Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85: Stagnation under Brezhnev Teaching notes This resource is one of a sequence of eight resources, originally planned for Edexcel’s Paper 1 Option: Russia, 1917-91: from Lenin to Yeltsin. The sequence focuses on the theme ‘Industrial and agricultural change, 1917-85’. Although the content of the resources is drawn from this particular specification, there is no reason why they couldn’t be used to support the teaching of other similar courses, perhaps with some adaptation of the suggested activities. The eight resources in the sequence are: 1. War Communism (search ‘25198’to find it on Teachit History) 2. The New Economic Policy (search ‘25199’) 3. The First Five-Year Plan (search ‘25200’) 4. Collectivisation (search ‘25201’) 5. Soviet Industry and Agriculture in WW2 (search ‘25202’) 6. Virgin Lands (search ‘25203’) 7. Stagnation and the Brezhnev era (this resource) 8. Reform under Gorbachev (search ‘25205’) Each resource contains a section of reading followed by some suggested tasks. These could be completed in class or as independent homework tasks. © www.teachithistory.co.uk 2015 25204 Page 1 of 6 Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85: Stagnation under Brezhnev Background Nikita Khrushchev was probably the last Soviet leader who genuinely believed that a communist society would eventually emerge in the Soviet Union. His successor, Leonid Brezhnev certainly did not share that view when he took power in 1964. However, for the first decade of his leadership from 1964 to 1973 the economy of the USSR continued to grow and there was a gradual improvement in living standards (though these were still far behind those of Western Europe and the USA). Leonid Brezhnev / Keystone / Hulton Archive Editorial / Getty Images / Universal Images Group / Copyright © Getty Images / For Education Use Only. This and millions of other educational images are available through Britannica Image Quest. For a free trial, please visit www.britannica.co.uk/trial In 1973 this growth came to an abrupt halt and did not revive itself for the remainder of Brezhnev’s time in office. The era of stagnation had an effect on both the peasants and industrial workers in the USSR but Brezhnev, unlike any Soviet leader before him, had no intention of making any kind of economic reform or adjustment to respond to Russia’s economic problems. He and the rest of the politburo had no desire to repeat Khrushchev’s attempts at liberalisation and his denunciation of Stalin. There had been far too much unrest as a result and Brezhnev was prepared to sacrifice economic performance for stability. After all, he claimed, a socialist society in the USSR now existed and it was his job to maintain it. This, which he described as ‘mature socialism’, was a world away from the revolutionary upheavals of Lenin and Trotsky. Stagnation Throughout the world during the early 1970s, economies, including the USSR’s, were in crisis. Historians have debated why the Soviet Union fell into stagnation during this period and the following factors have been suggested: A large defense sector and expensive Cold War military commitments. The failure of the Virgin Lands campaign to supply the USSR with enough food. An inefficient, centrally planned command economy that did not respond to market demand. Widespread corruption in the soviet bureaucracy and industry. The cost of providing subsidised oil and gas to the USSR’s satellite states in the Warsaw Pact. The lack of any kind of entrepreneurship or a private banking system to support it. The development of a new post war generation of soviet citizens who had no memory of Stalinism and who wanted the same rising living standards as westerners. © www.teachithistory.co.uk 2015 25204 Page 2 of 6 Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85: Stagnation under Brezhnev One of the main problems that the government faced was a growing level of resentment, militancy and anger from the workers. Shortages in stores meant that wages paid with paper money were increasingly worthless. The soviet policy of full employment meant that the threat of the sack for unruly workers carried little weight. An overall reluctance to work, absenteeism and poor levels of productivity became a permanent feature of working life in the USSR. Gone were the days of the Stakhanovites, where workers sacrificed everything to help build socialism. Food shortages After 1962, the USSR began to import food from abroad. One of the biggest food exporters to the USSR was America, despite the two powers being locked in bitter Cold War rivalry. The need to import food created a critical weakness within the soviet economy. Animal fodder was made from imported grain and a third of Russia’s bread was made from imports. Even with all Khrushchev’s efforts to boost the grain supply during the Virgin Lands campaign, it was impossible to undo the damage caused by Stalin’s collectivisation. The USSR’s dependence on imports meant that Russia could not be insulated from the rest of the world economy − it was affected by the inflation of the early 1970s that caused chaos in Europe and America. This resulted in a poor food supply and an inability to control food prices. The prosperity and relative stability of America, Britain and other wealthy nations was based primarily on a plentiful supply of cheap food. The USSR’s inability to achieve this by the 1960s was a key component of economic stagnation. Arms spending In the 1960s and 1970s the other expensive commodity was oil. Russia had large reserves of oil and natural gas and was capable of exporting this to generate large sums of foreign currency. The money was not directed towards the civilian economy or improvements to the industrial infrastructure of Russia, instead it was invested in the soviet military and the arms industry. In total, 15 percent of the country’s GDP was consumed by