LECTURE No. 11. Russian Economy

1. General characteristics of the Russian economy

The economy of modern Russia is mixed and is developing in the direction of strengthening the market principle. It can be said that at present it is still an economy of transition, when planned regulation has already been destroyed, and market regulators have not yet been created.

There are several opinions about the failure of reforms in Russia, the most significant of which are the following:

1) Reformed reform (reforms were not properly prepared, were not planned (or at least reliably predicted) the main socio-economic indicators of the transition period);

2) patriotic reform (reforms in the form in which they are being implemented are imposed on Russia by the International Monetary Fund with the aim of enslaving Russia, genocide of Russians, turning our country into a raw material appendage of the West);

3) patriarchal reform (at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, the Russian people rejected both NEP-man capitalism and the classical capitalism of the Guchkovs and Milyukovs; they did not accept socialism, in which they, the great Russian people, were turned into a faceless mass of average workers and employees).

The Russian people will not accept any new formations if they contradict:

1) collectivist Russian tradition;

2) the breadth of the Russian character;

3) rich Russian culture and spirituality, dating back to Orthodoxy.

Be that as it may, but for the period from 01.01.1991/01.01.1999/XNUMX to XNUMX/XNUMX/XNUMX:

1) Russia’s gross national product decreased by more than 2 times;

2) against the backdrop of an unprecedented rise in prices in the history of the country (by 11 times), the minimum wage increased by a total of 591 times;

3) over 60% of the income of Russians went into the "shadow", that is, they began to be paid in "black cash";

4) the revenue part of the budget has sharply decreased, and the financing of expenditures on education, culture, science, social needs, defense is carried out untimely and not in full.

The true causes of the problems that economic Russia is currently experiencing are not as obvious as it might seem. However, you can point to those that:

1) are interconnected;

2) lie in the field of economics;

3) are closely related to the block of social issues;

4) do not satisfy V. Pareto's optimality criterion.

2. Capitalist restructuring of Russia

After the defeat in the Crimean War (1853-1855), a restructuring of the national economy took place in Russia on a capitalist basis. It began with the abolition of serfdom (February 1861), which opened up a whole system of transformations in the legal, military (universal military service), judicial, administrative and other areas. However, the reforms were not completed: the country did not receive a parliamentary system, and the peasantry did not receive land.

Russia, which completed the industrial revolution after the reform, showed rather high rates of industrial development: for 1860-1913. industrial production increased 12,5 times (in Germany - 7 times, in France - 3 times). But, given the size of the country, this rise could not be decisive for overcoming the backlog.

The technical and socio-economic backwardness of the country could not be overcome by peaceful means: the autocracy and the feudal nobility stubbornly refused to leave the stage, seeking salvation in external adventures.

Free capital has not formed in the country, the bourgeoisie is firmly tied to tsarism by profitable military orders, customs protectionism, which protected it from foreign competition, and also by a police regime that provides cheap labor. The agrarian reform showed that the optimal solution to the socio-economic problems of Russia while maintaining tsarism and noble landownership is no more realistic than "fried ice".

3. Economic consequences of the First World War (1914-1918)

By the beginning of the XX century. the struggle of the capitalist powers for markets and sources of raw materials has become extremely acute.

In 1914, a war broke out between two imperialist blockades (the Entente: France, England, Russia, etc., on the one hand; the Triple Alliance: Germany, Turkey, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, on the other hand). This war is a world table: out of 56, 34 sovereign states that existed on the planet at that time took part in it.

In Europe, the workers theoretically had enough strength to avert war with an all-Russian political strike.

The World War presented unprecedented demands on the economy.

She absorbed 1/3 of the material values ​​of mankind. The military expenditures of the belligerent states increased by more than 20 times, exceeding by 12 times the available gold reserves. The front absorbed over 50% of industrial output.

First of all, the production of machine guns that dominated the field at that time increased sharply - up to 850 thousand pieces.

In countries that lost a terrible war, a restructuring of the socio-economic and political system naturally took place. The Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires collapsed.

The revolutions in Russia (February 1917) and Germany (November 1918) put an end to the power of the feudal lords and the monarchy.

