Why were there postscripts in the USSR? Soviet economy: truth and myth. Rise and fall angles

In his article, Comrade Kibalchich wanted to “hit” Comrade Kuchera, but he made me look like an idiot. After all, he knows that in the USSR I was the deputy director of the largest plant in its industry (and in the world), and I was precisely the deputy director who was obliged to deal with postscripts. And when Comrade Kibalchich writes that “most of the Soviet directors were engaged in postscripts,” this turns me into almost the only fool in the USSR who still does not know how to do this. The Ministry sent colleagues to me so that I could pass on my experience to them, but it turns out that no one taught me postscripts myself!?

Registrations were a criminal offense, but in my entire life I have never heard of a single case of conviction for them. Theft - yes, that happened, but registrations?!

Just in case, let me remind you what Comrade Kibalchich wrote about. In the USSR, under the piecework-bonus system of remuneration, engineers were paid 99% of the salary for fulfilling the plan, and workers were paid 99% of the tariff rate. For 100% of the plan, they paid a salary (100% of the tariff rate) plus a bonus (at our plant, 40% of the salary or tariff rate). For each successive percentage of overfulfillment, a 2% bonus was added to the bonus. That is, if you are a fool and fulfilled the plan 110% (the smart ones fulfilled it 101-102%), then you will receive a salary and 60% of the bonus, and workers will receive 110% of the tariff and 60% of the bonus. So Kibalchich writes that we supplied goods to stores at 80% of the plan, and in the reports we attributed 110% to ourselves and received wages twice as much as required, which led to the devaluation of the ruble and a shortage of goods in stores.

Just like that, it turns out that in the industry of the USSR they received money, but I didn’t know this, managing the planning, financial, and sales departments of the plant and being responsible for the accounting department (no one was in charge of the chief accountant - in the USSR he was a minister’s nomenklatura)! Well, am I not an idiot?

And the point is not that they were afraid to impute it - they also imprisoned for theft, but they stole! But the fact is that in the sphere of material production of the USSR, postscripts were technically impossible. Look. Suppose a metallurgical plant, in order to receive a rich bonus, took credit for the production of 1000 tons of steel sheet, which it actually did not roll. This figure, through the ministry, immediately goes to the State Planning Committee and there they address this 1000 tons to the plant for the production of pots, increasing its plan by 1000 tons of pots and counting the new figure as 100%. Here, this additional 1000 tons, but in the form of pots, is addressed by the State Planning Committee to stores and the plan is also increased for them. Budget funding is immediately withdrawn from those areas to whose banks stores must turn over additional revenue.

As a result, having received a bonus for 1000 tons of steel sheet assigned to the plan, the director of the steel plant condemns dozens of industrial, trade and financial organizations of the USSR to failure to fulfill the plan and to deprivation of the bonus. Yes, he, having received this award on the 5th, would not have had time to buy a bus ticket with it - they would have taken him where he needed to for free! How can you attribute anything under such conditions? Only the unfinished work of this month, which you will have to produce additionally next month.

That is, Comrade Kibalchich does not understand at all how the productive forces of the USSR were structured. I don’t even know if I can explain to him that in order to steal in industry and agriculture, it was necessary to do the opposite of what he accuses the directors of - it was necessary to make incomplete statements. That is, fulfill the plan 101%, but refuse additional bonuses and salaries, hide the products and put 100% in the report. Save the cost, but refuse the bonus for saving it and show the planned figure in the report. Thus, the industry of the USSR received less wages than it produced goods. True, the hidden difference in goods was stolen, but the Government did not print money for it. Having stolen something from the factory, the worker did not go to the store to get it. Having stolen a ton of grain from the field, the combine operator did not receive a salary or bonus for it, and having grown 200 kg of pork on this ton, he did not alienate the townspeople in line in the meat department. The productive forces of the USSR did not influence either the devaluation of the ruble or the shortage of goods in the country, or rather, they influenced only in a favorable direction.

...
Yu.I. Mukhin

Rise and fall angles

Anatoly Anishchenko wrote yesterday at 17:54
49 ratings, 1177 views Discuss (425)

Stalin's The system of managing the national economy of the USSR, strange as it may seem at first glance, was not socialist at all according to Marxism, but only a special form of Modernity, which was necessary for the accelerated industrialization of the country.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was practically the first among the Bolshevik-Leninists to understand the main formula of a fair, crisis-free market: e If prices are fixed, then it is desirable that there be a little more goods or a little less money than necessary - in this case, some of the goods do not participate in circulation, and the display cases are always full. And it turns out that in terms of understanding the laws of the market, I.V. Stalin turned out to be a competent and consistent marketer.