military spending, which diverted resources away from a civilian consumer economy. With an economy that was stagnating, high levels of defence spending became a luxury that the Soviet Union could ill afford, especially since the country was also forced to import food to feed the population. © www.teachithistory.co.uk 2015 25204 Page 3 of 6 Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85: Stagnation under Brezhnev Kosygin’s reforms In 1965, following the removal of Nikita Khrushchev from the role of Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Alexei Kosygin was appointed to the post. In September 1965 Kosygin, who was now in joint charge of the Soviet economy along with Brezhnev, proposed a significant change to economic policy. He argued that the existing model of state planning was inefficient and could not motivate the workforce to produce goods efficiently. Economists close to Kosygin argued that introducing a ‘profit motive’ into the economy would help to motivate the workers. Since the Five Year Plans, workers and state industries had not made profits and had not been intended to. All goods were priced simply to reflect the labour that had gone into making them, unlike in a capitalist economy, where some items can be sold at far higher prices than simply the worker’s wages. The soviet economy actually rewarded managers for producing surplus goods, meaning that large stockpiles of unwanted goods built up in warehouses or went to waste. Kosygin’s reforms enabled factory managers to set their own targets and enabled soviet enterprises, from coal mines to textile factories, to invest their own budgets in new equipment or supplies. Managers would be rewarded for increased profitability and workers would be paid incentives from a special fund. The Kosygin reforms also removed the state’s commitment to eliminating unemployment; managers could receive incentives for firing unproductive or poor workers. Businesses could access state banks and pay back loans with interest, meaning that the state was now making profits from lending money to state enterprises − a key feature of the capitalist system. There were, however, limitations to the reforms. Industries still had to have their production targets vetted by officials, but the output of the economy did improve in the second half of the 1960s. Central planning bureaucrats and politicians were uneasy about the reforms and believed the decrease in control over the economy represented a threat to their authority. By 1969 a backlash against the reforms from conservatives within the communist party had begun but they were unable to overturn the new policies. However, their resistance did ensure that the reforms were never as far reaching and comprehensive as they needed to be in order to be fully effective. © www.teachithistory.co.uk 2015 25204 Page 4 of 6 Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85: Stagnation under Brezhnev The second and third Kosygin reforms In 1973, as the world economy dipped into a deep recession and the soviet economy stalled, Kosygin tried again to weaken the power of centralised planners. He created regional associations that increased the power of local planners and diminished the control of centralised bureaucrats. These local associations encouraged state enterprises to share technology and expertise with one another and to champion innovative thinking and ideas. This approach was alien to the soviet system of central planning and once again faced resistance from them. The associations were introduced slowly and in a piecemeal fashion but were unpopular not only with central ministries but also with factory managers, both of whom lost power and control to the new associations. Many industries in the new associations had factories dotted across the country, so it became very difficult to group industries together regionally anyway. By 1979, when the third Kosygin reform was introduced, half the Soviet economy was organised into associations and some appeared to work well (such as the Leningrad Gorkii automobile plant), but for many, a new tier of bureaucracy and directives made life even more complicated. The third reforms were a complete reversal of their predecessors and re-centralised power. They sought to improve the state planning system and improve the quality of work and efficiency in soviet industry, but were quickly abandoned after Kosygin’s death in 1980. The final abandonment of Kosygin’s reforms meant that reactionary, conservative ideas in Brezhnev’s government had triumphed over attempts to bring limited market principals into the Soviet economy. Reform would not be attempted again until Perestroika and this would have dire consequences for the fate of the Soviet Union. Tasks 1. Work in pairs and follow the instructions below: Kosygin’s dilemma Imagine you are Kosygin. You are faced with the problems of the Soviet economy. a. What would you try to reform first and why? b. Could there be any unexpected consequences of these reforms? Fill in the table on the following page to record your ideas. © www.teachithistory.co.uk 2015 25204 Page 5 of 6 Industrial and agricultural change in Russia 1917-85: Stagnation under Brezhnev Economic problem Rank (1-7 1= top priority, 7 = low priority) give a reason for each ranking What reforms could you introduce? What might be the consequences? The USSR’s expensive cold war military commitments Food shortages and inefficient agriculture An inefficient, centrally planned economy Widespread corruption in the soviet bureaucracy and industry The cost of subsidising oil and gas to the Warsaw Pact countries The lack of any entrepreneurship or private banking The new consumerist aspirations of soviet citizens 2. Discussion points a. To what extent was Kosygin able to make any reforms at all? b. Was the soviet economy still trapped by the legacy of Stalinism? © www.teachithistory.co.uk 2015 25204 Page 6 of 6