Misplaced Pages

#617382

175-525: The State Planning Committee , commonly known as Gosplan (Russian: Госплан , IPA: [ɡosˈpɫan] ), was the agency responsible for central economic planning in the Soviet Union . Established in 1921 and remaining in existence until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Gosplan had as its main task the creation and administration of a series of five-year plans governing

350-426: A Tito–Stalin split , which marked the beginning of international sectarian division within the world communist movement. After Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev rose to the top post by overcoming political adversaries, including Lavrentiy Beria and Georgy Malenkov , in a power struggle. In 1955, Khrushchev achieved the demotion of Malenkov and secured his own position as Soviet leader. Early in his rule and with

525-529: A campaign against religion was waged in which the Russian Orthodox Church , which had long been a political arm of Tsarism before the revolution, was ruthlessly repressed, organized religion was generally removed from public life and made into a completely private matter, with many churches, mosques and other shrines being repurposed or demolished. The Soviet Union was the first to warn of the impending danger of invasion from Nazi Germany to

700-538: A command economy was implemented. After recovering from the Second World War , reforms were implemented which decentralized economic planning and liberalized Soviet society in general under Nikita Khrushchev . By 1980, various factors, including the continuing Cold War , and ongoing nuclear arms race with the United States and other Western European powers and unaddressed inefficiencies in

875-642: A cult of personality . Collective leadership split power between the Politburo , the Central Committee, and the Council of Ministers to hinder any attempts to create a one-man dominance over the Soviet political system. By contrast, Stalin's period as leader was characterized by an extensive cult of personality . Regardless of leadership style, all political power in the Soviet Union was concentrated in

1050-421: A democratic manner . This differs from planning within the framework of capitalism which is based on the planned accumulation of capital in order to either stabilize the business cycle (when undertaken by governments) or to maximize profits (when undertaken by firms) as opposed to the socialist concept of planned production for use. In such a socialist society based on economic planning, the primary function of

1225-456: A " technostructure ". Its specialized groups and committees are the primary decision-makers and specialized managers, directors and financial advisers operate under formal bureaucratic procedures, replacing the individual entrepreneur's role and intrapreneurship . Galbraith stated that both the obsolete notion of entrepreneurial capitalism and democratic socialism (defined as democratic management ) are impossible organizational forms for managing

1400-407: A balance-sheet to balance them with output targets specified by industry, thereby achieving a balance of supply and demand. In the case of the Soviet Union, this task fell on Gosplan and its subsidiaries: the industrial ministries and (under Khrushchev ) the regional sovnarkhozy . The ministries in turn were subdivided into Chief Industrial Administrations ( glavki ), under which each enterprise

1575-432: A bias for so-called "productive" work (i.e., yielding measurable physical output) over "unproductive" work (services, trade, etc.). "Such a wage policy calls into question the modernization of society, its efficiency, its competitiveness." Using this method any changes in the plan to remove mismatches between inputs and outputs would result in hundreds, even thousands, of changes to material balances. This meant that, without

1750-429: A centre point for central planning and expanded investment in heavy industry, with Leon Trotsky one of the leading political patrons of the agency. In June 1922 a new decree further expanded Gosplan's purview, with the agency directed to compose both "long-term" and "immediate" plans of production. Gosplan was to be consulted regarding proposed economic and financial decrees submitted to the Council of People's Commissars by

1925-536: A damaging peace to end the war with the Germans in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and transferring estates and imperial lands to workers' and peasants' soviets. In this context, in 1918, RSDLP(b) became All-Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks). Outside of Russia, social-democrats who supported the Soviet government began to identify as communists, while those who opposed it retained the social-democratic label. In 1921, as

SECTION 10

#1732765359618

2100-614: A frenzied effort to sustain what remained of Russian industry on behalf of the Red Army , locked in a life or death struggle with the anti-Bolshevik White movement , backed by the foreign military intervention of Great Britain, France, Japan, the United States, and other countries. In the countryside food requisitions , often backed by brute force, took place under the nominal auspices of the People's Commissariat of Agriculture . In

2275-403: A fully developed socialist economy, engineers and technical specialists, overseen or appointed in a democratic manner, would coordinate the economy in terms of physical units without any need or use for financial-based calculation. The economy of the Soviet Union never reached this stage of development, so planned its economy in financial terms throughout the duration of its existence. Nonetheless,

2450-484: A global scale. In the context of mainstream economics and the field of comparative economic systems , socialist planning usually refers to the Soviet-style command economy , regardless of whether or not this economic system actually constituted a type of socialism or state capitalism or a third, non-socialist and non-capitalist type of system. In some models of socialism, economic planning completely substitutes

2625-530: A higher participation rate. An organized opposition was established within the legislature under the name Inter-Regional Group of Deputies by dissident Andrei Sakharov . An unintended consequence of these reforms was the increased anti-CPSU pressure; in March 1990, at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union , the party was forced to relinquish its political monopoly of power, in effect turning

2800-753: A human face ", all non-conformist reform attempts in the Soviet Union were stopped. During his rule, Brezhnev supported détente , a passive weakening of animosity with the West with the goal of improving political and economic relations. However, by the 25th Congress held in 1976, political, economic and social problems within the Soviet Union began to mount, and the Brezhnev administration found itself in an increasingly difficult position. The previous year, Brezhnev's health began to deteriorate. He became addicted to painkillers and needed to take increasingly more potent medications to attend official meetings. Because of

2975-447: A market, but rather they are actually movements of value among different branches and divisions within corporations, companies and agencies. Furthermore, much economic activity is centrally planned by managers within firms in the form of production planning and marketing management (that consumer demand is estimated, targeted and included in the firm's overall plan) and in the form of production planning. In The New Industrial State ,

3150-836: A market-based economy, where the state employs market instruments to induce independent firms to achieve development goals. A distinction can be made between physical planning (as in pure socialism) and financial planning (as practiced by governments and private firms in capitalism ). Physical planning involves economic planning and coordination conducted in terms of disaggregated physical units whereas financial planning involves plans formulated in terms of financial units . Different forms of economic planning have been featured in various models of socialism. These range from decentralized-planning systems which are based on collective decision-making and disaggregated information to centralized systems of planning conducted by technical experts who use aggregated information to formulate plans of production. In

3325-473: A modern industrial system. Joseph Schumpeter , an economist associated with both the Austrian School and the institutional school of economics, argued that the changing nature of economic activity (specifically the increasing bureaucratization and specialization required in production and management) was the major cause for capitalism eventually evolving into socialism. The role of the businessman

3500-583: A nationalist military coup which received supported from Germany and Italy, in 1939 the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, later jointly invading and partitioning Poland to fulfil a secret protocol of the pact, as well as occupying the Baltic States, this pact would be broken in June 1941 when the German military invaded the Soviet Union in the largest land invasion in history, beginning

3675-433: A number of alternative metrics were developed for assessing the performance of non-financial economies in terms of physical output (i.e. net material product versus gross domestic product ). In general, the various models of socialist economic planning such as a socialist mode of production exist as theoretical constructs that have not been implemented fully by any economy, partially because they depend on vast changes on

