republics - Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Moldova - 2-3 times). True, this also included reparations and production of joint Soviet-East German enterprises.

The economy quickly picked up the pace of its development. The volume of machine-building products has grown significantly, and the extraction of oil, gas, coal and other raw materials has increased. The production of steel and non-ferrous metals has increased significantly, and production technology has taken a step forward. Noticeable successes in the restoration of the economy were achieved in the first years after the end of the war. In the shortest possible time, the DneproGES was restored, and the industrial centers of the South of Russia received electricity, the Novorossiysk cement plants rose from the ruins and all their products were sent to the regions of the country liberated from the Nazis. The coal of the first restored mines of Donbass went quickly, the restoration of large machine-building plants in Leningrad was of great importance.

The improvement of military equipment required the development and implementation of progressive technological methods and discoveries of science. Immediately after the end of the war, the technical re-equipment of the army takes place, saturating it with the latest models of aviation, small arms, artillery, and tanks. Large forces required the creation of jet aircraft and missile systems for all branches of the armed forces. In a short time, tactical, then strategic, and air defense missiles were developed.

Huge funds were concentrated on the implementation of the atomic project, which was supervised by the all-powerful L.P. Beria. Thanks to the efforts of Soviet designers, and partly intelligence, which managed to steal important atomic secrets from the Americans, atomic weapons in the USSR were created in an unpredictably short time - in 1949. And in 1953, the Soviet Union created the world's first hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb.

Thus, in the post-war years, the Soviet Union managed to achieve considerable success in developing the economy and rearming the army. However, these achievements seemed insufficient to Stalin. He believed that it was necessary to "spur" the pace of economic and military development. In 1949, the head of the State Planning Commission, N.A. Voznesensky was accused of having drawn up in 1946 a plan for the restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR for 1946-1950. contained low scores. Voznesensky was convicted and executed. In 1949, at the direction of Stalin, without taking into account the real possibilities for the development of the country, new indicators were determined for the main branches of industry. These voluntaristic decisions created extreme tension in the economy and slowed down the improvement of the already very low standard of living of the people. (Several years later this crisis was overcome, and in 1952 the increase in industrial output exceeded 10%). However, the implementation of the atomic project was not only a research and design task, but also an economic problem that required the creation of new industries and industries, and partly a general restructuring of the national economy. As a result, uranium mines were laid down, factories for the production of enriched uranium began to operate in the Urals. The instrument-making industry, which ensured the rapid pace of the implementation of the atomic project, was practically newly created. Major steps have been taken in the development of the electric power industry. Along with the restoration of power plants destroyed during the war, new energy capacities were introduced, which provided for the needs of civilian industries, household consumption and priority supply of industries related to the nuclear project and the missile program.

In 1950, it was officially announced that the five-year plan had been completed ahead of schedule. However, it was not said that reparations and production of a number of joint Soviet-East German enterprises were included in the figures. We must not forget the free forced labor of millions of people in the Gulag system. The volume of camps completed by the system, where prisoners worked, increased several times after the war. The army of prisoners expanded with the prisoners of war of the losing countries. It was their labor that built (but was never completed) the Baikal-Amur Railway from Baikal to the shores of the Pacific Ocean and the Northern Road along the shores of the Arctic Ocean from Salekhard to Norilsk, nuclear industry facilities, metallurgical enterprises, energy facilities were created, coal was mined and ore, timber, huge state farm camps produced products.

While acknowledging the undoubted economic successes, it should be noted that under the most difficult conditions of restoring the war-ravaged economy, a unilateral shift in favor of the military industries, which essentially subjugated the rest of the industry, created an imbalance in the development of the economy. Military production placed a heavy burden on the country's economy and sharply limited the possibilities for improving the material well-being of the people.

The former model of economic management was carried out with even greater rigidity than was the case during the years of the pre-war five-year plans. According to the Stalinist plan, society was finally formed with the elimination of market relations and the complete subordination of man to political and administrative power. This holistic model covered the entire national economy.

