Introduction

Purpose of writing test work characterize the international situation after the Second World War. Find out what the relationship of forces was between the countries of the “capitalist” and “socialist” blocs in the international arena. Identify the states that adopted the Soviet model of economic and political development. The meaning of the term “cold war” should be understood. Understand who initiated it. How did it affect the Korean War of 1950-1953? Reveal the essence of the “Marshal Plan” and the attitude of the Soviet leadership towards it. Reveal the content of plans for the restoration of the national economy after the Great Patriotic War. Formulate the main tasks economic policy after the war. Understand what successes have been achieved in industrial development. Find out how the monetary reform of 1947 affected the standard of living of Soviet people. Justify the reasons for the tightening of the political regime of I.V. Stalin in the post-war period. Pay attention to the “Leningrad case” and the “doctors’ case.” It is necessary to understand the meaning of the term “cosmopolitanism”. Determine how repressive policies affected the spheres of science and culture.

International situation. Cold War Politics

As a result of the Great Patriotic War and the Second World War, the situation in the world radically changed. The countries of Germany and Japan were defeated and temporarily lost their role as great powers, and the positions of England and France were significantly weakened. At the same time, the share of the United States has increased immeasurably. During the war years, their industrial production not only did not decrease, but also increased by 47%. The United States controlled about 80% of the capitalist world's gold reserves and accounted for 46% of global industrial production.

The war marked the beginning of the collapse of the colonial system. Within a few years, such largest countries like India, Indonesia, Burma, Pakistan, Ceylon, Egypt. In total, 25 states gained independence in the post-war decade.

The most important feature post-war period there were people's democratic revolutions in countries of Eastern Europe and a number of Asian countries. During the fight against fascism in these countries, a united front of democratic forces emerged, in which the communist parties played the leading role. After the overthrow of the fascist and collaborationist governments, governments were created that included representatives of all anti-fascist parties and movements. They carried out a number of democratic reforms. IN economic field A multi-structure economy has emerged - the coexistence of the state, state capitalist, cooperative and private sectors. In the political sphere, a multi-party parliamentary form of political power was created, in the presence of opposition parties, with a separation of powers. This was an attempt to transition to socialist transformations in our own way.

However, starting in 1947, the Stalinist model of the political system, borrowed from the USSR, was imposed on these countries. The Cominform Bureau, created in 1947 to replace the Comintern, played an extremely negative role in this. A one-party system was established, usually through the merger of communist and social democratic parties. Opposition political parties were banned, their leaders were repressed. Transformations similar to the Soviet ones began - mass nationalization of enterprises, forced collectivization.

There has been a shift to the left in the political spectrum of European countries. Fascist and right-wing parties left the scene. The influence of the communists grew sharply. In 1945 – 1947 they were part of the governments of France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Finland. There has been a tendency towards rapprochement between communists and social democrats. The system of modern democracy began to take shape.

The role has grown immeasurably Soviet Union- a country that made a decisive contribution to the defeat of fascism. Not a single international problem was solved without his participation.

After the war, the foundations were laid for the split of the world into two opposing camps, which determined the entire world practice. During the World War, an alliance of great powers was formed - the USSR, the USA, Great Britain and France. The presence of a common enemy made it possible to overcome differences and find compromises. The decisions of the Tehran (1943), Crimean (1945), Potsdam (1945) conferences were of a general democratic nature and could become the basis for a post-war peace settlement. The formation of the UN (1945) was also of great importance, the charter of which reflected the principles of peaceful existence, sovereignty and equality of all countries of the world. However, this unique chance to create lasting peace for many generations remained unused. The Second World War was replaced by the Cold War.

The term “Cold War” itself was coined by US Secretary of State D. F. Dulles. Its essence is a political, economic, ideological confrontation between two systems, balancing on the brink of war.

It makes no sense to argue about who started the Cold War; arguments are given by both sides. It is illogical and unwise to completely whitewash one side and place all the blame on the other. Already during the war with Germany, some circles in the United States and England seriously considered plans to start a war with Russia through Germany. The fact of negotiations that Germany conducted at the end of the war with the Western powers on a separate peace is widely known. Russia's impending entry into the war with Japan, “which would make it possible to save the lives of millions of American boys,” tipped the scales and prevented these plans from being realized.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) was not so much a military operation as a political act aimed at putting pressure on the USSR.