SECTION 20

#1732765359618

3850-462: A number of reformers, including Yegor Ligachev , Nikolay Ryzhkov , and Mikhail Gorbachev , to important positions. He also supported a crackdown on absenteeism and corruption. Andropov had intended to let Gorbachev succeed him in office, but Konstantin Chernenko and his supporters suppressed the paragraph in the letter which called for Gorbachev's elevation. Andropov died on 9 February 1984 and

4025-450: A number of state-owned enterprises in strategic sectors of the economy. The concept behind indicative planning is the early identification of oversupply, bottlenecks and shortages so that state investment behavior can be quickly modified to reduce market disequilibrium so that stable economic development and growth can be sustained. France experienced its Trente Glorieuses (Thirty Glorious), years with economic prosperity. The Soviet Union

4200-408: A planned economy because planning did not play an operational role in the allocation of resources among productive units in the economy since in actuality the main allocation mechanism was a system of command-and-control. The term administrative-command economy gained currency as a more accurate descriptor of Soviet-type economies. Decentralized economic planning is a planning process that starts at

4375-466: A point that the traditional notions of private ownership and commodity production become increasingly insufficient for further expanding the productive capacities of society, necessitating the emergence of a socialist economy in which means of production are socially owned and the surplus value is controlled by the workforce. Many socialists viewed these tendencies, specifically the increasing trend toward economic planning in capitalist firms, as evidence of

4550-446: A practical pursuit in the economically undeveloped country. In 1929, as Joseph Stalin became the leader of the party, Marxism–Leninism , a fusion of the original ideas of German philosopher and economic theorist Karl Marx , and Lenin, became formalized by Stalin as the party's guiding ideology and would remain so throughout the rest of its existence. The party pursued state socialism , under which all industries were nationalized, and

4725-571: A readership of 320,000. This was roughly halved after the repression of the Bolsheviks following the July Days demonstrations so that even by the end of August, the principal paper of the Bolsheviks had a print run of only 50,000 copies. Despite this, their ideas gained them increasing popularity in elections to the soviets. The factions within the soviets became increasingly polarized in the later summer after armed demonstrations by soldiers at

4900-440: A series of macroeconomic government plans ( First Malaysia Plan and Five-Year Plans of South Korea ) that rapidly developed and industrialized their mixed economies. The economy of Singapore was partially based on government economic planning that involved an active industrial policy and a mixture of state-owned industry and free-market economy. Under dirigisme (dirigism), France used indicative planning and established

5075-641: A significant fraction of the GDP. Not only individuals but state enterprises as well engaged in these practices, often out of necessity, when extra-legal influence or illegal operations appeared to be the only way to fulfill the demands of the plan. Claims of plan fulfillment that were passed up the hierarchy became as impossible to believe as the targets in the next plan. Economic planning There are various forms of economic planning that vary based on their specific procedures and approach. The level of centralization or decentralization in decision-making depends on

5250-402: A similarly proletarian relationship to their labor through the policies of collectivization , which turned feudal-style farms into collective farms which would be in a cooperative nature under the direction of the state. These two shifts changed the base of Soviet society towards a more working-class alignment. The plan was fulfilled ahead of schedule in 1932. The success of industrialization in

5425-458: A speech titled " The Personality Cult and its Consequences ". Despite delegates to Congresses losing their powers to criticize or remove party leadership, the Congresses functioned as a form of elite-mass communication . They were occasions for the party leadership to express the party line over the next five years to ordinary CPSU members and the general public. The information provided

Gosplan - Misplaced Pages Continue

5600-411: A trial-and-error method, adjusting until the price matched the marginal cost, with the aim of achieving Pareto-efficient outcomes. Although these models were often described as market socialism , they actually represented a form of market simulation planning. Material balance planning was the type of economic planning employed by Soviet-type economies. This system emerged in a haphazard manner during

5775-566: Is often cited as a form of economic planning that is used by large firms to increase demand for future products by deliberately limiting the operational lifespan of its products, thus forcing customers to buy replacements. The internal structures of corporations have therefore been described as centralized command economies that use both planning and hierarchical organization and management. According to J. Bradford DeLong , many transactions in Western economies do not pass through anything resembling

5950-405: Is only one way to eliminate (the) grave evils (of capitalism), namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute

6125-457: The 11th Congress , the 3rd Statute was adopted with only minor amendments being made. New statutes were approved at the 17th and 18th Congresses respectively. The last party statute, which existed until the dissolution of the CPSU, was adopted at the 22nd Congress. General Secretary of the Central Committee was the title given to the overall leader of the party. The office was synonymous with

6300-541: The CPSU Moscow City Committee . On 13 March 1988, Nina Andreyeva , a university lecturer, wrote an article titled " I Cannot Forsake My Principles ". The publication was planned to occur when both Gorbachev and his protege Alexander Yakovlev were visiting foreign countries. In their place, Yegor Ligachev led the party organization and told journalists that the article was "a benchmark for what we need in our ideology today". Upon Gorbachev's return,

6475-604: The Central Auditing Commission were approved beforehand by the Politburo and the Secretariat. A Congress could also provide a platform for the announcement of new ideological concepts. For instance, at the 22nd Congress , Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union would see " communism in twenty years "— a position later retracted. A Conference, officially referred to as an All-Union Conference,

6650-665: The Civil War was drawing to a close, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy (NEP), a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and post-war recovery. The NEP ended a brief period of intense rationing called " war communism " and began a period of a market economy under Communist dictation. The Bolsheviks believed at this time that Russia, being among the most economically undeveloped and socially backward countries in Europe, had not yet reached

6825-623: The Cold War . In Europe, Yugoslavia , under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito , acquired the territory of Trieste , causing conflict both with the Western powers and with the Stalin administration who opposed such a provocative move. Furthermore, the Yugoslav communists actively supported the Greek communists during their civil war , further frustrating the Soviet government. These tensions led to

7000-490: The Communist International (Comintern). A central tenet of Leninism was that of the vanguard party. In a capitalist society, the party was to represent the interests of the working class and all of those who were exploited by capitalism in general; however, it was not to become a part of that class. Lenin decided that the party's sole responsibility was to articulate and plan the long-term interests of

7175-643: The Economic Stabilization Program to directly intervene in the economy to control prices and wages, among other things, in different economic sectors. Since the start of the Cold War, the federal government has directed a significant amount of investment and funding into research and development (R&D), often initially through the United States Department of Defense . The government performs 50% of all R&D in

Gosplan - Misplaced Pages Continue

7350-552: The February Revolution , the first phase of the Russian Revolutions of 1917, the party worked underground as organized anti-Tsarist groups. By the time of the revolution, many of the party's central leaders, including Lenin, were in exile. After Emperor Nicholas II (1868–1918, reigned 1894–1917) abdicated in March 1917, a republic was established and administered by a provisional government , which

7525-487: The Gossnab allocating factor inputs to enterprises and economic units throughout the national economy. The national plan was broken down by various ministries, which in turn used the plan to formulate directives for local economic units which implemented them. The system used material balance planning . Economic information, including consumer demand and enterprise resource requirements, were aggregated to balance supply from

7700-631: The Great Patriotic War . The Communist International was dissolved in 1943 after it was concluded that such an organization had failed to prevent the rise of fascism and the global war necessary to defeat it. After the 1945 Allied victory of World War II , the Party held to a doctrine of establishing socialist governments in the post-war occupied territories that would be administered by communists loyal to Stalin's administration. The party also sought to expand its sphere of influence beyond

