Inevitable Soviet decline
Economics over politics?
Authoritarian culture
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300 years
Secret police & bureaucracy under Czars
Czars “licensed” industrialization
1861 “emancipation” of serfs
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Put them on 49 year installment plan!
Communist revolution
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In a backward country
Strikes spontaneous
Marxist-Leninists seized chance
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Seized centre
Ideology
changed but
not conditions
Ideology
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Community over individual
Politics the job of elite
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“some animals more equal than others”!
Justified Stalin’s rule
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Suppressed nationalities
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Purged millions in Ukraine
Suppressed religion
Centralized power
Stalin’s fears
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Criticism
Counter-revolution
Encirclement by capitalist west
No feedback
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Opposition considered immoral
Voting an act of ritual
Privileges for elite
Party bureaucracy oversees state
Central planning a disaster
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Bureaucrats hid errors
Output measured in weight
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Very heavy TVs!
Perverted planning
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Administration replaced collective good
Planners disregarded social &
environment costs
“metal eaters alliance”
Fiction of full employment
“Gigantomania”
Stagnation
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Production reported to rise 8.5%
1966-70
Receded 3.7% 1981-85
Brezhnev
Reform
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Gorbachev (1985) price
reforms too late
Managers allowed to
retain profits
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Inflation resulted
Perestroika weakened
centre
Glasnost allowed
criticism
Reform failure
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Bureaucrats resisted change
Command structure of industry remained
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“Autonomy” meant 5 year plans for industries
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Rubles just accounting device
Still tied to centre
Inter-enterprise links stayed weak
Final decline
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4% 1990
10-15% first half of 1991
1992 crisis as farms hoarded grain to fatten
livestock
Soil erosion at crisis levels
Breakdown of centrally allocated resources
Hyperinflation & barter
1990/91 Military still 40% budget; 18% GNP
Social problems
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Religious harassment
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200 mosques for 20 million
Anti-Semitism
Alcoholism
Delinquency
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“Hooliganism”
Social problems
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Double burden on women
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Education: promoted inequality
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Health care: weak and IMR 25/1000
Environment
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Aral Sea salinized by irrigation
Lake Baikal dead (world’s largest freshwater
lake)
Quota obsession meant 20% steel production
dumped each year
Nuclear accidents & regular abuse
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130 explosions used to move earth or build oil
pressure
Impact
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70m /190m in 103 cities breathe air with
5 times allowable limits of dangerous
chemicals
If individuals sued polluting enterprises
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Could close 80% factories overnight
270 mile canal from Caspian Sea to
Aral sea …… uphill!
Energy
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920,000 barrels oil spilled per DAY
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=one Exxon Valdez every 6 HOURS!
Cut-off valves only every 30 miles
5m acres boreal forest lost per year
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Worse than Amazon
Fall
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1991
USSR
no more
Recap Soviet features
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Authoritarian
Centralized
Corrupt
Repressive
Inefficient
Unequal
Change
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Yeltsin defied tanks in Aug 1991 putsch
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Oct 1993 Duma rebellion
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Apparently “feeling no pain”!
Y. persuaded army to support him and shell
parlmt.
Clarity of anti-communist movement lost in
the uncertainties of nationalism, fragmented
parties, disputes between legislature and
executive
Change?
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¾ Moscow welcomed 1993 state of
emergency
15 far right newspapers closed
Swift polarization of rich & poor
2/3 enterprises in corrupt activities
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Yeltsin’s daughter questioned
Change?
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Putin first elected (partly) on anticorruption ticket
2003 Duma elections reinforcing Putin’s
power