The turn from cooperation with the Soviet Union to confrontation with it began after the death of President F. Roosevelt. The beginning of the Cold War is usually subsidized by W. Churchill’s speech in the American city of Fulton in March 1946, in which he called on the people of the United States to jointly fight against Soviet Russia and its agents - the communist parties.

The economic reasons for the change in US policy were that the US became immeasurably rich during the war. With the end of the war they were threatened with a crisis of overproduction. At the same time, the economies of European countries were destroyed, their markets were open to American goods, but there was nothing to pay for these goods. The United States was afraid to invest capital in the economies of these countries, since there was a strong influence of the leftists there, and the situation for investment was unstable. In the USA, a plan was developed, called the Marshall Plan. European countries assistance was offered to rebuild the devastated economy. Loans were given to purchase American goods. The proceeds were not exported, but were invested in the construction of enterprises in these countries. The Marshall Plan was adopted by 16 Western European states. The political condition for providing assistance was the removal of communists from governments. In 1947, the communists were removed from the governments of Western European countries. Help was also offered to Eastern European countries. Poland and Czechoslovakia began negotiations, but under pressure from the USSR they refused assistance. At the same time, the United States broke the Soviet-American loan agreement and adopted a law banning exports to the USSR.

The ideological basis for the Cold War was the Truman Doctrine, put forward by the US President in 1947. According to this doctrine, the conflict between Western democracy and communism is irreconcilable. The tasks of the USA are the fight against communism throughout the world, “containing communism”, “throwing back communism into the borders of the USSR.” American responsibility for the events taking place throughout the world was proclaimed; all these events were viewed through the prism of the confrontation between communism and Western democracy, the USSR and the USA.

Monopoly possession of the atomic bomb allowed the United States, as they believed, to dictate its will to the world. In 1945, plans began to develop plans for an atomic strike on the USSR. Plans for “Pincher” (1946), “Broiler” (1947), and “Dropshot” (1949) were consistently developed. American historians, without denying such plans, say that they were talking only about operational military plans that are drawn up in any country in case of war. But after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the presence of such plans could not but cause a sharp response from the Soviet Union.

In 1946, a strategic military command was created in the United States, which controlled aircraft carrying atomic weapons. In 1948, bombers with atomic weapons were stationed in Great Britain and West Germany. The Soviet Union was surrounded by a network of American military bases. In 1949 there were more than 300 of them.

The United States pursued a policy of creating military-political blocs against the USSR. In 1949, the North Atlantic bloc (NATO) was created. A course was taken to restore Germany's military potential. In 1949, in violation of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, the Federal Republic of Germany was created from three zones of occupation - British, American and French, which joined NATO in the same year.

The Soviet Union also pursued a policy of confrontation. The actions of the USSR in the international arena were by no means always thoughtful, and its policy cannot be called completely peace-loving. Thus, the beginning of the Cold War was to some extent provoked by the USSR’s policy towards Poland. The Soviet Union did not agree to the creation of general elections in Poland and refused to return the eastern Polish lands received under a pact with Germany. I. Stalin in all foreign policy also proceeded from the concept of splitting the world into two camps - the camp of imperialism led by the USA and the camp of socialism led by the USSR - and viewed all events in the world through the prism of the confrontation between these two camps.

So, at a secret meeting in the Kremlin in January 1951. J.V. Stalin stated that it was possible to “establish socialism throughout Europe” within the “next four years” and that external and domestic politics communist-led "people's democracies" countries. “We had our own hopes,” N.S. Khrushchev later recalled, “just as Russia emerged from the First World War, carried out a revolution and established Soviet power, Europe, too, having survived the catastrophe of the Second World War, may become Soviet. Everyone would then follow the path from capitalism to socialism. Stalin was convinced that post-war Germany would organize a revolution and create a proletarian state... We all believed in this. We had the same hopes for France and Italy."