7875-462: The Minister of Defence , each with highly contrasting visions for the future direction of the country. Trotsky sought to implement a policy of permanent revolution , which was predicated on the notion that the Soviet Union would not be able to survive in a socialist character when surrounded by hostile governments and therefore concluded that it was necessary to actively support similar revolutions in

8050-505: The October Revolution of 1917. Its activities were suspended on Soviet territory 74 years later, on 29 August 1991, soon after a failed coup d'état by conservative CPSU leaders against the reforming Soviet president and party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev . The CPSU was a communist party based on democratic centralism . This principle, conceived by Lenin, entails democratic and open discussion of policy issues within

8225-539: The Soviet Communist Party ( SCP ), was the founding and ruling political party of the Soviet Union . The CPSU was the sole governing party of the Soviet Union until 1990 when the Congress of People's Deputies modified Article 6 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution , which had previously granted the CPSU a monopoly over the political system. The party's main ideology was Marxism–Leninism . The party

8400-530: The Soviet economic model was often referred to as a command economy or an administered economy as plan directives were enforced by inducements in a vertical power structure, with actual planning playing little functional role in the allocation of resources. Owing to difficulties in transmitting information in a timely fashion and disseminating information on demand throughout the whole economy, administrative mechanisms of decision-making and resource allocation played

8575-561: The economy of the USSR . The time of the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War which followed was a period of virtual economic collapse. Production and distribution of necessary commodities were severely tested as factories were shuttered and major cities such as Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg ) were depopulated, with urban residents returning to the countryside to claim a place in land redistribution and in order to avoid

8750-616: The first five-year plan . He noted that several engineers and economists who had created the plan were themselves later put on trial as " conscious wreckers who had acted on the instructions of a foreign power". Communist Party of the Soviet Union The Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( CPSU ), at some points known as the Russian Communist Party , All-Union Communist Party and Bolshevik Party , and sometimes referred to as

8925-573: The pre-war rate of 6% and, perhaps, even higher”. According to historian Sheila Fitzpatrick , the scholarly consensus was that Stalin appropriated the position of the Left Opposition on such matters as industrialisation and collectivisation . The economy of the Soviet Union operated in a centralized and hierarchical manner during the Stalinist era. The process used directives which were issued to lower-level organizations. Thus,

SECTION 50

#1732765359618

9100-545: The public sector . That includes research in other fields including healthcare and energy, with 75% of most innovative drugs financed through the National Institutes of Health . The most notable critique of central economic planning came from Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises . Hayek argued that central planners could not possibly accrue the necessary information to formulate an effective plan for production because they are not exposed to

9275-574: The "trust in cadres" policy implemented by his administration, the CPSU leadership evolved into a gerontocracy . At the end of Brezhnev's rule, problems continued to amount; in 1979 he consented to the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan to save the embattled communist regime there and supported the oppression of the Solidarity movement in Poland. As problems grew at home and abroad, Brezhnev

9450-510: The 19th Conference in 1988, the Politburo alongside the Secretariat controlled appointments and dismissals nationwide. In the post-Stalin period, the Politburo controlled the Central Committee apparatus through two channels; the General Department distributed the Politburo's orders to the Central Committee departments and through the personnel overlap which existed within the Politburo and the Secretariat. This personnel overlap gave

9625-510: The American economist John Kenneth Galbraith noted that large firms manage both prices and consumer demand for their products by sophisticated statistical methods. Galbraith also pointed out that because of the increasingly complex nature of technology and the specialization of knowledge, management had become increasingly specialized and bureaucratized. The internal structures of corporations and companies had been transformed into what he called

9800-468: The Brezhnev period saw the rise of neo-Stalinism . While Stalin was never rehabilitated during this period, the most conservative journals in the country were allowed to highlight positive features of his rule. At the 23rd Congress held in 1966, the names of the office of First Secretary and the body of the Presidium reverted to their original names: General Secretary and Politburo, respectively. At

9975-500: The British researcher of Russian affairs, Archie Brown , the democratization of the Soviet Union brought mixed blessings to Gorbachev; it helped him to weaken his conservative opponents within the party but brought out accumulated grievances which had been suppressed during the previous decades. In reaction to these changes, a conservative movement gained momentum in 1987 in response to Boris Yeltsin 's dismissal as First Secretary of

10150-505: The CPSU General Secretary a way of strengthening his position within the Politburo through the Secretariat. Kirill Mazurov , Politburo member from 1965 to 1978, accused Brezhnev of turning the Politburo into a "second echelon" of power. He accomplished this by discussing policies before Politburo meetings with Mikhail Suslov , Andrei Kirilenko , Fyodor Kulakov , and Dmitriy Ustinov among others, who held seats both in

10325-487: The CPSU and independent candidates. Other organized parties were not allowed. The CPD was elected in 1989 ; one-third of the seats were appointed by the CPSU and other public organizations to sustain the Soviet one-party state . The elections were democratic, but most elected CPD members opposed any more radical reform. The elections featured the highest electoral turnout in Russian history; no election before or since had

10500-454: The CPSU launched the August 1991 coup , which overthrew Gorbachev but failed to preserve the Soviet Union. When Gorbachev resumed control (21 August 1991) after the coup's collapse, he resigned from the CPSU on 24 August 1991 and operations were handed over to Ivashko. On 29 August 1991 the activity of the CPSU was suspended throughout the country, on 6 November Yeltsin banned the activities of

10675-475: The Great Purge. According to party rules, the Central Committee was to convene at least twice a year to discuss political matters—but not matters relating to military policy. The body remained largely symbolic after Stalin's consolidation; leading party officials rarely attended meetings of the Central Committee. The Central Auditing Commission (CAC) was elected by the party Congresses and reported only to

SECTION 60

#1732765359618

10850-538: The Kerensky led provisional government's legitimacy. The provisional government, insistent on maintaining the universally despised war effort on the Eastern Front because of treaty ties with its Allies and fears of Imperial German victory , had become socially isolated and had no enthusiastic support on the streets. On 7 November (25 October, old style), the Bolsheviks led an armed insurrection, which overthrew

11025-562: The Kerensky provisional government and left the soviets as the sole governing force in Russia. In the aftermath of the October Revolution , the soviets united federally and the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic , the world's first constitutionally socialist state, was established. The Bolsheviks were the majority within the soviets and began to fulfill their campaign promises by signing

11200-621: The Party's second conference. Martov's followers were called the Mensheviks (which means minority in Russian); and Lenin's, the Bolsheviks (majority). (The two factions were in fact of fairly equal numerical size.) The split became more formalized in 1914, when the factions became named the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), and Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Mensheviks). Prior to

11375-488: The Politburo and faced few constraints from party leaders. In the summer of 1990 the party convened the 28th Congress . A new Politburo was elected, previous incumbents (except Gorbachev and Vladimir Ivashko , the CPSU Deputy General Secretary) were removed. Later that year, the party began work on a new program with a working title, "Towards a Humane, Democratic Socialism". According to Brown,

11550-455: The Politburo and the Secretariat. Mazurov's claim was later verified by Nikolai Ryzhkov , the Chairman of the Council of Ministers under Gorbachev. Ryzhkov said that Politburo meetings lasted only 15 minutes because the people close to Brezhnev had already decided what was to be approved. The Politburo was abolished and replaced by a Presidium in 1952 at the 19th Congress. In the aftermath

