The Soviet Economy
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Case Code: ECON028 Case Length: 19 Pages Period: 1991-2007 Pub Date: 2008 Teaching Note: Not Available |
Price: Rs.400 Organization : - Industry : - Countries : Russian Federation Themes: Economics |
Abstract Case Intro 1 Case Intro 2 Excerpts
"We need economic reform and political reform. The central question is with which to start."
- Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party,in 1982.
"Gentlemen, comrades, do not be concerned about all you hear about Glasnost and Perestroika and democracy in the coming years. They are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant internal changes in the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes."
- Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union at a politburo meeting in 1987.
Introduction
On August 20, 1991, Estonia, taking advantage of the relatively greater freedom that Mikhail Gorbachev (Gorbachev), president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), allowed to the Soviet republics, formally declared its independence from the Soviet Union. Following this, several other republics of the Soviet Union started declaring their sovereignty, and the USSR, created in 1922 by the union of several republics that in earlier times had been part of the Russian empire, broke up into independent states. The Russian empire had been controlled by the Tsars right from the 16th century. Russia then had an agrarian economy, with the serfs doing all the agricultural labor under the control of the nobility, who were the owners of the land. The continued oppression of the serfs and the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05, which weakened the economy, contributed to the Russian Revolution of 1905.
With the country starting to industrialize, the number of industrial workers (the proletariat) also grew. As political and economic conditions worsened, revolutionary fervor increased and the Russian Revolution succeeded in removing the Tsar from power in 1917. After the period of Civil War (1917-1922), the USSR or the Soviet Union was founded in 1922 and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Lenin)4 became the first leader of the USSR. Lenin introduced a New Economic Policy (NEP), which permitted private activity in some sectors of the economy, while most sectors were retained under state control. After Lenin's death, Joseph Stalin (Stalin) took control of the USSR. His era was characterized by an extreme centralization that included Five Year Plans and collectivization of agriculture. Rapid industrialization (through central planning) was also strongly emphasized. After Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev (Khrushchev) led the USSR. He came to be most remembered for his agricultural reform policy that included introduction of modern technology and allowing farmers to sell more grain in the open market...
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