However, industrialization through the form of party dictatorship carried with it the danger of the emergence of such a phenomenon as the merger of power and property. The Stalinist leadership of the country was well aware of this “phenomenon of power ownership,” which was quite widespread in the East. Therefore, we had to, as they say, keep our eyes open and avoid excessive socialization.

The genius of Stalin, as a market economist and a talented student of Vladimir Lenin, lies precisely in the fact that, having reforged the NEP in a socialist way, he solved the problem of industrializing the country in a monstrously short time, developing theoretically and putting into practice non-economic means. Naturally, in order to carry out such a grandiose process of transforming society, it was necessary to create such a universal mechanism of violence as a new people's state.

The Bolsheviks - people of crystal honesty, honor and dignity, selflessly devoted to their Motherland, whose economic and political views and actions were supported by the masses, under the leadership of Stalin, managed to create a state that was able to move from a plow to a rocket in a single leap, making the Soviet people the freest , rich and happy people on planet Earth and defeat all their internal and external enemies.

I think that I will not reveal any secret if I say that the main engine of the Stalinist economy was the obligation of every Soviet person to work. For this, the country had an excess number of jobs, raw materials, equipment, the opportunity to get an education, caring medicine, conditions for an eventful holiday and an established healthy sense, style andLifestyle. That is, the criterion of Stalin's CORRECT economy there was a state policy, which can be said this way: “So that the capabilities of everyone are used for the benefit of the whole society!”

The state apparatus strictly planned, organized and controlled so that the work was not just some kind of end in itself to produce something “AT ALL”, but that it produced what others wanted to buy. It was thanks to the creation of a mechanism for the precise work of the entire Soviet people, like a clock, the production of products needed by both an individual and the whole society, that the Stalinist economy achieved unprecedented successes in the world: in less than ten pre-war years, the USSR became a powerful industrial power, the domestic market was filled abundance of food, consumer goods and manufactured goods, almost single-handedly defeated all (ALL!) of the armies of Hitler's Europe in the Great Patriotic War, in 4 years restored the national economy destroyed by the war, created a nuclear shield from an external enemy, went into space, etc. At the same time, automatically the standard of living and well-being of the people increased.

It should also be noted thatunder Stalin in the USSR, private entrepreneurship was not only not prohibited, but, on the contrary, was protected and welcomed in many areas: bakery, hairdressing salons, tailoring and shoemaking, collection and rough processing of recyclable materials, repair and construction work, medicine not related to surgical intervention, collection and sale of medicinal herbs, mushrooms, berries and other gifts of wild nature, fishing, beekeeping, etc. People's cooperation had broad rights and opportunities. The cooperative economic system was practically a state within a state and permeated the entire economy of the country from a private hairdressing salon to the ocean fishing fleet. Under Stalin, the collective farm market flourished, sometimes even too much.

My family are hereditary beekeepers. So, my grandfather, my father, and I ourselves never traded honey or other beekeeping products in the markets. We even despised traders. Our job was to work in the apiary. We packed the obtained beekeeping products into cans, jars and flasks; at a certain time, a procurer-cooperator came to us, sealed our products and took them away. Within a month, the amount of money previously agreed upon with the procurer-cooperator “fell” into our savings book, and the container was returned. And our economy flourished.

But, alas! Nothing is eternal on Earth. Stalin died without leaving a worthy heir. Trotskyist Khrushchev seized power in the USSR.

And now, our ancestral beekeeping enterprise has practically died, because we are not able to independently produce and trade. Yes, in fact, we don’t know how to trade, we haven’t been taught, because we didn’t need it.

The slogan itself is: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!” Andunderestimation of the importance of commodity-money relations is the most characteristic feature of Trotskyism. N.S. Khrushchev corrupted the people, instilled the idea that there is free prosperity. Before him, under Stalin, there were gas meters in kitchens and education, starting from high school, was paid...

During the destructive “Khrushchev thaw” for the USSR and the crazy “Khrushchev reforms”, an anecdotal tale circulated among the people. As if some very highly developed and insanely smart world power, let’s call it Mother Japan, offered the insanely smart General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev assistance in building communism in the Soviet Union at an accelerated pace. The essence of the proposal was as follows: the USSR leased Siberia - from the Urals to Chukotka - to Mother Japan for 99 years, and for this, Mother Japan (as rent) obliged for 99 years to feed three times a day according to needs, to clothe and shoe according to needs. seasons and amuse the entire 290 million Soviet people according to their wishes. At the same time, for the entire duration of this insanely smart Lease Agreement, the entire 290 million Soviet people should not work, and the insanely smart authorities of the USSR should not interfere with the activities of the insanely smart Mother Japan. The peoples of the USSR should only eat, relax and have fun.