11725-426: The Politburo did during the post-Stalin era, serving as the party's governing body. However, as the membership in the Central Committee increased, its role was eclipsed by the Politburo. Between Congresses, the Central Committee functioned as the Soviet leadership's source of legitimacy. The decline in the Central Committee's standing began in the 1920s; it was reduced to a compliant body of the Party leadership during

11900-636: The Presidium), the Secretariat and the Orgburo (until 1952). The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary , Premier or head of state , or two of the three offices concurrently, but never all three at the same time. The party leader was the de facto chairman of the CPSU Politburo and chief executive of the Soviet Union. The tension between

12075-427: The Secretariat by the plenums of the Central Committee. In between Central Committee plenums, the Politburo and the Secretariat were legally empowered to make decisions on its behalf. The Central Committee or the Politburo and/or Secretariat on its behalf could issue nationwide decisions; decisions on behalf of the party were transmitted from the top to the bottom. Under Lenin, the Central Committee functioned much as

12250-420: The Soviet Union into a liberal democracy . The CPSU's demise began in March 1990, when state bodies eclipsed party elements in power. From then until the Soviet Union's disestablishment, Gorbachev ruled the country through the newly created post of President of the Soviet Union . Following this, the central party apparatus did not play a practical role in Soviet affairs. Gorbachev had become independent from

12425-570: The Soviet Union led Western countries, such as the United States , to open diplomatic relations with the Soviet government. In 1933, after years of unsuccessful workers' revolutions (including a short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic ) and spiraling economic calamity, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, violently suppressing the revolutionary organizers and posing a direct threat to the Soviet Union that ideologically supported them. The threat of fascist sabotage and imminent attack greatly exacerbated

12600-448: The Soviet Union was stagnating but was stable and might have continued largely unchanged into the 21st century if not for Gorbachev's reforms. Gorbachev conducted a significant personnel reshuffling of the CPSU leadership, forcing old party conservatives out of office. In 1985 and early 1986 the new leadership of the party called for uskoreniye ( Russian : ускоре́ние , lit.   'acceleration'). Gorbachev reinvigorated

12775-604: The Statistical Directorate was merged into Gosplan, and on 3 February 1931 Gosplan was resubordinated to the Sovnarkom . During May 1955 Gosplan was divided into two commissions: the USSR Council of Ministers State Commission for Advanced Planning and the USSR Council of Ministers Economic Commission on Current Planning. These were, respectively, tasked with predictive and immediate planning. The work of

12950-879: The Union Republics became independent and underwent various separate paths of reform. In Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation emerged and has been regarded as the inheritor of the CPSU's old Bolshevik legacy into the present day. The origin of the CPSU was in the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). This faction arose out of the split between followers of Julius Martov and Vladimir Lenin in August 1903 at

13125-426: The United States, with a dynamic state-directed public-sector developing most of the technology that later becomes the basis of the private sector economy. Noam Chomsky has referred to the United States economic model as a form of state capitalism . Examples include laser technology, the internet, nanotechnology, telecommunications and computers, with most basic research and downstream commercialization financed by

13300-606: The United States, the government temporarily seized large portions of the economy during World War I and World War II, resulting in a largely government-planned war economy . The development models of the East Asian Tiger economies involved varying degrees of economic planning and state-directed investment in a model sometimes described as state development capitalism or the East Asian Model. The economy in both Malaysia and South Korea were instituted by

13475-415: The abolition of private property and to the possibilities inherent in planned economy . But, they - I cannot say exactly - but I will say two or three times less than they could be under a regime of Soviet democracy”. In his work, The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? , Trotsky argued that the excessive authoritarianism under Stalin had undermined the implementation of

13650-542: The aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis , Khrushchev's position within the party was substantially weakened. Shortly before his eventual ousting, he tried to introduce economic reforms championed by Evsei Liberman , a Soviet economist, which tried to implement market mechanisms into the planned economy. Khrushchev was ousted on 14 October 1964 in a Central Committee plenum that officially cited his inability to listen to others, his failure in consulting with

13825-490: The aid of information technology, Gosplan could only deal with the economy in very general terms. Ideological bias resulted in unrealistic plans that were impossible to execute. Pressure to execute them anyway resulted in widespread falsification of statistics on all levels of reporting. Falsified plan realization feedback further resulted in Gosplan preparing plans even more detached from reality: The second economy engulfed

14000-613: The already existing tensions within the Soviet Union and the Communist Party. A wave of paranoia overtook Stalin and the party leadership and spread through Soviet society. Seeing potential enemies everywhere, leaders of the government security apparatuses began severe crackdowns known as the Great Purge . In total, hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom were posthumously recognized as innocent, were arrested and either sent to prison camps or executed. Also during this time,

14175-553: The article was discussed at length during a Politburo meeting; it was revealed that nearly half of its members were sympathetic to the letter and opposed further reforms which could weaken the party. The meeting lasted for two days, but on 5 April a Politburo resolution responded with a point-by-point rebuttal to Andreyeva's article. Gorbachev convened the 19th Party Conference in June 1988. He criticized leading party conservatives—Ligachev, Andrei Gromyko and Mikhail Solomentsev . In turn, conservative delegates attacked Gorbachev and

14350-513: The available resource inventories, with demand based on requirements for individual economic units and enterprises through a system of iterations. Leon Trotsky was one of the earliest proponents of economic planning during the NEP period. Trotsky argued that specialisation , the concentration of production and the use of planning could “raise in the near future the coefficient of industrial growth not only two, but even three times higher than

14525-445: The bottom-up (by employees and consumers) without any directing central authority. This often contrasts with the doctrine of orthodox Marxism–Leninism which advocates directive administrative planning where directives are passed down from higher authorities (planning agencies) to agents (enterprise managers), who in turn give orders to workers. Two contemporary models of decentralized planning are participatory economics , developed by

14700-417: The call of the Bolsheviks and an attempted military coup by commanding Gen. Lavr Kornilov to eliminate the socialists from the provisional government. As the general consensus within the soviets moved leftward, less militant forces began to abandon them, leaving the Bolsheviks in a stronger position. By October, the Bolsheviks were demanding the full transfer of power to the soviets and for total rejection of

14875-538: The close, party-to-party relations that he wanted. While the Thaw reduced political oppression at home, it led to unintended consequences abroad, such as the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and unrest in Poland, where the local citizenry now felt confident enough to rebel against Soviet control. Khrushchev also failed to improve Soviet relations with the West, partially because of a hawkish military stance. In

15050-400: The collectivization drive under Joseph Stalin and emphasized rapid growth and industrialization. Eventually, this method became an established part of the Soviet conception of socialism in the post-war period and other socialist states emulated it in the latter half of the 20th century. Material balancing involves a planning agency taking a survey of available inputs and raw materials and using

15225-401: The computational difficulty faced by 20th-century attempts at economic planning (See OGAS and Cybersyn ). Large corporations use planning to allocate resources internally among their divisions and subsidiaries. Many modern firms also use regression analysis to measure market demand to adjust prices and to decide upon the optimal quantities of output to be supplied. Planned obsolescence