3. Economic discussions 1945-1946

In August 1945, the government instructed Gosplan to prepare a draft of the fourth five-year plan. During its discussion, proposals were made for some softening of the voluntarist pressure in the management of the economy, the reorganization of collective farms. The "democratic alternative" also manifested itself in the course of a closed discussion of the draft of the new Constitution of the USSR prepared in 1946. In particular, along with the recognition of the authority of state property, it allowed the existence of small private farms of peasants and handicraftsmen based on personal labor and excluding the exploitation of other people's labor. During the discussion of this project by nomenklatura officials in the center and in the localities, the ideas of the need to decentralize economic life, grant greater rights to the regions and people's commissariats were voiced. "From below" there were more and more calls for the liquidation of collective farms due to their inefficiency. As a rule, two arguments were cited to justify these positions: firstly, the relative weakening of state pressure on the manufacturer during the war years, which gave a positive result; secondly, a direct analogy was drawn with the recovery period after the civil war, when the revival of the economy began with the revival of the private sector, the decentralization of management and the priority development of the light and food industries.

4. Monetary reform and development of domestic trade.

The recovery of the economy required the improvement of the financial system. Frustrated finances and progressive inflation are problems that almost all warring countries, including the USSR, had to face.

Monetary reform was carried out in the difficult conditions of post-war devastation. Until the end of 1947, the USSR maintained a rationing system for food and industrial goods for the population. Its cancellation was planned for the end of 1946, but due to drought and crop failure, this did not happen. Cancellation was carried out only at the end of 1947. By the way, the Soviet Union was one of the first European countries to abolish card distribution.

Careful preparation for it began already in 1943, when Stalin set this task for the then Minister of Finance (the Minister of Finance at that time was A.G. Zverev, who served in this position with short breaks from 1938 to 1960, in February-December 1948 it was occupied by A.N. Kosygin). The monetary reform was based on the following foundations:

old defective money in circulation was exchanged for new full-fledged samples of 1947. All cash held by the population, state, cooperative and public enterprises, organizations and institutions, collective farms were exchanged at the rate of 10 r. old money for 1 p. new. The small change was not subject to exchange and remained in circulation at face value. In savings banks, deposits and current accounts of the population were revalued on the day the new money was issued according to the following principle: deposits in the amount of up to 3 thousand rubles. remained unchanged in the nominal amount, i.e., the ruble was revalued for the ruble; for deposits exceeding the specified amount, the following were credited to the deposit: the first 3 thousand rubles; the next amount, not exceeding 10 thousand rubles, was determined on the basis of 3 rubles. old money - 2 p. new, and the rest of the deposit, exceeding 10 thousand rubles, was revalued in the ratio of 2 rubles. old money for 1 p. new. The funds held in the settlement and current accounts of cooperative enterprises and organizations and collective farms were also revalued. Their funds were determined on the basis of: for 5 p. old money - 4p. new. But before abolishing cards, the government established uniform food prices to replace the previously existing card (ration) and commercial prices. As a result, the cost of basic food products for the urban population has risen. So, the price of 1 kg of black bread on the cards was 1 ruble, and became 3 rubles. 40 kopecks; the price of 1 kg of meat increased from 14 to 30 rubles; sugar - from 5.5 to 15 rubles; butter - from 28 to 66 rubles; milk - from 2.5 to 8 rubles. At the same time, the minimum wage was 300 rubles, the average wage in 1946 was 475 rubles, in 1947 - 550 rubles. per month. True, for low- and medium-paid categories of workers and employees, along with uniform prices, the so-called “bread allowances” were established on average about 110 rubles. per month, but these allowances did not solve the general problem of income.

The need for a monetary reform was determined by the complete imbalance of the monetary system during the war years, since the sharp increase in military spending required the constant release into circulation of a huge amount of money not backed by consumer goods. As a result of a significant reduction in retail turnover, the population had more money in their hands than was required for the normal functioning of the national economy, and therefore the purchasing power of money fell. As a result of the reform, the excess money supply was withdrawn, and the reform itself acquired, in the main, a confiscatory character. In the course of the reform, it was mainly rural residents who suffered, who, as a rule, kept their savings at home, and speculators who made money during the war and did not have time to realize large sums of cash. On January 1, 1950, the government recognized the need to raise the official exchange rate of the ruble against foreign currencies, and determined it in accordance with the gold content of the ruble (0.222168 g of pure gold), although in those years this fact had no economic significance, because. established official exchange rate The ruble was not used in any calculations.