The insanely smart General Secretary Khrushchev was very happy about this proposal. Even from an excess of insane joy, directing his insane gaze beyond the Ocean, he shouted: “I’ll show you Kuzka’s mother!” And he established the exact date for the beginning of the life of the Soviet people in this very communism - from January 1, 1980!!!

As is customary with insanely smart leaders, the insanely smart Khrushchev with frantic energy began to crap on his predecessors and destroy everything they had done, without thinking about the consequences:

Calling Stalin and Stalin’s devotion to the Motherland a deviation from the Leninist path, he exposed his “cult of personality”;

Having called the enemies of the people innocently repressed victims of Stalinism, he rehabilitated them and released them;

Calling Stalin a bloody tyrant, he pulled out Stalin’s mummy from the mausoleum at night and buried it deep underground;

Calling all private owners relics of the bourgeoisie, he banned private entrepreneurship in all volumes, types and manifestations. People's cooperation was deprived of its independence, placing it under the complete control of the state;

Having called the Stalinist economy obsolete, parallel to the existing Stalinist system of governing the country, he created Economic Councils, immediately increasing the number of officials by 2 times;

Having called the Russian family a relic of the past, he launched propaganda to free women from husbands, children and households, for which he created a network of canteens and home catering kitchens, nurseries and kindergartens; the massive construction of small-sized apartments, the so-called “Khrushchevka”, under the slogan “A separate apartment for each family” destroyed the Russian family, broke the connection between generations, tore children away from their parents and vice versa;

- Having failed to cope with the collective farm market, Khrushchev destroyed the collective farms of the collective farmers. IN in all villages, he reduced the personal plots of collective farmers to the size of a city florist and forbade collective farmers to keep more than one cow on their personal farms, and in cities and urban-type settlements he forbade workers and employees from gardening, keeping livestock and even chickens...

And, like the apotheosis of madness, he sowed all the agricultural (and not only) lands of the USSR with corn.

All these crazy reforms and transformations pushed the USSR from the peak of its Stalinist power and the country, at first slowly, but then, ever accelerating, rolled down - into the abyss of modern thieves' liberal Darwinism. For the first time in Soviet history, Russia-USSR was unable to grow enough bread for the country's needs and was forced to sit on the Yankee-Canadian food needle.

Here is an example of the people's assessment of Khrushchev's reforms. In those days, there was a practice when citizens, voting in elections, often wrote their orders to their deputies on ballot papers, and the deputies then, after their election, read these orders and carried them out. Here, for example, is what it looked like for the deputy, writer and poet Tvardovsky, who was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on March 1, 1960. They voted for candidate Tvardovsky with faith and hope that he would help, correct, improve, and stop the insane activities of the insanely smart Khrushchev to accelerate the construction of communism in the USSR. Here's what n Voters wrote instructions to Tvardovsky on the ballot papers: “He’s a good man, let him go”; “Try to keep chickens in the village and not take away the last piece of bread from the children. For example, I am not able to buy at the market, but here they prohibit it. I ask for permission to keep chickens in the village».

“Work hard to keep the chickens!” - this is the cry of the soul of the Soviet people, whom the insanely smart Khrushchev drove into poverty with his insanely smart reforms.

The rehabilitated and released enemies of the people, due to their anger at Stalin and the Soviet people's power, quickly grouped into wolf packs and began to harm the Soviet Union with tenfold force. Talent and arrogance, coupled with hatred and thirst for power, hit the USSR with all its might. The formation of the 5th column of internal enemies of the USSR was facilitated by the indecisiveness of the rulers subsequent to Khrushchev and their political and economic illiteracy.

The state in the Khrushchev and post-Khrushchev economic system became the supreme owner of the entire national economy, which gave rise to a governing pseudo-estate - the nomenklatura. There was a merger of power and property. In the USSR, the “phenomenon of power ownership” appeared, which in turn gave rise to nomenklatura privileges, shortages and cronyism. External enemies and the internal 5th column united into a united front. The Cold War against the USSR received a powerful offensive impulse...

The destruction of the USSR was carried out in full accordance with the well-known Dulles plan. Step by step, drop by drop, poison poured into the souls and consciousness of Soviet youth, Soviet ideology and morality were destroyed, and the country's top leadership was corrupted. If under Stalin being a communist was the honorable right of the best, then under Brezhnev being a communist became the annoying duty of every rabble. Under Stalin, only 30% of directors and other top managers in the national economy were communists, and in Brezhnev’s time, almost the entire leadership corps in the national economy were communists (89%). Under Stalin, one had to first become a leader, show one’s best side, and only then to apply for membership in the party (this rule did not apply to the working class), and under Brezhnev one had to first become a communist and then apply for a leadership position. Under Brezhnev, even in order for some thief to take the position of warehouse manager, he first had to join the CPSU. That is, the party was filled with various kinds of crooks, drunkards and careerists and ceased to be “the mind, honor and conscience of the people.”

