2024/12/11 by Giovanni Cadioli
Social Sciences · #Russia and Soviet political economy
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/russ.12725
Yakov Feygin offers a fresh and nuanced examination of the Soviet Union’s economic trajectory during the Cold War, from Stalin’s death up to the country’s collapse. Feygin argues that the USSR’s collapse was significantly influenced by internal contradictions within its political economy. Soviet efforts to transition from a command model to a consumer-oriented society, he contends, led to unresolved tensions within the policymaking apparatus. Feygin’s analysis highlights how the failure to reconcile competing visions within the Soviet leadership contributed to the nation’s decline and ultimate dissolution. Such visions were many: retain the old modeling full? Tinker with it while conserving its basic structure? Move more boldly in the direction of decentralization and of giving leeway to market forces? Building a Ruin delves into the complexities of Soviet economic reforms, and specifically into the ideological battles among policy advisers and experts, which, the author posits, did influence policymaking. It furthers our understanding of the inner workings of the Soviet economy, provides new insights into the Soviet expert community and into its relationship with actual policymaking, and thereby further demystifies the decline and collapse of the USSR. The main contours of the story are known: paraphrasing Stephen Kotkin, “armageddon” was averted because the Cold War did not resolve itself militarily. The spectre of thermonuclear war did not concretize itself because, after nearly three decades of slowing growth and then eventual stagnation, the USSR ceased to exist in a largely peaceful way (with notable exceptions ranging from Moldova to the Caucasus and Central Asia). It did so because its last leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, renounced party dictatorship, Marxism-Leninism, the messianic goal of building communism, and the command economy. One of the book’s core theses is that collapse was not the inevitable result of the inherent faults of the communist system; unresolved tensions within its political economy were also to blame. These tensions arose as reformers sought to implement economic policies emphasizing productivity, growth, and consumer goods availability, akin to Western capitalist economies. This meant transitioning away from the Stalinist model of mass mobilization, heavy industrialization, and centralized administrative direction. However, entrenched Stalinist institutions and conservative political factions resisted these changes, resulting in policy inconsistencies, stagnation, and eventual instability. The Soviet attempt to mimic Western achievements was not born out of abstruse ideological priorities, but rather very pressing necessities. Building a Ruin focuses on the Soviet attempt, which was replicated with largely similar results throughout socialist East Central Europe, to attain economic prosperity by winning over the West on its battlefield of choice: consumerism. Soviet snd Warsaw Pact tank deployments dwarfed NATO forces in Europe: but what of clothing and shoes, washing machines and everyday life utensils? In examining their level of prosperity, Soviet citizens were never going to count the barrels of tank guns. Hence Feygin looks at a key factor that undermined not only popular belief in the Soviet system, but that of its very own leaders, up to the last party general secretary. In 1917, Bolsheviks promised a world of liberated labor, peace, equality—and abundance. Soviet communists repeated endlessly that their aim was nothing short of prosperity. In late 1935, Stalin said that the “equalization of people’s material conditions on the basis of a poor man’s living standard” was a “petty-bourgeois conception of socialism,” since true socialism meant “abundance of products.”1 Fast forward five decades, and few believed that the Soviet system could deliver that. This, as Kristy Ironside has pointed out, was “prosperity postponed.”2 And it remained so until the promise that such prosperity would be achieved under the hammer and sickle was no more. However, Feygin emphasizes that if the outcome of Soviet reform was failure, this does not mean that the effort was not there, nor that this had turned into a ritualistic exercise nobody really believed in or cared about. Feygin does not look much at the actual results of piecemeal or (intended) comprehensive economic reform attempts that began in the 1950s. These have been discussed elsewhere, and the author’s very careful reading of the historiography amply suffices. Instead, the author takes us deep into the debates that kept the Soviet expert community busy up until the system that needed reforming collapsed. His rich pool of sources reflects this choice. Feygin thoroughly researched the collections of the Soviet Communist Party, the Soviet government (as in both state documents and those specifically related to the economy), and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It is in the interplay between the documents coming from four main former Soviet archives that we see the reports and analyses produced by economists travel from the discussion tables at the Academy, or in government expert committees, into the hands of senior bureaucrats and political leaders. Experts have figured prominently in recent literature on the Soviet economy.3 In Feygin’s book they take center stage and become main characters because—and this is another core thesis of the book—the author contends they did matter, not just in terms of discussing and defining, but also in terms of executing economic reform policies. After the Cold War took the shape of economic competition with the West in the 1950s, the role of economic experts in the Soviet system was elevated. A new cadre of Soviet economists who prioritized technical expertise over ideological conformity emerged. We therefore follow known key Soviet experts, some active since the prewar period, some of whom by the 1950s had become doyens of Soviet reform economics (Lenin Prize laureates Viktor Novozhilov, Vassily Nemchinov, and Leonid Kantorovich, the latter also a Nobel Prize winner). Others important experts gained worldwide notoriety thanks the 1965 reform (such as Evsei Liberman, who became a star in the West). However, Feygin reserves the main stage for less well-known experts, who are shown to have