Introduction

After the victory in the Great Patriotic War and the surrender of Japan on September 3, 1945, a completely new period began in the life of the Soviet state. In 1945, the victory gave rise to people's hopes for a better life, a weakening of the pressure of the totalitarian state on the individual, and the elimination of its most odious costs. The potential for changes in the political regime, economy, and culture opened up. The Soviet Union was a victorious but completely destroyed country. In order to win the greatest war in history, it was necessary to suffer losses that exceeded the losses of the enemy and, in general, the losses of any nation in any war. Only through the efforts of millions could the destroyed cities and factories be raised from the ruins and the infrastructure restored. This period cannot but worry us - citizens of today's Russia, because... Our parents' generation are children of those difficult years.

The state of the USSR economy after the end of the war

Victory over fascism came at a high cost to the USSR. A military hurricane raged for several years over the main regions of the most developed part of the Soviet Union. Most industrial centers in the European part of the country were hit.

All the main breadbaskets - Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and a significant part of the Volga region - were caught in the flames of war. So much was destroyed that restoration could take many years, even decades. The war resulted in huge human and material losses for the USSR. It claimed almost 27 million human lives. 1,710 cities and towns were destroyed, 70 thousand villages were destroyed, 31,850 factories and factories, 1,135 mines, 65 thousand km of railways were blown up and put out of action. Cultivated areas decreased by 36.8 million hectares. The country has lost approximately one third of its national wealth. In the context of the transition from war to peace, questions arose about the ways further development the country's economy, its structure and management system. It was not only about the conversion of military production, but also about the advisability of maintaining the existing economic model. In many ways, it was formed under the emergency conditions of the thirties. The war further strengthened this “extraordinary” nature of the economy and left its mark on its structure and system of organization. The years of war revealed the strong features of the existing economic model, and in particular, very high mobilization capabilities, the ability to quickly establish mass production of high-quality weapons and provide the army and military-industrial complex with the necessary resources by overstraining other sectors of the economy. But the war also strongly emphasized the weaknesses of the Soviet economy: the high proportion of manual labor, low productivity and quality military products. What was tolerable in peacetime, pre-war times, now required a radical solution. The discussion was about whether it was necessary to return to the pre-war model of the economy with its hypertrophied military industries, strict centralization, unlimited planning in determining the activities of each enterprise, the complete absence of any elements of market exchange, and strict control over the work of the administration. The post-war period required a restructuring of the type of work government agencies to solve two contradictory problems: the conversion of the huge military-industrial complex that emerged during the war, with the aim of quickly modernizing the economy; the creation of two fundamentally new weapons systems that guarantee the security of the country - nuclear weapons and invulnerable means of their delivery (ballistic missiles). The work of a large number of departments began to be united into intersectoral targeted programs. It was a qualitatively new type government controlled, although it was not so much the structure of the organs that changed, but the functions. These changes are less noticeable than structural ones, but the state is a system, and the process in it is no less important than the structure.

The conversion of the military industry was carried out quickly, increasing the technical level of civilian industries (and thereby allowing the transition to the creation of new military industries). The People's Commissariat of Ammunition was rebuilt into the People's Commissariat of Agricultural Engineering. People's Commissariat of Mortar Weapons to People's Commissariat of Mechanical Engineering and Instrument Making, People's Commissariat of Tank Industry to People's Commissariat of Transport Engineering, etc. (in 1946 the people's commissariats began to be called ministries).

As a result of the mass evacuation of industry to the east and the destruction during the occupation and hostilities in the European part, 32 thousand industrial enterprises have changed greatly economical geography countries. Immediately after the war, a corresponding reorganization of the management system began - along with the sectoral principle, they began to introduce the territorial principle into it. The point was to bring management bodies closer to enterprises, for the sake of which the ministries were disaggregated: during the war there were 25, and in 1947 there were 34. For example, coal mining was now managed by the People's Commissariat of the Coal Industry of the western regions and the People's Commissariat of the Coal Industry of the eastern regions. The People's Commissariat of the Oil Industry was similarly divided. On this wave, among economic managers and economists, aspirations began to appear to reorganize the economic management system, to soften those aspects of it that restrained the initiative and independence of enterprises, and in particular, to weaken the shackles of over-centralization. Analyzing the existing economic system, some scientists and industrialists proposed to carry out transformations in the spirit of the NEP: with the prevailing dominance public sector officially admit private sector, covering primarily the service sector and small-scale production. Mixed economy, naturally, used market relations. An explanation for such sentiments can be sought in the situation that developed during the war. The country's economy during the war, the life of the population, and the organization of work of local authorities acquired unique features. With the transfer of the work of the main industries to meet the needs of the front, the output of peaceful products sharply decreased; ensuring the life of the population, supplying them with the most necessary goods and services, local authorities began to deal primarily with organizing small-scale production, attracting necessary goods handicraftsmen and artisans. As a result, the handicraft industry developed and private trade and not only food products, but industrial goods. Centralized supplies covered only a small part of the population.