According to official statistics, the average nominal wages of workers increased during 1928-1954. more than 11 times. But if general index retail prices in the state and cooperative trade in 1928 to take for 1, then in 1932 it was 2.6; in 1940 - 6.4; in 1947 - 20.1; in 1950 - 11.9. But real wages for this period, excluding taxes and subscriptions to a loan, but including an increase in wages in the form of free medical care, education and other social services, changed as follows: if we take the wage level of 1928 as 1, then in 1937 year it was 0.86; in 1940 - 0.78; in 1944 - 0.64; in 1948 - 0.59; in 1952 - 0.94; in 1954 - 1.19. 2

From 1947 to 1954, there were seven reductions in retail prices (the first - together with the monetary reform). Thus, retail prices for baked rye bread increased almost 19 times in 1928-1952; for beef - at 17; for pork - at 20.5; for sugar - at 15; for sunflower oil at 34; for eggs - at 19.3; for potatoes - 11 times 3 .

Therefore, an annual price reduction (by a few percent) for basic food products (and even with a large propaganda effect) was not difficult to implement. In addition, this reduction in prices was due to the actual robbery of collective farmers, since, as indicated above, the growth rate of purchase prices for agricultural products was much lower than the increase in retail prices. And, finally, the majority of the rural population almost did not feel this drop in prices, because. public supply in countryside It was very bad, the shops were not supplied with basic food for years.

The main long-term result of the reform was that, in fact, for 15 years (until the end of the 1950s) it was possible to maintain a commodity-money balance and, on the whole, ensure price stability. The monetary reform again acts as a preliminary stage in carrying out market-oriented transformations in the mode of maintaining stable and high economic growth.

5. Problems and difficulties of the agricultural sector.

One of the most important post-war tasks was to solve the food problem and bring agriculture out of a deep and protracted crisis. The country's agriculture came out of the war even more weakened, the gross output of which in 1945 did not exceed 60% of the pre-war level. It could not fully provide the population with food and raw materials for light industry. The terrible drought of 1946 struck Ukraine, Moldova, and southern Russia. People died. Dystrophy was the main cause of high mortality. But the tragedy of the post-war famine, as often happened, was carefully hushed up. After a severe drought, a high grain harvest was obtained in the next two years. This to some extent contributed to the strengthening of agricultural production in general and some of its growth.

AT agriculture the assertion of the old order, the unwillingness to go for any reforms that would weaken the tight control by the state, had a particularly painful effect. In general, it rested not so much on the personal interest of the peasant in the results of his labor, but on non-economic coercion. Each peasant was obliged to perform a certain amount of work on the collective farm. For non-compliance with this norm, prosecution was threatened, as a result of which the collective farmer could be deprived of his liberty or, as a measure of punishment, his personal plot was taken away from him. It should be taken into account that it was this plot that was the main source of livelihood for the collective farmer, from this plot he received food for himself and his family, the sale of their surplus on the market was the only way to get Money. A collective farm member did not have the right to move freely around the country; he could not leave his place of residence without the consent of the head of the collective farm.

Government decrees of 1946 established strict sizes for personal plots, which expanded somewhat during the war years due to the development of vacant lands. In the early post-war years, a strict campaign was carried out to seize all "surplus" household plots. This measure hit the villagers hard, sharply reducing their level of material well-being.

The declared fight against "violations of the charter of the agricultural artel" ultimately resulted in a sharp reduction in the area under the household plots of rural residents. A course was taken to turn collective farms (formally - "agricultural cooperatives") into state-owned enterprises. At the end of the 1940s, a campaign was launched to enlarge the collective farms, which at first seemed to be a justified and reasonable measure, but in fact turned out to be only a stage on the path of turning the collective farms into state agricultural enterprises.