15400-471: The concepts of a planned economy and economic planning, especially by socialists and Marxists who liken command economies (such as that of the former Soviet Union) to that of a single capitalist firm, organized in a top-down administrative fashion based on bureaucratic organization akin to that of a capitalist corporation. Economic analysts have argued that the economy of the Soviet Union actually represented an administrative or command economy as opposed to

15575-521: The decision-making STO. Gosplan was formally established by a Sovnarkom decree, dated 22 February 1921. Ironically, the decree was passed on the same day that an article by Soviet leader V. I. Lenin was published in Pravda criticizing advocates of a "single economic plan" for their "idle talk" and "boring pedantry" and arguing that the GOELRO plan for national electrification was the "one serious work on

15750-402: The direction of a market economy once again. Gorbachev and his allies envisioned the introduction of an economy similar to Lenin's earlier New Economic Policy through a program of " perestroika ", or restructuring, but their reforms, along with the institution of free multi-candidate elections led to a decline in the party's power, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union , the banning of

15925-537: The dissolution of the governing structures of the CPSU and the governing structures of its republican organization—the Communist Party of the RSFSR. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian adherents to the CPSU tradition, particularly as it existed before Gorbachev, reorganized themselves within the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). Today a wide range of parties in Russia present themselves as successors of CPSU. Several of them have used

16100-545: The dominant role in allocating factor inputs as opposed to planning. Historian Robert Vincent Daniels regarded the Stalinist period to represent an abrupt break with Lenin's government in terms of economic planning in which a deliberated, scientific system of planning that featured former Menshevik economists at Gosplan had been replaced with a hasty version of planning with unrealistic targets, bureaucratic waste, bottlenecks and shortages . Stalin's formulations of national plans in terms of physical quantity of output

16275-402: The economist Michael Albert ; and negotiated coordination, developed by the economist Pat Devine . The economic models developed in the 1920s and 1930s by American economists Fred M. Taylor and Abba Lerner and by Polish economist Oskar R. Lange involved a form of planning based on marginal cost pricing. In Lange's model, a central planning board would set prices for producer goods through

16450-513: The economy can also happen under other political philosophies to industrialise and modernise the economy. A different form of planned economy operated in India during the Permit Raj era from 1947 to 1990. The unusually large government sector in countries like Saudi Arabia means that even though there is a market , central government planning controls allocation of most economic resources. In

16625-465: The economy matched outputs from another part of the economy. Gosplan achieved this using a methodology called the system of ' material balances '. For a plan period (in detail for one year and in lesser detail for a five-year plan) Gosplan drew up a balance sheet in terms of units of material (i.e. money was not used as part of the accounting process). The first step in the process was to assess how much steel, cement, wool cloth, etc. would be available for

16800-405: The economy, led to stagnant economic growth under Alexei Kosygin , and further with Leonid Brezhnev and growing disillusionment. After the younger, vigorous Mikhail Gorbachev assumed leadership in 1985 (following two short-term elderly leaders, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko , who quickly died in succession), rapid steps were taken to transform the tottering Soviet economic system in

16975-579: The economy. If mismatches between supply and demand were identified then, for the one-year plan, utilization plans for a particular input material could be cut or alternatively effort was made to increase supply. For the five-year plan mismatches between supply and demand could be mitigated by modifying long-term plans to increase productive capacity. Wages and pensions were leveled upwards, and skilled and manual work began to exceed much mental and professional work in remuneration. The Italian economic historian Rita Di Leo found "a compression of differentials" and

17150-409: The end of his life, Lenin warned of the danger that the party could be taken over by bureaucrats, by a small clique, or by an individual. Toward the end of his life, he criticized the bureaucratic inertia of certain officials and admitted to problems with some of the party's control structures, which were to supervise organizational life. The Congress, nominally the highest organ of the party,

17325-511: The entire economy. To be sure, the system had its limitations, including the absence of meaningful price and cost information and the difficulty of extending planning to all the special commodities and enterprises in a modern economy. More serious difficulties stemmed from the attitudes and priorities built into the Stalinist planning system. "From the start," write the Soviet economists Nikolai Shmelev and Vladimir Popov, "the administrative system

17500-611: The first half of the 1920s, with Gosplan's desires and actual policy largely disjointed. Tension continued between Narkomfin and Gosplan throughout the NEP period, with Narkomfin advocating for increased grain exports as a means of bolstering the currency by balancing imports and exports while simultaneously bolstering peasant prosperity, while Gosplan emerged as the chief advocate of cheap food and planned development of industry. During 1925 Gosplan started creating annual economic plans, known as "control numbers" ( контрольные цифры ). Its work

17675-404: The form X = ( I − A ) − 1 D {\displaystyle X=(I-A)^{-1}D} , where D {\displaystyle D} is the demand matrix. This is a modelling method proposed by some socialist economists such as Paul Cockshott , who argue that the advent of modern computer technology since the times of Victor Glushkov negates

17850-472: The fundamental problems of the Soviet economy. The standard of living for ordinary citizens did increase; 108 million people moved into new housing between 1956 and 1965. Khrushchev's foreign policies led to the Sino-Soviet split , in part a consequence of his public denunciation of Stalin. Khrushchev improved relations with Josip Broz Tito 's League of Communists of Yugoslavia but failed to establish

18025-507: The greatest support within the party, and Trotsky, who was increasingly viewed as a collaborator with outside forces in an effort to depose Stalin, was isolated and subsequently expelled from the party and exiled from the country in 1928. Stalin's policies henceforth would later become collectively known as Stalinism . In 1925, the name of the party was changed to the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), reflecting that

18200-423: The increasing obsolescence of capitalism and inapplicability of ideals like perfect competition to the economy, with the next stage of evolution being the application of society-wide economic planning. State development planning or national planning entails macroeconomic policies and financial planning conducted by governments to stabilize the market or promote economic growth in market-based economies. This involves

18375-486: The input and participation of the millions of people who participate in the economy and so they would be unable to respond to local conditions quickly enough to effectively coordinate all economic activity. Trotsky further specified the need for Soviet democracy in relation to the industrialisation period to the Dewey Commission: “The successes are very important, and I affirmed it every time. They are due to

18550-474: The international community. The Western powers, however, remained committed to maintaining peace and avoiding another war breaking out, many considering the Soviet Union's warnings to be an unwanted provocation. After many unsuccessful attempts to create an anti-fascist alliance among the Western countries, including trying to rally international support for the Spanish Republic in its struggle against

18725-523: The latter was based on the five-year plans delivered by Gosplan, with Gosplan planning 10–15 years ahead. Gosplan was headquartered at the building now occupied by the State Duma, in Moscow. The introduction of the first five-year plan in 1928 led to a re-examination of the roles of Gosplan and VSNKh, the supreme state organization for management of the economy at this time. This re-examination of roles

18900-482: The leader of the Soviet Union after Joseph Stalin's consolidation of power in the 1920s. Stalin used the office of General Secretary to create a strong power base for himself. The office was formally titled First Secretary between 1953 and 1966. The Political Bureau (Politburo), known as the Presidium from 1952 to 1966, was the highest party organ when the Congress and the Central Committee were not in session. Until