Bitter drunkards were the secretaries of the Sverdlovsk, Magadan, Tambov and other regional committees of the CPSU Yeltsin, Shaidurov, Cherny, etc., etc. The enemies of Russia and the Russian people managed to lower the people to the level of unprincipled cattle. In the 80s, the only thing left for the enemies to do was to find scoundrels in the top leadership of the USSR who would be willing to take on the role of executioners and push the sick country into the abyss. Such executioners turned out to be traitors to the Motherland Gorbachev, Yeltsin and their cauldron of all sorts of insatiable Chubais. It is bitter to admit, but the enemies of Russia and the Russian people managed to deceive the people and destroy the USSR. The people were unable to defend the Soviet Motherland in 1991 from the 5th column of Yankee-European lackeys and traitors. And then we saw who is who. Almost all modern thieves-oligarchs are former Komsomol workers - secretaries and members of the Komsomol Central Committee.

Particular mention should be made of Gorbachev's treacherous actions. The 1987 decree on state-owned enterprises allowed enterprises to transfer part of their non-cash profits to the material incentive fund and cash them out. Non-cash profits were never provided by consumer goods, and non-cash money, pouring into the commodity market, catastrophically inflated the money supply. Small enterprises aggravated the situation: people close to the management of enterprises bought Zhiguli cars for a month’s salary; ordinary citizens carried wads of money into savings banks - there was nowhere else to put it. The item has disappeared. Everything became in short supply, even toilet paper.

There were also destructive decisions - the Law on Cooperation (with taxes of 3%), the Law on Joint Ventures (the first opportunity to export capital and finance pro-Western politicians), and the anti-alcohol campaign. All this contributed to the pumping of the money supply unsecured by goods. And, as is now reliably known, all this was done according to the demands of Western creditors.

The blow was delivered accurately. Subversive activities against the USSR were focused not even on the collapse of production, but on collapse of commodity-money circulation. Then there was Gaidar with his colossal money supply and “released” prices, Chubais with his predatory privatization...

Like dirty foam on the crest of popular unrest, various Gorbachevs, Yeltsins, Solzhenitsyns, Gaidars, Chubais, Medvedevs and other traitors, drunkards, sexots, idiots, thieves and other moral monsters splashed out to the top of power, who, crap on our yesterday’s majestic History, our yesterday's loved ones, humane and selfless in their selfless service to Russia and the Russian people, Lenin-Stalin, tore Russia-USSR into bloody pieces.

So it's over! -

Russia

fell from a height to the bottom.

Velikoross - blue from vodka,

And Maloross is an arrogant fool,

And Beloross is a bald lackey,

Russia was lured into Pushcha

And there they killed the Sacred One,

And they chopped it up with an ax

Into three bloody pieces!

Three presidents

Three borders

Three packs of dogs - thieves in law

(Revived kings and princes?)

They drink, eat and shit in a Russian house.

Russia is in darkness! A network of pipelines of enormous diameter and length, railways and roads, tankers, steamships and airplanes, millions of Russian slaves serving this predatory system - these are insatiable bloodsuckers, pumping the natural resources of their Russian body and driving them for next to nothing to the West. And back for the slaves they bring fabulously expensive perfumes, porn magazines, condoms, genetically modified products, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and consumer goods, including underpants to cover skinny asses. And in the vastness of Russia, destroyed villages and towns, empty schools and cinemas, stumps from felled trees, dead plants and factories, landfills of discarded art books of Russian classics. Has the anecdotal tale that Soviet people told laughing under Khrushchev really come true?

That is, wages increased 166 times. Let's look at Soviet prices, also increased by 166 times, and compare them with Russian prices in 2012.

The first column is the name of the product. The second is the price of the product in the early 80s of the 20th century. The third is the price that should be for the product today (2012), taking into account indexation (old price multiplied by 166). The fourth column is today's real price in the Auchan chain of stores.

If the price of the fourth column is higher than the price of the third, the goods have become more expensive and life has worsened. If it is lower, the price has fallen, it has improved.

... but, fortunately, there are people who have secret knowledge. They know, firstly, that all the statistics (ALL statistics) were falsified - that is, even the Politburo reported extremely incorrect data, but it tolerated it - and secondly, without any statistics they know how everything really happened . Moreover, in detail. Divine revelation, nothing less.

And they can compare. With the USA, with England. Everything is fair with their statistics. With the exception, of course, of statistics about the USSR, which specifically introduced agents to them to falsify intelligence data. Yes Yes. That's how it was. Just lies all around. This is especially obvious to people who didn’t live then and didn’t see any statistics at all. Even counterfeit.