Of course, there were also prosperous collective farms. But usually this was the result of the support of higher authorities to create artificial "beacons", or, in rare cases, they were led by uniquely enterprising and desperately courageous people.

The village needed significant capital investments, but the state did not have the funds for this. However, it was possible to weaken the financial pressure, under the burden of which both the private and public economy were. The tax on everything that the collective farmer kept in his farmstead was so high that it was simply unprofitable to keep livestock and grow fruit trees. Peasants cut down orchards to get rid of the tax burden. There was a theoretical justification for all this: the peasant must devote most of his time to social production. The purchase prices for the products of collective farms and state farms were so low that sometimes it was not possible to pay the collective farmers for their work.

Pre-war norms were preserved that limited the freedom of movement of collective farmers: they were actually deprived of the opportunity to have passports, they were not covered by payment for temporary disability, pensions. Organizational recruitment of the rural population for construction sites and factories increased the outflow of peasants to the city.

After a terrible drought in 1946, good weather conditions followed in 1947 and 1948. The leadership became convinced that it was worth carrying out a set of works that would reduce the impact of natural and climatic conditions on harvesting, and a significant part of the problems would be solved. Thus, in 1948, the widely publicized "Stalin's plan for the transformation of nature" arose. It was planned to carry out forest protection measures, develop irrigation systems, build ponds and reservoirs. In the future, this plan was supplemented by government decisions on the construction of large canals. In the early 50s. grandiose projects are put forward for the construction of gigantic hydroelectric power stations on the Volga and the Dnieper, canals in the Kara-Kum desert and between the Volga and the Don, a plan for the creation of forest protection plantations on many hundreds of thousands of hectares. These projects diverted huge resources, depleting the already meager treasury of the state, introducing new tension into the life of society, lowering the standard of living of ordinary people. And at the same time, there were not enough funds for the minimum investment required by agriculture in the middle zone. The Russian peasant, by hook or by crook, tried to leave the village, rushing to the cities for new buildings.

As before, the main burden for the formation of funds for heavy industry was borne by agriculture, which emerged from the war extremely weakened. In 1945, agricultural production decreased by almost 50% compared to 1940. The country's leadership tried to ignore the deep crisis in the agrarian sector of the economy, and even cautious recommendations for easing command pressure on the countryside were invariably rejected. The control over the farms by the MTS and their political departments again increased. The MTS again received the right to distribute plan assignments among the collective farms. Higher organizations through the MTS system dictated to the farms the timing of sowing, harvesting and other agrotechnical work. And the chairmen of collective farms who violated these terms, based, for example, on weather conditions, could receive severe punishment. The MTS also carried out mandatory procurement of agricultural products, collected payment in kind from the collective farms for the performance of mechanized work, and so on. Moreover, at the beginning of the 1950s, the consolidation of collective farms was carried out under the same pretext of strengthening the process of mechanization of agricultural production. In fact, the enlargement of collective farms made it easier state control for farms through MTS. The number of collective farms in the country decreased from 237,000 in 1950 to 93,000 in 1953.

In the field of collective farm law, the most important post-war act was the September 1946 resolution “On Measures to Eliminate Violations of the Charter of the Agricultural Artel in Collective Farms”, aimed at securing the land allotted to collective farms and preventing the transfer of these lands to individual use. To control the implementation of the Charter of the Agricultural Artel, the Council for Collective Farm Affairs was created under the government. In April 1948, another government decree “On measures to improve the organization, increase productivity and streamline wages on collective farms” was adopted, which abolished such a structural production unit of the collective farm as a link, and restored the production team as the main form of labor organization on the collective farm.

Agriculture developed very slowly. Even in the relatively favorable year of 1952, the gross grain harvest did not reach the level of 1940, and the yield in 1949-1953 was only 7.7 centners per hectare (in 1913 - 8.2 centners per hectare). In 1953, the number of cattle was less than in 1916, and the population over the years has grown by 30-40 million people, i.e. the food problem remained very acute. The population of large cities was supplied intermittently.