19075-419: The local party committee, the local party committee elected the regional committee, the regional committee elected the Central Committee, and the Central Committee elected the Politburo, Orgburo, and the Secretariat. Lenin believed that the party needed to be ruled from the center and have at its disposal power to mobilize party members at will. This system was later introduced in communist parties abroad through

19250-402: The market mechanism, supposedly rendering monetary relations and the price system obsolete. In other models, planning is utilized as a complement to markets. The classical conception of socialist economic planning held by Marxists involved an economic system where goods and services were valued, demanded and produced directly for their use-value as opposed to being produced as a by-product of

19425-618: The members of the Presidium, his establishment of a cult of personality, his economic mismanagement, and his anti-party reforms as the reasons he was no longer fit to remain as head of the party. He was succeeded in office by Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Chairman of the Council of Ministers . The Brezhnev era began with a rejection of Khrushchevism in virtually every arena except one: continued opposition to Stalinist methods of terror and political violence. Khrushchev's policies were criticized as voluntarism, and

19600-516: The midst of such chaos the mere idea of long-term economic planning remained a utopian dream during these first years of existence of Soviet Russia. It was not until the Civil War had drawn to a successful conclusion for the Bolsheviks in 1920 that serious attention was paid to the question of systematic planning for the Soviet economy. In March 1920 the Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense

19775-486: The more advanced capitalist countries. Stalin, however, argued that such a foreign policy would not be feasible with the capabilities then possessed by the Soviet Union and that it would invite the country's destruction by engaging in armed conflict. Rather, Stalin argued that the Soviet Union should, in the meantime, pursue peaceful coexistence and invite foreign investment in order to develop the country's economy and build socialism in one country . Ultimately, Stalin gained

19950-579: The name "CPSU". However, the CPRF is generally seen (due to its massive size) as the heir of the CPSU in Russia. Additionally, the CPRF was initially founded as the Communist Party of the Russian SFSR in 1990 (sometime before the abolition of the CPSU) and was seen by critics as a "Russian-nationalist" counterpart to the CPSU. The style of governance in the party alternated between collective leadership and

20125-528: The necessary conditions of development for socialism to become a practical pursuit and that this would have to wait for such conditions to arrive under capitalist development as had been achieved in more advanced countries such as England and Germany. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), of which Lenin

20300-437: The next year. This calculation was based on the following formula: production minus exports plus imports plus or minus changes in stocks. The planning system as such was fairly simple. Gosplan calculated the sum of the country's resources and facilities, established priorities for their use, and handed down output targets and supply allocations to the various economic ministries and through them to every branch and enterprise in

20475-532: The occupied territories, using proxy wars and espionage and providing training and funding to promote communist elements abroad, leading to the establishment of the Cominform in 1947. In 1949, the communists emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil War , causing an extreme shift in the global balance of forces and greatly escalating tensions between the communists and the Western powers, fueling

20650-465: The oppressed classes. It was not responsible for the daily grievances of those classes; that was the responsibility of the trade unions . According to Lenin, the party and the oppressed classes could never become one because the party was responsible for leading the oppressed classes to victory. The basic idea was that a small group of organized people could wield power disproportionate to their size with superior organizational skills. Despite this, until

20825-416: The organization of the CPSU. Democratic centralism is an organizational principle conceived by Lenin. According to Soviet pronouncements, democratic centralism was distinguished from " bureaucratic centralism", which referred to high-handed formulae without knowledge or discussion. In democratic centralism, decisions are taken after discussions, but once the general party line has been formed, discussion on

21000-511: The party Congress. It had about as many members as the Central Committee. It was responsible for supervising the expeditious and proper handling of affairs by the central bodies of the Party; it audited the accounts of the Treasury and the enterprises of the Central Committee. It was also responsible for supervising the Central Committee apparatus, making sure that its directives were implemented and that Central Committee directives complied with

21175-620: The party Statute. The Statute (also referred to as the Rules, Charter and Constitution) was the party's by-laws and controlled life within the CPSU. The 1st Statute was adopted at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party —the forerunner of the CPSU. How the Statute was to be structured and organized led to a schism within the party, leading to the establishment of two competing factions; Bolsheviks (literally majority ) and Mensheviks (literally minority ). The 1st Statute

21350-424: The party and the state ( Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union ) for the shifting focus of power was never formally resolved. After the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922, Lenin had introduced a mixed economy , commonly referred to as the New Economic Policy , which allowed for capitalist practices to resume under the Communist Party dictation in order to develop the necessary conditions for socialism to become

21525-474: The party by later last RSFSR President Boris Yeltsin and subsequent first President of the successor Russian Federation . A number of causes contributed to CPSU's loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union during the early 1990s. Some historians have written that Gorbachev's policy of " glasnost " (political openness) was the root cause, noting that it weakened the party's control over society. Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost

21700-421: The party ideology, adding new concepts and updating older ones. Positive consequences of this included the allowance of "pluralism of thought" and a call for the establishment of "socialist pluralism" (literally, socialist democracy). Gorbachev introduced a policy of glasnost ( Russian : гла́сность , meaning openness or transparency ) in 1986, which led to a wave of unintended democratization. According to

21875-541: The party in Russia and Gorbachev resigned from the presidency on 25 December; the following day the Soviet of Republics dissolved the Soviet Union. On 30 November 1992, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation recognized the ban on the activities of the primary organizations of the Communist Party, formed on a territorial basis, as inconsistent with the Constitution of Russia , but upheld

22050-529: The party, followed by the requirement of total unity in upholding the agreed policies. The highest body within the CPSU was the Party Congress , which convened every five years. When the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo , (previously

22225-418: The popularity of their program, notably calling for an immediate end to the war, land reform for the peasants, and restoring food allocation to the urban population. This program was translated to the masses through simple slogans that patiently explained their solution to each crisis the revolution created. Up to July, these policies were disseminated through 41 publications, Pravda being the main paper, with

22400-478: The price system with centralized resource allocation and created a number of new agencies to direct important economic sectors, notably the Food Administration, Fuel Administration, Railroad Administration and War Industries Board. During World War II, the economy experienced staggering growth under a similar system of planning. In the postwar period, United States governments utilized such measures as

22575-464: The program reflected Gorbachev's journey from an orthodox communist to a European social democrat . The freedoms of thought and organization which Gorbachev allowed led to a rise in nationalism in the Soviet republics, indirectly weakening the central authorities. In response to this, a referendum took place in 1991 , in which most of the union republics voted to preserve the union in a different form . In reaction to this, conservative elements within

22750-418: The pursuit of profit by business enterprises. This idea of production for use is a fundamental aspect of a socialist economy. This involves social control over the allocation of the surplus product and in its most extensive theoretical form calculation-in-kind in place of financial calculation. For Marxists in particular, planning entails control of the surplus product (profit) by the associated producers in

22925-426: The question of the single economic plan." Other members of Sovnarkom were more optimistic, however, and Lenin sustained a defeat on the establishment of another planning entity, Gosplan. As a compromise measure uniting the mission of the two planning entities, head of GOELRO Gleb Krzhizhanovsky was tapped to head Gosplan. Initially Gosplan had an advisory function, with its entire staff consisting of just 34 people at

23100-426: The rapid changes that take place in an economy in any particular time and place and so they are unfamiliar with those circumstances. The process of transmitting all the necessary information to planners is thus inefficient without a price system for the means of production. Modern theorists such as Cottrell and Cockshott, mentioned above, argue that modern advancements in mathematics and computational technology has made