That's a lot of effort! After all, statistics, before getting into newspapers, ended up in statistical collections. They also had to be tampered with, otherwise someone would definitely discover a coincidence. It is possible, of course, to completely destroy it, but the problem is that these collections are still in libraries and archives. So they didn't destroy it. But before the collections, there were still documents for internal use. And they also survived. This means that they too were forged. The statistics in these collections had to be consistent with internal data on enterprises. That is, they had to falsify them right away at the factories - after all, payments were made based on these reports. To do this, at a minimum, all directors of all factories had to be in agreement - no one would want to go to jail for someone else's embezzlement. But this is not enough. All transport departments had to be in cahoots with them. Moreover, external ones too - railways, ports. Reports at enterprises had to be coordinated with departmental reports, which means that department heads were also in the conspiracy.

Truly a monstrous organization! Covers a third of the country. And yet the remaining two-thirds know nothing. KGB, I understand. They can do anything. They were so clever that they managed to destroy all the “white accounting”, leaving only the black one, on the day of the collapse of the USSR. I bow to them. Only one thing is strange - why couldn’t such a powerful organization stop the collapse? Here, perhaps, divine power intervened. From which you receive revelations.

Belief in a monolithic and all-powerful organization is precisely from the realm of extreme idealism. Statistics, as you have already correctly noted, are needed mainly not for publication in newspapers, but in production management. Production of any kind. With fake statistics, they simply would not be able to manage. The dream that in the USSR all the leaders took each other’s word, of course, inspires optimism, but they do not correspond to reality. Therefore, everything was meticulously documented. Every transaction. Much more meticulous than now. Back then, people were not fined for discrepancies in numbers, but imprisoned. Therefore, those statistics are even more reliable than the current ones.

Let me explain again: statistics were kept separately. That is, not only one organization was involved in it. GoskomStat only summarized the data. And each plant collected them separately. So, the statistics are the same. That is, if it was falsified, then only on a nationwide scale. Everyone had to be involved in this. And if everything is tied, then why was it faked at all?
I want to add this:

Due to the planned economy, statistics in the USSR were taken very seriously. In all its manifestations, both in processing and in collection. Any old accountant will tell you this - modern charts of accounts are baby talk compared to Soviet ones.

Moreover, those who gave false statistical data ("postscripts", in the lexicon of the perestroika years, or, on the contrary, concealment) were punished very cruelly. Let us remember the famous “Uzbek Case” or the case of the USSR Ministry of Fisheries. Hundreds of middle and senior officials were imprisoned, death sentences, suicides.

“Additions” are always and everywhere, in any situation where there is reporting, and rewards or censures (whether they are expressed in orders or in bank transfers) depend on the information contained in the reporting. This was perfectly proven to us by the not-so-recent incidents with Enron or the not-so-high-profile case of the Daewoo Corporation a few years earlier.
Considering totalitarianism in the USSR and possible punishments (much more significant than in the democratic West), I would not exaggerate the scale of the postscripts.

Let’s not be unfounded - let’s return to the loudest and most popular “Uzbek Case”. Uzbekistan then reported the delivery of 6 million tons of cotton, but in reality they collected just over 5 million. That is. the scale of the additions was less than one sixth. How were the additions made - (I hope you don’t think that every sixth carriage was empty?) - by overestimating the quality of the cotton fiber. Those. under the guise of the lowest quality cotton, they loaded lint, uluk - something that is no longer considered cotton, but looks very similar to it. Naturally, bribes were paid to those who turned a blind eye. As a result, standards were not observed, and the quality of fabrics decreased.

It is impossible to assign “out of the blue”; there are always regulatory bodies, and you can’t silence everyone with bribes. Especially considering the realities of that time, when underground millionaires drove Zhiguli cars and buried gold in their gardens, and for a bribe of 100 thousand (God, what ridiculous money by today’s standards, just a couple of prestigious cars at the “market price”) the tower was shining. You can maneuver with varieties, revise the norms - but just like that, sucking a million tons of something out of your finger is impossible, unless you fall into conspiracy theories and invent some kind of universal conspiracy according to postscripts.

My little “research” in the previous post on the topic of meat can serve as a clear illustration. sdanilov states that almost half of the meat turns out to be not meat at all, but offal and fat. In this case, where did this offal and fat, which also appears in statistics in separate columns, come from? There is no answer... The only logical explanation comes to mind - that the scoops, according to Lysenko’s behests, raised special varieties of super-fat and super-fleathy meatless mutants in order to deceive our scoop fighter. Oh, no - another version - the scoops secretly purchased waste from meat processing plants in neighboring countries.

Now tell me the technology of postscripts in reporting the consumption of chicken eggs and I will calm down :).