played a key role in the debates and in the struggle to push reform through the leadership. Among them were mathematical economist Nikolay Fedorenko, Dzhermen Gvishiani, a man with a complex career and who held a Ph.D. in the philosophy of science (not the norm), and heterodox economist Yakov Kronrod. The beliefs and proposals of such experts, shaped and shaping the institutions to which they were affiliated, defined their interplay with different interest groups within the party-state and the outcome of their very proposals. Feygin takes us from the Khrushchev years, through the (supposed) heyday of economic reform in the Kosygin years of the mid-to–late 1960s, then into Brezhnev’s Era of Stagnation, leading to the brief but meaningful Andropov and Chernenko interregnums, and eventually into the twilight of the USSR under Gorbachev. The Khrushchev period was, in the author’s eyes, a mixture of traditional reliance on old and new trends. Stalinist patterns—large investment, primarily in heavy and defense industries—were still evident, but so was an attempt at transitioning toward a system that would allow improvement in the quality of consumer goods and their availability. Campaigns aimed at mobilizing activism for the purpose of stronger scrutiny of managers ensued, which led to significant popular participation, a broader feature of Khrushchev’s economic policy (the regionalization of economic management was accompanied by a wave of meetings that saw very large numbers of citizens attending). Soviet economic thinking again flourished at this time, and several strands of reform economics took shape, seeking different alliances with interest groups within the Soviet elite and at times openly clashing with one another. The Kosygin era is a turning point in the book. Alexey Kosygin became prime minister in 1964, after Khrushchev’s ousting, and was the main force behind the reform, enacted in 1965, that bore his name (Leonid Brezhnev, the new general secretary, did not oppose reform, but was not overtly enthusiastic). The 1965 reform did away with Khrushchev’s regionalization of economic management, hence recentralizing the economy (ministries were reestablished). However, it also reduced central oversight over economic units (it significantly cut mandatory plan indicators set centrally), promised significant decentralization of economic decision-making (it empowered enterprise managers), and introduced profitability and sales as key performance indicators for enterprises (as opposed to gross output value). Every “normally functioning enterprise” should have become able to earn a profit. This was a significant departure from the old patterns, and from the mobilization style. Yet this turned out to be “reform” more in words than in deeds. Feygin delves into the many problems that undercut the chances of the 1965 reform to succeed, such as just how resources could be redirected from structurally unprofitable enterprises (in some cases almost entire branches) toward profitable ones, or how to build a system of accounting that would render a profit indicator of actual economic relevance in conditions of centralized price setting. Feygin discusses in detail how such problems could not be resolved because Soviet leaders simply could not agree on a solution. And as the Kosygin years of the Brezhnev period transitioned into the whole hog Brezhnev-only Era of Stagnation, the 1965 reform ran aground. However, the author details how this hardly meant an end to economic debates and to experts’ attempts at influencing economic policy. The impasse led to what Feygin calls a “conservative consensus” that favored political stability over chances to prevent what gradually became a reality: economic stagnation (pp. 10, 129ff). This consensus held for about a decade, during which a reform initially not even called such was launched in 1973. And then, in 1979, what were simple ongoing economic changes was instead termed “reform,” and it was the blatant failure of these “reforms” that led to the collapse of the “conservative consensus.” And all this took place during the downfall of detente and the beginning of the so-called Second Cold War, with its profound implications for Soviet trade relations and the budget. Building a Ruin culminates with an examination of the reform policies enacted by Mikhail Gorbachev, who rose to power after two old timers ruled the USSR for two years before succumbing to old age. Gorbachev quickly moved beyond the traditional approach to reform symbolised by his mentor, Yuri Andropov, and embraced perestroika. Here Feygin argues that a key factor seriously undercutting its chances of success was that the political coalition behind this course grew out of a shared opposition to the “conservative consensus” of the Brezhnev era. The economic policy proposals put forward by Gorbachev and his group were incoherent, and when it came to settling on a concrete plan, the anti-“consensus” consensus did not produce viable proposals, but rather reproduced the impasse that had been reached by the Kosygin reform. Building a Ruin is a significant contribution to the field of Soviet economic history, offering a nuanced perspective on the complexities of economic reform and the factors contributing to the Soviet Union’s decline. Indeed, Feygin’s meticulous research, based on a careful reading of the historiography and on a vast study of archival materials, produces a thoughtful analysis of the challenges involved in attempting a transition from a command economy to one that could compete with capitalist systems. The book challenges deterministic narratives about the USSR’s downfall, highlighting instead the complex interplay of ideological, political, and economic factors that involved not only top leaders but also experts. In doing so, it represents a valuable addition to existing literature whose resource pool primarily consists of interviews, diaries, and memoirs of party and state leaders as well as officials at institutions such the Central Committee or leading organs within the State Planning Committee.4 Building a Ruin is essential reading for scholars and students of Soviet history, economic policy, and Cold War studies, as well as for anyone interested in understanding the intricate dynamics that led to one of the twentieth century’s most consequential geopolitical transformations. Open access publishing facilitated by Universita degli Studi di Padova, as part of the Wiley - CRUI-CARE agreement.