The German bourgeoisie managed to keep power in its hands, but the Russian bourgeoisie could not do this and was destroyed by the totalitarian Bolshevik regime established by the October Revolution.

If mobilization in Russia did not ultimately allow the European proletariat to prevent a world war, then the defeat of the country and its exit from the war led to the emergence of a socialist system in the world and a split into hostile socio-economic systems.

This was the most severe consequence of the First World War for mankind.

4. Major economic changes in the interwar period (1919-1939)

The socio-economic and political development of mankind after the October Revolution of 1917 passed under the sign of confrontation and struggle (both bloodless and bloody) between the socialist and capitalist systems. The confrontation between the systems gave rise to two main trends in the economic policy of the capitalist countries: democratic, built on the containment of socialism, the search for a compromise, and at the same time raising real wages and social protection of workers, and totalitarian (it is very close to socialism), which is aimed at military the crushing of socialism, the totalitarian Soviet Union - the successor of the Russian Empire - is its center.

The first trend was characteristic of the USA, France, England and other bourgeois-democratic countries of the West, the second - for Japan, Italy and especially Germany, where in the early 1930s. gg. defeated the national socialist (fascist) regime based on racial ideology.

In terms of the rate of scientific and technological progress and labor productivity, US industry has far surpassed all other countries. The engineering industry, which annually produced millions of cars, created in the country a huge market for metal, oil, glass, rubber and other materials, as well as a powerful infrastructure in the form of gas stations, car service enterprises, and provoked unprecedented highway construction.

The economic crisis has gripped all the major capitalist countries. Germany suffered the most. If in England for 1929-1932. industrial production fell by 18%, then in Germany - by 29%. In the country in 1932, there were 7 million unemployed - almost 11% of the population.

In the USA - large loans and subsidies to dying enterprises, stimulation of private investment by tax breaks, even provoking inflation by issuing unsecured dollars in order to revive demand, public works (especially road construction) for the unemployed, etc.; in Germany - direct state management of the economy (the owner of the enterprise was appointed by his "Fuhrer") and the complete militarization of production.

With the help of active state intervention, Germany, the USA and other capitalist countries got out of the crisis.

The elimination of unemployment contributed to the rallying of the German people around the National Socialist Party and stimulated the accelerated preparation of the Second World War, which was unleashed by Germany in 1939.

5. Economic content of the Cold War

The confrontation of the systems outwardly had a peaceful, ideological form ("cold war"), although certain "reconnaissance in force" were undertaken - the most significant: on the socialist side - the war in Korea (1950-1953), the installation of missiles with atomic warheads in Cuba (1962), the war in Afghanistan (1979-1989), and with the capitalist war in Vietnam in the 1960s. The essence of the Cold War was an unprecedented competition in the production of modern weapons between the Western (North Atlantic Treaty) and Eastern (Warsaw Treaty) military alliances.

The race of new arms embraced all types of troops - air, land, sea. The main result was the creation of a new type of strategic weapon: thermonuclear (hydrogen) bombs (1955), which repeatedly exceed the destructive power of atomic charges, and their carriers - ballistic intercontinental missiles (1957 - the first launch of an Earth satellite into space by a rocket) - as stationary (in mines), and mobile (on nuclear submarines).

In the mid 1980s. The arms race, and with it the Cold War, ended with the victory of the Western bloc led by the United States, which dealt the Soviet Union two hardest bloodless blows.

The first blow - the installation in Europe of American tactical missiles of increased power (flight time to Moscow - only 5 million) - the USSR parried with a system of nuclear submarines located on the ocean "rookeries" around the North American continent with ballistic missiles aimed at the main centers of America.

On the second blow - the American strategic defense initiative ("Star Wars") - the development of an irresistible laser shield, according to the idea, for ballistic missiles, the Soviet economy, exhausted by overwhelming military production, turned out to be powerless to respond. It was tantamount to defeat. In 1991, the Soviet Union, due to its extremely inefficient working economy, collapsed (a detailed analysis in the life of the "Kingdom of Money") and the power of the Soviets ceased to exist.