The truth about the Great Patriotic War (collection of articles) Sokolov Boris Vadimovich

Soviet economy: truth and myth

We are so accustomed to the statement that the USSR ranks second in the world in terms of total production volume after the USA, repeated in the recently published reference book “USSR in Figures in 1987”, that we have long stopped thinking about what is behind this. After all, the gap in the level and quality of life with the same United States is colossal, this will be confirmed by any citizen of our country who has visited there, and dry statistical calculations will also confirm that only in terms of per capita meat consumption we lag behind the United States by 3 (!) times.

I won’t reveal any secret by saying that our economy still retains strict centralized planning, even if it is now called “state order”. If you don’t fulfill the plan, you will be left without a bonus, which has already become an indispensable and significant component of your salary, and now, with the introduction of state acceptance, sometimes without a salary at all if the company’s products are rejected. Plan indicators handed down from above very often do not take into account the real capabilities of enterprises and farms. But control numbers are the law. And in order to fulfill them, managers have to make adjustments - deliberately exaggerating information about the goods and services produced. The temptation to “fulfill” and even “exceed” the plan with one stroke of the pen is too great. There are other postscripts, so to speak, absolutely legal - the maximum increase in the cost of products, for which the most expensive raw materials, materials and equipment are used, and the number of intermediate operations performed each time at a separate enterprise increases sharply. All this leads to a significant increase in the gross value of products due to double, triple, quadruple counting, but without any increase in the physical volume of products produced or improvement in their consumer properties.

But there are also “material additions” that you can literally touch with your hand, but the trouble is that they do not affect the standard of living of the population or, say, the defense capability of the country, since they do not have consumer properties and, therefore, do not have values ​​in the political-economic sense of the word are not. These are tractors and combines rusting in the open air due to the lack of necessary hanging equipment. These are machines that were obsolete before they were even installed, destined to become, at best, scrap for the steel industry, and, at worst, simply crumble from rust. This is steel, the production and import of which we have long and firmly held first place in the world. These are shoes and clothes that are destined to rot in warehouses. These are construction projects that drag on for decades and then end up mothballed. These are, finally, repair services for household electrical appliances and electronics, which have become our daily concern due to the extremely low quality of domestic refrigerators and tape recorders, televisions and players. In terms of the volume of such services, we also clearly occupy a leading position in the world.

It is clear that all of the above circumstances greatly distort Soviet statistics on cost indicators - national income and gross national product (GNP). In the statistics of countries with market economies, both developing and developed capitalist ones, there is no such distortion, since there are no phenomena that give rise to it - postscripts and products produced, but not sold on the market. The appearance of such products in a market economy is the beginning of a crisis of overproduction.

It is worth mentioning one more phenomenon that affects our well-being. We will talk about the so-called “shadow economy”. In the West, its role is extremely great. These are all goods and services hidden from tax authorities and produced either in officially registered enterprises or in underground factories. It is known, for example, that when in 1987 in Italy official statistics included goods and services of the shadow economy in the country's GNP, in per capita terms Italy caught up with Japan in this indicator, which in 1983 was 1.6 times behind. Sometimes in the West the scale of the Soviet shadow economy is considered equally significant. Thus, the American scientist V. G. Treml believes that in the USSR the products of this sector account for about 30% of the official GNP. To this we can only say one thing - if this were really so, then it would not be so bad. At least there would not be such a huge shortage of consumer goods and services. After all, in the West, the “shadow economy” produces mainly what is in high demand among the population. Yes, if we take the official GNP, from the State Statistics Committee! After all, our national income, according to the already mentioned statistical reference book, reaches almost two-thirds of the American one. If our “leftist” products also reached almost a third of the official GNP, then our GNP would generally be equal to the US GNP. Everyone would be dressed and shod in the latest fashion and served in the highest class, no worse than in America.

I will also note the huge gap in the quality of the vast majority of goods produced in the USSR and in the West. It is known, for example, that Soviet Zhiguli cars are sold in freely convertible currency several times cheaper than Japanese Toyotas and Italian Fiats, and even if someone buys a Volga in the West, it will be at a price close to the cost of scrap metal.

All of the above considerations made me doubt the official data of the State Statistics Committee and try to independently compare the main economic indicators of the USSR and the USA. Comparing these two countries is a long tradition in our economic science. After all, they are close in population (the population of the USSR in 1983 was only 1.16 times larger than the population of the USA), and their territories are vast, and their economies have an extremely diversified, diversified structure, and the climatic conditions are similar.