Disadvantages of administrative-command methods of managing the national economy.

The administrative-command system is a way of organizing the economy and social life, characteristic of countries that have gone through proletarian revolutions with belated industrialization. Main features:

rigidly centralized management based on state ownership;

use in management not so much economic as political and ideological regulators.

According to many economists, there was no alternative to the ACS in that historical period of the development of our country. The fact is that, one of the factors is the predominant type of worker. The system itself adapts to the type of employee, shapes him, but at the same time, the type of employee largely determines the nature of the system. A worker under the ACS is par excellence a worker who is characterized by pre-commodity individualism. There is bourgeois, petty-bourgeois, commodity individualism, when a person wants to stand out from the collective in order to surpass others economically. Under pre-commodity individualism, a person strives not to recycle more than others. In the 1930s, the prevailing type of worker was people who had once left the countryside; the NEP economy was not to their liking (ruined peasants, poor peasants, horseless peasants). The AKC, as a business model, adapted the mass worker to itself, and the mass worker adapted to it. And commodity petty-bourgeois individualism was, in the end, replaced by primitive collectivism, the origins of which are in the disintegrated communal consciousness.

The periods of development of the ACS can be traced according to the data of the economic development of Russia. 1861-1913 - GNP growth rates were, according to the American scientist Abram Bergson, 2.65% per year. During the formation of the foundations of the administrative-command system (1928-1940), GNP increased to 5.1% per year. Western statistics differ from Soviet statistics in that their data are cleared of inflationary components. During the heyday of the AKC, GNP was about 5% per year. During the decline of the ACS GNP - 2% per year. During the liquidation of the AKC, GNP fell by 5% per year (ie, the growth rate was negative). These data, of course, are lower than those of Soviet statistics. For example, according to Soviet statistics in 1928-55. GNP grew at 10.4% per year, and according to Western sources this figure was 4.6% per year, although this is still a very high GDP growth rate for that time.

In the Stalin period, the rate of economic growth, according to Western statistics, is very high. The AKC could ensure the GNP growth rate of 6% per year, i.e. 1.8 times higher than the pre-revolutionary market economy. But on the basis of these data, it cannot be said that the ACS is more efficient than the market system, because it is necessary to take the growth rates of GNP for the entire period of existence, and according to these data, the growth rates of the ACS turn out to be lower. Ensuring the growth rate of GNP in the conditions of the ACN was not flawless (the Gulag, the tragedy of the Russian peasantry, etc.).

From an economic point of view, the ideal model of socialism, with various variations, can be reduced to the following provisions:

all property rights belong to the state. This is the so-called "public property". Private property is liquidated;

the economy is managed from a single Center, which decides what, how and for whom to produce;

the market mechanism as a decentralized communication system based on price signals is destroyed.

It is assumed that such a system of economic organization is capable of eliminating all market defects associated with uncertainty, uneven distribution of income, cyclical recessions and, in general, inevitable deviations from the state of equilibrium. The market is not an ideal system, therefore, socialists believe, it must be replaced by scientifically developed, rational planning.

The administrative-command system assumes a single Center, which must concentrate a huge amount of information in order to bring down the planned tasks. However, the very concentration of information in a single planning body turns out to be an insoluble task. Indeed, in conditions of limited society resources, it is necessary to make numerous choices - What, How and For Whom to produce. In a market economy, the problem of choice is solved with the help of the price mechanism. Changes in relative prices and marginal substitution rates are the benchmark that tells producers what to produce and consumers what to buy. Under the conditions of administrative-command control, these mechanisms do not work.

The management system of the Soviet national economy was repeatedly reformed. For example, the management of industry by the end of the 20s - the beginning of the 30s was 4-link. As a result of the reform of 1934, a 3- and 2-tier management system arose in our country. Changes in the management scheme were reduced to changes in subordination. The enterprises were subordinate either through the trust to the production-territorial administrations, or directly to the center. Instead of Glavkov, Production and Territorial Administrations were created. Either the functional management system was liquidated, or it was revived. Thus, since 1936, the process of fragmentation of the People's Commissariats intensified. In general, on this basis, the evolution of the management system of Soviet industry continued until the end of the 1950s, at least until the reform of 1957, when an attempt was made to switch to a sectoral system of management on a regional basis.