6. Not Planning

In 1987, “directive planning” was abolished, and with it the planned start of work in general (for example, disciplines in one way or another connected with planning were excluded from the curricula of universities; the planning and economic departments of enterprises and organizations were disbanded or transformed at best into analysis and forecasting departments). The very word "plan" has become outdated, little used.

The Plenum defined a fundamental restructuring of the entire planning system as the most important organic part of the economic management reform. Paragraph 7 of the same resolution specified this decision:

1) "to abandon, starting from the thirteenth five-year plan, the established practice of the annual development and approval of state annual plans for the economic and social development of the USSR";

2) grant enterprises the rights to independently:

a) plan for the coming year the output of products, the performance of works and services, as well as other indicators of social and economic development;

b) resolve issues of material and technical provision of resources for contract construction and installation works.

Formally, the decree retained the institution of 5-year plans, however, if we take into account the rather democratic nature of the entire system of long-term planning in the USSR, it becomes clear that the formal preservation of 5-year plans did not solve anything: the planned one was replaced by an unplanned start.

7. Refusal to manage material resources

The planning system included a fairly developed subsystem for managing material resources, the significance of which was determined by the fact that the share of material costs in the structure of the cost of industrial products traditionally accounted for the lion's share (in 1988, for example, 72,5%), and therefore material resources had a very high degree of regulation.

As part of the social and economic development plan for the year, the enterprise developed a logistics plan (LTO plan), which listed all the materials necessary for the enterprise, indicated the need for each of them; the sources of satisfaction of this need are identified. Naturally, before drawing up the MTO plan, it was necessary:

1) form a portfolio of orders;

2) determine the own needs of the enterprise (what fixed assets to purchase, where and what to build, what fixed assets to repair, etc.);

3) develop (adjust) the consumption rates of materials for marketable products, as well as estimates for work for their own needs;

4) know their own capabilities to meet the needs: the balance of materials at the beginning of the year; savings in materials due to lower consumption rates; the possibility of acquiring certain materials in a decentralized manner;

5) have the information necessary for the development of estimates for water consumption, electricity, heating, the number of employees; cubic capacity of heated premises; operating modes of technological equipment, etc.

The MTO plans of enterprises, brought together, determined the needs of some ministries and set "directive" tasks for others. This is how plans for centralized supplies were formed until 1988.

8. Abolition of the principle of "equal pay for equal work"

Until 1988, the Soviet economy professed the principle of remuneration, which, in relation to the "Swedish" model, is called the "Socialist principle of equal pay for equal work." The abolition of the principle of "equal pay for equal work" occurred due to the fact that with the abolition of the institution of planning, directive wage regulators were abolished.

The first of these regulators, the "normative ratio of wage growth and labor productivity" was focused on the final results of the enterprise's work, and established how much money could be directed to the wages of a given number of its employees with a given volume of output produced by them.

The second indicator, "the standard for remuneration of employees of the administrative apparatus," divided all the money allocated for remuneration into two parts: wages for workers and wages for employees of the administrative apparatus (for example, with a standard of 0,18 out of every 100 rubles of the general fund wages, the satisfaction apparatus could claim only 18 rubles). The results of the abolition of the principle of equal pay for equal work were not long in coming: already in 1988, for the first time in the entire Soviet history of industry, wage growth rates began to outpace labor productivity growth rates. This was not only a prerequisite for the stratification of society into rich and poor (today 2% of Russians die of starvation, while 60% of all savings belong to 2% of the country's population), but also the main cause of inflation (due to the growth in the volume of money supply not supported by goods) .

9. Reducing the revenue side of the budget

In 1988, the structure of costs for the production of industrial products was as follows: depreciation - 10,8%; material costs - 72,5%; wages and social insurance contributions - 13,8%; other costs - 2,9%. In 1988, 10,8% of costs amounted to 45 billion rubles in the RSFSR, or 72 billion US dollars. These funds were used exclusively for their intended purpose:

1) for major repairs - according to pre-approved project-by-project estimates and within the limits of the amounts allocated for this (for example, in 1988 in industry - 20,9 billion rubles);

2) for full restoration - in accordance with the submitted applications and plans for organizational and technical development.