23275-467: The reformers. According to Brown, there had not been as much open discussion and dissent at a party meeting since the early 1920s. Despite the deep-seated opposition to further reform, the CPSU remained hierarchical; the conservatives acceded to Gorbachev's demands in deference to his position as the CPSU General Secretary. The 19th Conference approved the establishment of the Congress of People's Deputies (CPD) and allowed for contested elections between

23450-523: The remaining poor. The combination of these tensions led the party leadership to conclude that it was necessary for the government's survival to pursue a new policy that would centralize economic activity and accelerate industrialization. To do this, the first five-year plan was implemented in 1928. The plan doubled the industrial workforce, proletarianizing many of the peasants by removing them from their land and assembling them into urban centers. Peasants who remained in agricultural work were also made to have

23625-403: The republics outside of Russia proper were no longer part of an all-encompassing Russian state. The acronym was usually transliterated as VKP(b), or sometimes VCP(b). Stalin sought to formalize the party's ideological outlook into a philosophical hybrid of the original ideas of Lenin with orthodox Marxism into what would be called Marxism–Leninism . Stalin's position as General Secretary became

23800-450: The resultant expression takes the form of ( I − A ) X = 0 {\displaystyle (I-A)X=0} where X {\displaystyle X} as a variable may represent the optimal payment for each instance of production encoded in the matrix A {\displaystyle A} . More sophisticated methods include open models where production satisfies exterior demand, and generally takes

23975-466: The revolution towards the transformation of the ongoing war into a war of the working class against capitalism. The rebellion proved not yet to be over, as tensions between the social forces aligned with the soviets (councils) and those with the provisional government now led by Alexander Kerensky (1881–1970, in power 1917), came into explosive tensions during that summer. The Bolsheviks had rapidly increased their political presence from May onward through

24150-436: The specific type of planning mechanism employed. In addition, one can distinguish between centralized planning and decentralized planning . An economy primarily based on planning is referred to as a planned economy . In a centrally planned economy, the allocation of resources is determined by a comprehensive plan of production which specifies output requirements. Planning can also take the form of indicative planning within

24325-547: The start of his premiership, Kosygin experimented with economic reforms similar to those championed by Malenkov, including prioritizing light industry over heavy industry to increase the production of consumer goods. Similar reforms were introduced in Hungary under the name New Economic Mechanism ; however, with the rise to power of Alexander Dubček in Czechoslovakia, who called for the establishment of " socialism with

24500-660: The state apparatus changes from one of political rule over people (via the creation and enforcement of laws) into a technical administration of production, distribution and organization; that is, the state would become a coordinating economic entity rather than a mechanism of political and class-based control and thereby ceasing to be a state in the Marxist sense. In the May 1949 issue of the Monthly Review titled " Why Socialism? ", Albert Einstein wrote: I am convinced there

24675-457: The subject must cease. No member or organizational institution may dissent on a policy after it has been agreed upon by the party's governing body; to do so would lead to expulsion from the party (formalized at the 10th Congress ). Because of this stance, Lenin initiated a ban on factions , which was approved at the 10th Congress. Lenin believed that democratic centralism safeguarded both party unity and ideological correctness. He conceived of

24850-496: The support of several members of the Presidium, Khrushchev initiated the Thaw , which effectively ended the Stalinist mass terror of the prior decades and reduced socio-economic oppression considerably. At the 20th Congress held in 1956, Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes, being careful to omit any reference to complicity by any sitting Presidium members. His economic policies, while bringing about improvements, were not enough to fix

25025-412: The system after the events of 1917 when several socialist parties "deformed" themselves and actively began supporting nationalist sentiments. Lenin intended that the devotion to policy required by centralism would protect the parties from such revisionist ills and bourgeois deformation of socialism. Lenin supported the notion of a highly centralized vanguard party, in which ordinary party members elected

25200-453: The time of its April 1921 launch. These were selected on the basis of academic expertise in specialized aspects of industry; just 7 were members of the Russian Communist Party (bolsheviks) . With the ongoing turn to a market-based system of production as part of the New Economic Policy (NEP), very real constraints existed on the possible extent of central planning during the initial phase of Gosplan's institutional life. Gosplan quickly became

25375-407: The top executive position within the party, giving Stalin significant authority over party and state policy. By the end of the 1920s, diplomatic relations with Western countries were deteriorating to the point that there was a growing fear of another allied attack on the Soviet Union. Within the country, the conditions of the NEP had enabled growing inequalities between increasingly wealthy strata and

25550-404: The unemployment, lack of food, and lack of fuel which had become endemic. By 1919 hyperinflation had emerged, further pushing the struggling economic system of Soviet Russia towards total collapse. An ad hoc system remembered to history as military communism emerged. The Soviet government's Council of Workers' and Peasants' Defense rushed from economic bottleneck to economic bottleneck in

25725-406: The use of monetary policy, industrial policy and fiscal policy to steer the market toward targeted outcomes. Industrial policy includes government taking measures "aimed at improving the competitiveness and capabilities of domestic firms and promoting structural transformation". In contrast to socialist planning, state development planning does not replace the market mechanism and does not eliminate

25900-503: The use of money in production. It only applies to privately owned and publicly owned firms in the strategic sectors of the economy and seeks to coordinate their activities through indirect means and market-based incentives (such as tax breaks or subsidies). While economic planning is mainly associated with socialism and the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc , in particular its administrative-command system , government planning of

26075-469: The user-level in a bottom-up flow of information. Decentralized planning often appears as a complement to the idea of socialist self-management , most notably by democratic socialists and libertarian socialists . The theoretical postulates for models of decentralized socialist planning stem from the thought of Karl Kautsky , Rosa Luxemburg , Nikolai Bukharin and Oskar R. Lange . This model involves economic decision-making based on self-governance from

26250-611: The various economic People's Commissariats. An administrative rivalry ensued between Gosplan and the People's Commissariat of Finance (Narkomfin), the latter the agency most in favor of currency stabilization and expansion of the general economy through the regulated market. Gosplan had no power of compulsion in this early interval, but was forced to work through Sovnarkom, STO, or the People's Commissariats to have its suggestions implemented by decree. The agency's economic calculations and policy suggestions remained largely abstract throughout

26425-454: The work of the individual People's Commissariats toward this plan's fulfillment, so that "for the first time the RSFSR had a general planning organ with clearly defined functions," as historian E. H. Carr has observed. The State Committee for Planning, commonly known as "Gosplan," was launched as a permanent advisory subcommittee of STO, assigned with the task of conducting detailed economic investigations and providing expert recommendations to

26600-408: The work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child. The education of the individual, in addition to promoting his own innate abilities, would attempt to develop in him a sense of responsibility for his fellow-men in place of the glorification of power and success in our present society. The concept of a command economy is differentiated from

26775-633: The “economic planning problem” obsolete. In his analysis of socialism in 1938, Oskar R. Lange addressed this theoretical issue by pointing out that planners could gain much of the information they required by monitoring changes in plant inventory levels. In practice, economic planners in Soviet-typed planned economies were able to make use of this technique. Proponents of decentralized economic planning have also criticized central economic planning . Leon Trotsky believed that central planners, regardless of their intellectual capacity, operated without