National income in GNP of the USSR and the USA can, in principle, be compared in two ways: either calculate American indicators according to Soviet norms and prices in rubles, or Soviet ones - according to American ones in dollars. The first method must be rejected, since in the American economy there are no postscripts or imaginary values; increasing the cost of products with the help of postscripts will not occur to anyone there (since this will only cause an increase in the amount of tax), and therefore it is simply impossible to adequately recalculate the US national income in rubles . The second method remains. Recalculation based on it automatically excludes all additions and imaginaries from Soviet indicators. What remains outside the calculations is only the “shadow economy” (in the United States, it is largely formed due to the opposite phenomenon of postscripting - hiding manufactured products from taxation). But as shown above, the American “shadow economy” significantly exceeds the Soviet “shadow economy” in terms of production volume. Therefore, my calculation may slightly overestimate the true ratio of indicators in favor of the USSR, but certainly not in favor of the USA.

A group of researchers from the Institute of the USA and Canada of the USSR Academy of Sciences compared the national incomes of the USA and the USSR. His results are presented in the newspaper "Arguments and Facts" (1988, No. 47, p. 2), and I used them. In the 1980s, the share of wages in US national income was stable, remaining at 60%. Wages make up about 90% of the personal income of the US population, so the share of personal income in national income is approximately 66%. In the USSR in 1985, the share of wages in national income was equal to 37% (our wages are almost equal to all personal income of citizens). The remaining part - 34% of national income for the USA and 63% for the USSR (what remains after subtracting the share of personal consumption), is accumulation (capital investment and production of means of production), which is necessary to ensure a given level of personal consumption, and military expenditures states. There is no need to prove that defense spending is only an additional burden for the national economy, since neither the army nor the military industry creates any material benefits.

In the United States, according to estimates by scientists at the Stockholm Institute for International Peace Research (SIPRI), American military spending in the 1980s averaged about 7% of GNP, or, given that in the US national income is approximately 89% of GNP, approximately 8% of national income. The remaining part of the American national income - approximately 26% - is the accumulation (one can call it conditionally pure, that is, cleared of military expenditures) that is necessary to maintain the current level of personal consumption in the United States - about 66% of national income. Assuming that in the USSR the ratio between personal consumption and conditionally net accumulation is approximately the same as in the USA, I approximately determined the share of conditionally net accumulation in the Soviet national income - about 15%. A considerable part of the national income falls on the military expenditures of the USSR. Their share in GNP will be somewhat lower - 42%, if we take for the USSR the ratio between national income and GNP that exists in the USA.

Now we finally have the opportunity to equate the Soviet and American indicators to each other. After all, the military parity between the USSR and the USA as a whole has been indisputable, at least since the 70s, so the military expenditures of the two countries can be considered approximately equivalent. The entire Soviet GNP is only about 16% of the American one (per capita about 14%). Taking this into account, you can see what place our country occupies in the world in terms of GNP (both in total volume and in per capita terms).

A group of American researchers compared most countries and territories of the world based on per capita GNP. Calculations were made in conventional dollars, taking into account the different purchasing powers of different national currencies in relation to 1983. The US per capita GNP was determined to be $14,120. This means that the per capita GNP of the USSR will be equal to approximately 1975 dollars.

This puts our country in 53rd place in a group of 135 countries and territories, behind South Korea ($2,010) and ahead of Brazil ($1,880). As is clear from data published in the UN Statistical Yearbook 1983/84, a similar situation is observed for other socio-economic indicators. Thus, in terms of average life expectancy, the USSR ranks from 47th to 56th among 156 countries, in terms of infant mortality - 90th out of 200, in terms of telephone penetration (the number of telephones per 1000 inhabitants) - 66th out of 147, and in terms of the number of passenger cars per capita - 74th place among 139 countries and territories (according to this last indicator, we are 13 times inferior to the United States!).

The number of passenger cars per capita reflects, strictly speaking, the standard of living of the population rather than general economic indicators. The standard of living in the USSR is relatively worse than it could be based on the level of per capita GNP, since our country is forced to bear an exorbitant burden of military expenditures. If we subtract from our GNP “excessive” military expenditures in comparison with the American and world norm in excess of the 7% level (in the vast majority of countries they are below the level of 7% of GNP), then the size of such “cleaned” GNP will be equal to $1,285 and will largely reflect the position of our country in the world hierarchy in terms of the standard of living of the population.

According to this indicator, the USSR falls into the same group of countries with Congo ($1,230), Turkey ($1,240), Tunisia ($1,290), Jamaica ($1,300) and the Dominican Republic ($1,370). So, both in terms of per capita GNP and in terms of living standards, the Soviet Union has to be classified as a developing country. Therefore, all the claims of some leaders of these countries regarding the allegedly insufficient assistance from the USSR to the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, compared with the assistance provided by developed capitalist countries, can hardly be considered valid.

