Abstract
At the Extraordinary Eighth Congress of Soviets in November 1936 Stalin announced in his report on the draft constitution that socialism had been achieved, and a socialist system had triumphed, in the Soviet Union. Thus, a new, socialist economy had also been established. It knew neither crises nor unemployment, neither poverty nor ruin, and provided the country’s citizens with every opportunity to lead a prosperous and cultured life.1
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Notes and References
J. Stalin, Problems of Leninism (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1947) pp. 543 and 548–9.
The figures for 1923–7 are to be found in L.S. Rogachevskaya, Likvidatsiya bezrabotitsy v SSSR 1917–1930 gg. (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo ‘Nauka’, 1973) p. 199, Table 12.
R.W. Davies, The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929–1930 (London: Macmillan, 1980) pp. 162–7.
N.I. Kondakova et al. (eds.), Opyt KPSS v reshenii zhenskogo voprosa, (Moskva: ‘Mysl’’ 1981,) p. 70.
Alexander Baykov, The Development of the Soviet Economic System (Cambridge University Press, 1950 reprinted) p. 327, Table 51..
Solomon M. Schwarz, Labour in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1951) pp. 14–15. See also R.W. Davies, op. cit. pp. 153–6.
Gregory Bienstock, Solomon M. Schwarz, and Aaron Yugow, Management in Russian Industry and Agriculture (London: Oxford University Press, 1946, second printing) p. 150.
Lazar Volin, A Century of Russian Agriculture: From Alexander II to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1970) pp. 259–60.
Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR, 1922–1982, p. 30, and G.S. Sarkisian, ‘Social Development and Rising Living Standards’, in P.N. Fedoseyev (ed.), The Fundamental Law of the USSR (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1980) p. 158.
On the behaviour of enterprises in the 1930s see Joseph S. Berliner, ‘The Informal Organization of the Soviet Firm’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. LXVI, 1952, pp. 342–65,
Joseph S. Berliner, Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1957).
O.I. Shkaratan, Problemy sotsial’noi struktury rabochego klassa SSSR (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo ‘Mysl’’, 1970) p. 282.
Robert Conquest (ed.) Industrial Workers in the USSR (London: The Bodley Head, 1967) pp. 105–6.
Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (London: Macmillan, 1968) pp. 335 and 532.
Steven Rosefielde, ‘Incriminating Evidence: Excess Deaths and Forced Labour Under Stalin: A Final Reply to Critics’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXIX, no.2 (April 1987), p. 303.
Stephen G. Wheatcroft, ‘On Assessing the Size of Forced Concentration Camp Labour in the Soviet Union, 1929–56’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXIII, no. 2 (1981), p. 286, 30.
A.A. Barsov, ‘NEP i vyravnivanie ekonomicheskikh otnoshenii mezhdu gorodom i derevnei’, in M.P. Kim et al. (eds.), Novaya ekonomicheskaya politika (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo ‘Nauka’, 1974) p. 102.
See also Janet G. Chapman, Real Wages in Soviet Russia Since 1928 (Santa Monica, California: The RAND Corporation, 1963,) p. 157, Table 25.
V.Z. Drobizhev et al., Sotsial’naya politika sovetskogo gosudarstva (Moskva: ‘Mysl’’, 1985) p. 99.
Mervyn Matthews, Poverty in the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) p. 9.
Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow (London: Hutchinson, 1986) p. 306.
V.M. Selunskaya, Sotsial’naya struktura sovetskogo obshchestva (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1987) p. 102.
Roger Munting, ‘Soviet Food Supply and Allied Aid in the War, 1941–45’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXVI, no.4 (October 1984), p. 582.
N. Voznesenskii, Voennaya ekonomika SSSR v period otechestvennoi voiny (OGIZ: Gosudarstvennoe irdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1948) p. 129.
Steven Rosefielde, op. cit. pp. 292 and 300. According to the same author, there were 16.5 million aggregative excess deaths sustained in the Soviet Union between 1 January 1929 and 1 January 1937, 7.3 million more than indicated by the official census of 1939. Steven Rosefielde, ‘Excess Collectivization Deaths 1929–1933: New Demographic Evidence,’ Slavic Review, vol. 43, no. 1 (1984), pp. 83–8.
See e.g. Steven Rosefielde, ‘An Assessment of the Sources and Uses of Gulag Forced Labour 1929–56’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXIII, no. 1 (1981), pp. 51–87,
S.G. Wheatcroft, ‘Towards a Thorough Analysis of Soviet Forced Labour Statistics’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXV, no. 2 (1983), pp. 223–37.
S. Swianiewicz, Forced Labour and Economic Development: An Enquiry into the Experience of Soviet Industrialization (London: Oxford University Press, 1965) pp. 50–3.
John Barber, ‘The Development of Soviet Employment and Labour Policy, 1930–41’, in David Lane (ed.), Labour and Employment in the USSR (Brighton: Wheatsheaf Books Ltd, 1986) pp. 56–7.
V.E. Poletaev (ed.), Rabochii klass SSSR (1951–1965 gg.), (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo ‘Nauka’, 1969) p. 115.
M.Ya. Sonin, Razvitie narodonaseleniya, (Moskva: Statistika, 1980,) p. 243. According to the author, industrial enterprises hired individually 71.2 per cent of new workers in 1950 and 79.4 per cent in 1955, while construction enterprises hired individually 40.7 per cent and 55.1 per cent, respectively.
See also N.S. Maslova, ‘Rost proizvoditel’nosti truda v narodnom khozyaistve SSSR’, in G.A. Prudenskii (ed.), Voprosy truda v SSSR (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1958) p. 234.
M.I. Kalinin, On Communist Education (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1949) p. 401.
N.G. Aleksandrov (ed.), Sovetskoe trudovoe pravo (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe izdatel’stvo yuridicheskoi literatury, 1949) pp. 39–40 and 254–5.
The Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Political Economy (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1957) pp. 545 and 561. The translation was made from the second (revised and enlarged) Russian edition of 1955. The first Russian edition was published in Moscow in 1954.
In more detail see Carl B. Turner, An analysis of Soviet views on John Maynard Keynes (Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press 1969.) It was only after the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956 that in certain cases Soviet economists were prepared to admit that some planning was possible in the capitalist system.
Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, The Soviet Block: Unity and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1971, third printing) p. 148.
Allan G. Gruchy, Comparative Economic Systems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1966) pp. 771–5, and Janet G. Chapman, op. cit. p. 153, Table 24.
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© 1989 J. L. Porket
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Porket, J.L. (1989). The Stalin Era. In: Work, Employment and Unemployment in the Soviet Union. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10930-2_4
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