26950-404: Was a collective body elected at the annual party congress . It was mandated to meet at least twice a year to act as the party's supreme governing body. Membership of the Central Committee increased from 71 full members in 1934 to 287 in 1976. Central Committee members were elected to the seats because of the offices they held, not on their personal merit. Because of this, the Central Committee

27125-535: Was also attributed by Daniels as a source for the stagnant levels of efficiency and quality. The need for long-term economic planning to promote efficiency was a central component of Labour Party thinking until the 1970s. The Conservative Party largely agreed, producing the postwar consensus , namely the broad bipartisan agreement on major policies. A long-term economic plan was a phrase often used in British politics. The United States used economic planning during World War I. The federal government supplemented

27300-584: Was at this time in exile in Switzerland where he, with other dissidents in exile, managed to arrange with the Imperial German government safe passage through Germany in a sealed train back to Russia through the continent amidst the ongoing World War . In April, Lenin arrived in Petrograd (renamed former St. Petersburg ) and condemned the provisional government, calling for the advancement of

27475-404: Was based upon Lenin's idea of a centralized vanguard party. The 4th Congress , despite a majority of Menshevik delegates, added the concept of democratic centralism to Article 2 of the Statute. The 1st Statute lasted until 1919 when the 8th Congress adopted the 2nd Statute. It was nearly five times as long as the 1st Statute and contained 66 articles. It was amended at the 9th Congress . At

27650-480: Was commonly considered an indicator for Sovietologists to study the strength of the different institutions. The Politburo was elected by and reported to the Central Committee. Besides the Politburo, the Central Committee also elected the Secretariat and the General Secretary —the de facto leader of the Soviet Union. In 1919–1952, the Orgburo was also elected in the same manner as the Politburo and

27825-433: Was convened between Congresses by the Central Committee to discuss party policy and to make personnel changes within the Central Committee. 19 conferences were convened during the CPSU's existence. The 19th Congress held in 1952 removed the clause in the party's statute which stipulated that a party Conference could be convened. The clause was reinstated at the 23rd Congress, which was held in 1966. The Central Committee

28000-485: Was convened every five years. Leading up to the October Revolution and until Stalin's consolidation of power, the Congress was the party's main decision-making body. However, after Stalin's ascension, the Congresses became largely symbolic. CPSU leaders used Congresses as a propaganda and control tool. The most noteworthy Congress since the 1930s was the 20th Congress, in which Khrushchev denounced Stalin in

28175-758: Was coordinated with the USSR Central Statistical Directorate , the People's Commissariat of Finance, and the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy (VSNKh), and later with the State Bank (Gosbank) and State Supply Committee (Gossnab) . With the introduction of five-year plans in 1928, Gosplan became responsible for their creation and supervision according to the objectives declared by the All-Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) . During 1930

28350-445: Was distinguished by economic romanticism, profound economic illiteracy, and incredible exaggeration of the real effect that the 'administrative factor' had on economic processes and on the motivations of the public." The second step was to identify where there were mismatches between levels of outputs of one material that was used as an input in another part of the economy i.e. where there were differences between supply and demand within

28525-574: Was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the economic stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. In the final years of the CPSU's existence, the Communist Parties of the federal subjects of Russia were united into the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR). After the CPSU's demise, the Communist Parties of

28700-405: Was elected leader. On 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924, only thirteen months after the founding of the Soviet Union, of which he would become regarded as the founding father. After Lenin's death, a power struggle ensued between Joseph Stalin , the party's General Secretary , and Leon Trotsky ,

28875-412: Was finally subordinated. Input-Output models , developed by Wassily Leontief , take advantage of linear programming and matrices by dividing the economy into interdependent sectors that produce products for both themselves and other sectors; the production in one sector relies in the input of goods from another. The flow of goods strictly between sectors is modelled by a Leontief closed model where

29050-420: Was general, ensuring that party leadership retained the ability to make specific policy changes as they saw fit. The Congresses also provided the party leadership with formal legitimacy by providing a mechanism for the election of new members and the retirement of old members who had lost favor. The elections at Congresses were all predetermined and the candidates who stood for seats to the Central Committee and

29225-506: Was given a new name – the Council of Labor and Defense (STO) – and a broader planning mission. STO was established as a commission of the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), to be headed by the leading People's Commissars themselves, a representative of the Russian trade unions, and the chief of the Central Statistical Agency. STO was directed to establish a single economic plan for Soviet Russia and to direct

29400-512: Was increasingly bureaucratic and specific functions within the firm required increasingly specialized knowledge which could be supplied as easily by state functionaries in publicly owned enterprises. In the first volume of Das Kapital , Karl Marx identified the process of capital accumulation as central to the law of motion of capitalism. The increased industrial capacity caused by the increasing returns to scale further socializes production. Capitalism eventually socializes labor and production to

29575-457: Was increasingly ineffective in responding to the growing criticism of the Soviet Union by Western leaders, most prominently by US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan , and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher . The CPSU, which had wishfully interpreted the financial crisis of the 1970s as the beginning of the end of capitalism, found its country falling far behind the West in its economic development. Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982, and

29750-409: Was largely dominated by the interests of the military, former nobility, major capitalists business owners and democratic socialists. Alongside it, grassroots general assemblies spontaneously formed, called soviets , and a dual-power structure between the soviets and the provisional government was in place until such a time that their differences would be reconciled in a post-provisional government. Lenin

29925-420: Was outlawed under Russian President Boris Yeltsin 's decree on 6 November 1991, citing the 1991 Soviet coup attempt as a reason. The party started in 1898 as part of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party . In 1903, that party split into a Menshevik ("minority") and Bolshevik ("majority") faction; the latter, led by Vladimir Lenin , is the direct ancestor of the CPSU and is the party that seized power in

30100-536: Was required because VSNKh itself also had responsibility for planning through the Industrial Planning Commission (Promplan). Re-examination of roles was also required as the introduction of the first five-year plan meant that Gosplan's role was no longer one of prognosis and drafting of 'control figures' since plans had now become orders to act. In order to ensure the success of the plan it was necessary to ensure that inputs from one part of

30275-534: Was succeeded by Yuri Andropov on 12 November. Andropov, a staunch anti-Stalinist, chaired the KGB during most of Brezhnev's reign. He had appointed several reformers to leadership positions in the KGB, many of whom later became leading officials under Gorbachev. Andropov supported increased openness in the press, particularly regarding the challenges facing the Soviet Union. Andropov was in office briefly, but he appointed

30450-533: Was succeeded by Chernenko. The elderly Cherneko was in poor health throughout his short leadership and was unable to consolidate power; effective control of the party organization remained with Gorbachev. When Chernenko died on 10 March 1985, his succession was already settled in favor of Gorbachev. The Politburo did not want another elderly and frail leader after its previous three leaders, and elected Gorbachev as CPSU General Secretary on 11 March 1985, one day after Chernenko's death. When Gorbachev acceded to power,

30625-465: Was the first national economy to attempt economic planning as a substitute for factor market allocation. Soviet-type economic planning took form in the 1930s and largely remained unchanged despite mild reforms until the Soviet Union's dissolution. Soviet economic planning was centralized and organized hierarchically, with a state planning agency such as the Gosplan establishing target rates for growth and

#617382