My calculations are fully confirmed by the data provided by the famous Soviet economist G. Khanin. He tried to clear our economic indicators of the influence of inflation and determined that for 1928-1987. The national income of the USSR increased by 6.9 times (according to Goskomstat estimates - by 89.5 times), while during the same period the national income of the USA increased by 6.1 times, Great Britain - by 3.8 and France - by 4.6 times. Meanwhile, in 1893, the industrial production of the USA, Great Britain, France and Tsarist Russia was correlated as 5.0: 2.2: 1.5: 1.0. By 1913 There was no significant change in the ratio of the main economic indicators of Russia and the leading industrial powers of the world. In 1928, the USSR, in terms of basic economic indicators, including the total volume of national income, approximately reached the level of 1913. The ratio of national incomes of the USA, Great Britain, France and the USSR in 1928 was approximately equal to 7:2, 2:1,4:1 (I repeat that ideally the ratio of two or more countries in terms of GNP, national income and industrial production will be the same). This means that in 1987 this ratio was 6.2:1 between the USA and the USSR, 0.9:1 between Great Britain and the USSR, and 1:1 between France and the USSR.

According to my calculations, in 1983 the GNP of the USA and the USSR correlated as 6.2:1, and that of France, Great Britain and the USSR were almost equal to each other. As you can see, the results are almost identical.

The USSR ranks fifth in the world in terms of total GNP, behind the USA, Japan, Germany and (very slightly) France. In sixth place is Great Britain, which has almost caught up with us, followed by Italy and Canada. The situation is almost the same as that of Tsarist Russia in 1913, only Japan took the place of Great Britain ahead of us.

My estimate is almost 4 times lower than the official one given in the reference book “USSR in Figures in 1987,” which states that the national income of the USSR in 1987 was 64% of the national income of the United States. This means that postscripts and “imaginary” costs distort our statistical data by approximately the same factor and inflate them. Taking this into account, we must also evaluate the relative size of our annual budget deficit. As E. Gaidar and O. Latsis showed, our deficit is about 11% of GNP, and official GNP, not cleared of distortions. But since the official GNP is overestimated, in my opinion, by about 4 times, in reality the deficit reaches 44-45% of GNP. World economics considers the budget deficit to be 8-10% of GNP critical. Then galloping, uncontrollable inflation begins. The enormous size of the Soviet budget deficit clearly indicates that if market pricing is introduced in the economy on any significant scale, we will face a real inflationary catastrophe (price increases of 1000 percent or more per year) with unpredictable social, economic and political consequences. Cooperative prices today are sometimes ten times higher than state prices, showing what our potential inflation could be like.

A realistic view of our country’s true place in the global economic hierarchy dictates urgent measures. An immediate abandonment of centralized mandatory planning and a transition to predominantly market regulation is impossible due to the reason stated above. The only way out today is a sharp and unilateral (!) reduction in military spending, the fastest conversion (transfer to peaceful purposes) of the main part of the military industry and scientific research. Military spending should provide us with the ability to guarantee the destruction of the enemy in the event of a retaliatory nuclear strike. At the same time, transfer the majority of our enterprises to a joint-stock basis, which will make it possible to mobilize funds from the population, as well as investments from abroad, for development needs. Small private ownership should be allowed in the service sector and in small industrial enterprises, which will streamline the current individual labor and cooperative sectors.

In agriculture, under certain conditions, it is worth allowing private ownership of land, and the initial allotment should be for a purely symbolic fee. This will make the peasant a real owner of the land. A lease, even an indefinite one, will not give you such a feeling and responsibility for the land. Let us remember that we already had an indefinite lease, but it lasted only 11 years - from 1918 to 1929. Such an experience would make anyone wary. So today’s tenant will first of all strive to get the maximum possible income from the land in the shortest possible time, which will inevitably lead to depletion of the soil and a deterioration of the already difficult environmental situation in the country. In addition, tenants are now firmly tied to collective farms, state farms and local Soviet bodies, which in practice are able to dictate their terms to them.

One should not think that the transfer of land into private hands will eliminate collective farms. This process is slow, taking decades (as well as shareholderization); Viable collective farms will certainly remain. In addition, few peasants today would agree to take the land into private ownership. And the peasants who took the land will inevitably unite into various types of cooperatives (the experience of Western countries also speaks to this). The fact that the processes will be extended over time will guarantee us against rapid inflation, and the conversion of the military industry will smooth out both the budget and commodity deficit. Of course, changes in the economy will be positive and irreversible only if political life is completely and consistently democratized. Only then will we be able to reach the level of industrialized countries in a few decades (but not in 5-10 years, as some people think).

Notes:

USSR in numbers in 1987. M., 1988. P. 288.

Arguments and Facts. 1988. No. 47. P. 2.

Abroad. 1988. No. 29. P. 11.

Satellite. 1988. No. 10. P. 46.

SIPRI Yearbook 1987. Oxford, 1987, pp. 173-179.

World Bank World Development Report 1985. Washington, 1988. pp. 174-175, 231.

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