The rest was seized by the state from enterprises and then redistributed. As before, depreciation is charged: 2 million 760 thousand chief accountants still make huge depreciation charges, which do not go to the budget, but are included in the cost price, thereby reducing the taxable profit of enterprises.

10. The economic system of socialism in the USSR

The economy of socialism arose in Russia as a result of an almost bloodless coup d'état carried out by the Bolshevik Party in October 1917. In fact, without meeting resistance, the Bolsheviks turned the coup d'etat into a social revolution - they proclaimed a power that was totalitarian in nature.

Soviets, decreed the forcible liquidation of landlord landownership and the equalizing division of landowner land among the peasants (which could not be resolved for centuries, happened literally in an instant! Until the next summer of 1918, landowner land had already been divided), dispersed the Constituent Assembly freely elected by the people, in which they majority, confiscated the capital of private banks, monopolized foreign trade, nationalized large-scale industry and partial railways, introduced the forcible seizure of part of the food from the peasants.

The five-year national economic plans served as the embodiment of this tough strategic line. The vast majority of them were obviously unfeasible, nevertheless, all five-year plans were officially declared completed ahead of schedule.

Seven decades later, after liberation from serfdom, Russian peasants again became serfs.

The collectivization of agriculture was the resource base for the modernization of industry.

During the years of the first five-year plan alone, 1500 new industrial enterprises were put into operation, the fleet of metalworking machines was renewed by half, the average annual increase in production reached almost 20%, the first 5 tanks and hundreds of combat aircraft were produced. As a result of the first two five-year plans, the USSR became the second industrial power in the world and the first in Europe, overtaking Germany, England and France in terms of total industrial output.

11. Total militarization of the economy of the USSR

The main feature of the Soviet socialist economy was total militarization, the complete subordination of the country's economy to the production of weapons.

At all times, the production of military equipment enjoyed priority, according to the data, the case was truly unique - literally all sectors of the economy worked for the war; weapons and equipment accounted for 70-80% of the gross industrial output.

In 1970, at the height of the arms race, the Soviet Union produced per capita 479 kg of steel and 3000 kWh of electricity, and America - 630 kg and 7700 kWh, but parity prevailed in armaments between the USSR and the USA.

Inhumane laws were adopted, according to which military personnel who were captured were considered traitors to their homeland, and their families were subject to expulsion. Total distrust resulted in total suspicion, and further - in the total destruction of all suspects.

The total militarization of the economy gave rise to a crisis of consumption specific to socialism: a stable lag of supply behind payment - capable demand.

Militarization explained in the people's minds the inevitability of a shortage of goods, as a people's sacrifice in the name of defending the country from enemies. For the broad masses, the idea of ​​external danger explained the meaning of Soviet life.

It is believed that about 20% of GDP is produced outside the official economy. The criminal economy also includes underground banks that accumulate income from racketeering, prostitution, theft, gambling; they lend, under the protection of armed gangs, small businesses in cash ("black cash") at huge (up to 40) percent.

For 1992-1996 GDP decreased by 28% - more than during the Civil (23%) and World War II (21%) wars. The country lives by exporting gas and oil, timber, metals of the latest weapons and importing consumer goods. The industry in general is not profitable. The biggest income comes from: trading (especially currency, real estate), banking, civil service (extortions), stock brokerage and simple theft.

Thus, the harmonious development of the national economy of the new Russia and the improvement of the living standards of the people depend, first of all, on the solution of three closely related problems - the elimination of criminal business, the establishment of civilized market economic relations and a full-fledged investment process.

Author: Shcherbina L.V.

<< Back: Monopolization (Monopolization of the economy. The transformation of the United States into the first industrial country in the world. Germany is the second industrial power in the world. The loss of England's industrial primacy. The economic backwardness of France. Strengthening monopolies due to the disaggregation of medium-sized enterprises. Dismantling: the socially oriented taxation model)

>> Forward: Formation and development of a market economy of free competition

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