A Short History of Communism by Robert Harvey

Author:Robert Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781466888074
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

In the Soviet State

This was the state of the power structure on the eve of the most astonishing transformation since the 1917 revolution. The conflicts within it resulted in the often inexplicable turns of policy in Russia, and the even less comprehensible paralysis of the system. As can be seen, the Soviet system’s great weakness was not just the enormous difficulty of changing anything in the post-Stalin age, but the way in which these high-level manoeuvrings between various bureaucratic empires virtually ignored the interests of the Russian people, who counted for very little, although they needed to be given enough to keep them quiet.

Russia seemed to be moving away noticeably quickly from the ultimate Marxist goal envisaged in the final stage of the dialectic – the true communist society. This implied the end of capitalism and of the class system, leading to total equality, the withering away of the state, freedom for the individual and internationalism. But in the Soviet Union, closet capitalism was on the march; the country, increasingly class-ridden, was developing into one of the most class-conscious anywhere; state power was all-encompassing; personal freedom was again under attack after a brief moment of relaxation; and Russian internationalism was a dead letter. To take each in turn:

The Soviet Union was not a socialist economy, but a mixed economy with central industrial planning. In the agricultural sector, by the mid-1970s, some 27% of all Soviet farm output – worth around $33 billion a year – came from private plots which occupied around 20 million acres, less than 1% of Russia’s agricultural land. Some 25 million peasants operated as autonomous producers, and up to 62% of Russian potatoes, 32% of fruit and vegetables, 42% of eggs and 34% of meat and milk originated outside the state system.

Khrushchev had tried to crack down on private plots; Brezhnev reversed this, and they were here to stay. Furthermore, Brezhnev raised agricultural prices and considerably reduced compulsory state delivery quotas, enabling collectives to sell most of their produce independently. He also helped poorer families, most of whom earned around 80 roubles a month – just over $100 at the official exchange rate.

In industry the size of the black (private) market could only be guessed at: it was possibly at least 10 per cent of the economy, worth around $66 billion. Up to a quarter of the retail trade was outside state control. The private sector in industry expanded sharply in the 1960s and 1970s, although Andropov tried to curb it in the 1980s. Hard currency purchases of foreign technology – which the government judged a lesser evil than decentralizing the planning system – were mainly connected with production in the private sector. But corruption was so pervasive – for example factory managers applying for higher inputs than necessary in order to sell the surplus to middlemen – that the death penalty had been reinstated for ‘economic crimes’ in 1961.

By 1985 Russia and its 270 million people had, like most societies, three main classes, although the structured inequality of Soviet life was probably the most ordered in the world.

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