But regardless of the reforms of administrative structures, the development of industry proceeded due to extensive factors. As before, thousands of new enterprises were built, but the administrative-command methods of managing the national economy did not contribute to increasing the efficiency of existing capacities. Gradually, due to the imperfection of planning, structural imbalances intensified.

Attempts to reform the management system in the 1950s were more like hasty “shit-ups” and most often did not give quick positive results, so government leaders returned to their former, familiar methods of management. The Soviet directive economy, due to its over-centralization, lack of initiative and entrepreneurship in various economic structures, was unable to widely introduce scientific and technical developments into production (except for the military-industrial complex) and began to rapidly lag behind countries with a market economy. At the same time, no one wanted to admit that all the failures of the Soviet economy did not depend on specific performers, but were laid down within the command system itself. As a result, a macroeconomic imbalance arose in the economy:

uneven development of individual sectors and branches of the national economy. This was manifested, first of all, in the hypertrophied development of certain industries (military-industrial complex, heavy engineering), whose share in the total social product at the end of the 80s was 68% - these industries absorbed the lion's share of investments, raw materials, skilled labor, thereby more "depriving" other industries. Creation of a military-industrial complex unprecedented in its scale, annually absorbing at least 2/3 of the country's economic potential, for the maintenance of which 18-20% of national income was annually spent. This led to the lag of industries that did not work in the military-industrial complex, which led to a slowdown in economic growth, to a deficit, to imports;

unevenness in the technical and technological basis of various sectors and industries. This was expressed in the poor material equipment of many industries, in the extremely neglected state of the infrastructure (transport, warehousing, energy, information, utilities, social industries lagged behind in terms of technical equipment and development).

All this led to negative trends in the economic development of Russia and a steady decline in the pace of economic development.

The dominance of administrative-command methods of managing the national economy in our country led, in the end, to a logical result - a crisis of the entire system. Within the framework of the previous system, the urgent macroeconomic problems could no longer be solved; deep structural reforms were needed not only in the economy, but also in the socio-political life of the country. Reforms have become a vital necessity, as it was necessary to solve the problem of structural and investment restructuring on a modern technical and technological basis.

Conclusion

The sweet euphoria of victory did not require forced labor to rebuild a ruined country. The energy of the war was so great and had such inertia that it had to be "switched" to peaceful construction. In tension it was similar to a war: in 1948 the country reached and surpassed the pre-war level of industrial production, which is unthinkable by normal standards. And in 1952, the volume of industrial production exceeded the level of 1940 by 2.5 times. A lot was done - destroyed cities were revived, new enterprises were restored and built.

But we must not forget at what cost this growth was achieved. The war strengthened control over all spheres of life. The price reduction in the cities was carried out at the expense of the worsening of the life of the rural population. Inadequate remuneration for intense productive labor made it impossible to raise the standard of living of the people. In response, as if to reward the people for the overload of two decades, a permanent, albeit modest, improvement in the life of the population was made a principle of state policy. It was then that the specific stereotypes of the Soviet mass consciousness, enshrined in the state ideology (and strengthening the state), arose: confidence in the future and the conviction that life can only improve. The people, for their part, once again provided the state, the authorities with a huge credit of trust - they put up with the hardships that marked their lives, their way of life, believed in a "bright future".

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State of the economy of the USSR after the end of the war. Topic: "The economy of the USSR after the Second World War Economic development of the USSR after the Second World War

Introduction

The state of the economy of the USSR after the end of the war

Ministry of General and Vocational Education

Russian Federation

ESSAY

Topic: "The economy of the USSR after the Second World War"

Ulyanovsk 2003

Economy Japan after II World Wars

Economy USSR on the eve of II world wars

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