The war taught many leaders at all levels to have a certain independence and initiative. After the war, local authorities made attempts to expand the production of goods for the population not only in small handicraft workshops, but also in large factories subordinated directly to central ministries. Council of Ministers Russian Federation together with the leadership of the Leningrad region, in 1947 they organized a fair in the city, at which enterprises not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other republics, sold materials they did not need. The fair opened up the possibility of establishing independent economic ties between industrial enterprises, bypassing the center. To a certain extent, it contributed to the expansion of the scope of market relations (several years later, the organizers of this fair paid with their lives for their initiative). Hopes for changes in economic management turned out to be unrealistic.

From the late 40s, a course was taken to strengthen the previous administrative-command methods of leadership and to further develop the existing economic model. To understand the reasons for this decision, one must keep in mind the dual purpose of Russian industry. Its high mobilization capabilities during the war years were largely explained by the fact that the economy from the very beginning was oriented towards work in war conditions. All factories that were created in the pre-war years had both a civilian and military profile. Thus, the question of the economic model had to necessarily touch on this key aspect. It was necessary to decide whether the economy would be truly civil or, as before, remain a two-faced Janus: peaceful in words and military in essence.

Stalin's position became decisive - all attempts at change in this area ran into his imperial ambitions. As a result, the Soviet economy returned to the militaristic model with all its inherent shortcomings. Also during this period, the question arose: what was the Soviet economic system (it was called socialism, but this is a purely conventional concept that does not answer the question). Before the end of the war, life posed such clear and urgent tasks that there was no great need for theory. Now it was necessary to understand the meaning of the plan, goods, money and market in the economy of the USSR.

Feeling that the question was complicated and there was no ready answer in Marxism, Stalin delayed the publication of a textbook on the political economy of socialism as long as he could. In 1952 he published important work « Economic problems socialism in the USSR,” where he carefully, without entering into polemics with Marxism, gave an understanding of the Soviet economy as a non-market economy, a civilization different from the West (“capitalism”). No other interpretation was possible.

The country began to restore the economy in the year of the war, when in 1943. a special party and government resolution was adopted “On urgent measures to restore the economy in areas liberated from German occupation.” With the colossal efforts of the Soviet people, by the end of the war in these areas it was possible to restore industrial production to a third of the 1940 level. The liberated areas in 1944 provided over half of the national grain procurements, a quarter of livestock and poultry, and about a third of dairy products. However, the country faced the central task of reconstruction only after the end of the war. At the end of May 1945, the State Defense Committee decided to transfer part of the defense enterprises to the production of goods for the population. Somewhat later, a law was passed on the demobilization of thirteen ages of army personnel. These decisions marked the beginning of the Soviet Union's transition to peaceful construction. In September 1945, the State Defense Committee was abolished. All functions of governing the country were concentrated in the hands of the Council of People's Commissars (in March 1946, transformed into the Council of Ministers of the USSR). Measures were taken aimed at resuming normal work in enterprises and institutions. Mandatory overtime work was abolished, the 8-hour working day and annual paid leave were restored. The budget for the third and fourth quarters of 1945 and for 1946 was reviewed. Appropriations for military needs were reduced and expenditures for the development of civilian sectors of the economy increased. The restructuring of the national economy and social life in relation to peacetime conditions was completed mainly in 1946. In March 1946, the Supreme Council of the USSR approved a plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1946-1950. The main objective of the five-year plan was to restore the areas of the country that were subject to occupation, achieve the pre-war level of industrial development and Agriculture, and then surpass them. The plan provided for the priority development of heavy and defense industries. Significant financial resources, material and labor resources. It was planned to develop new coal regions and expand the metallurgical base in the east of the country. One of the conditions for fulfilling planned targets was the maximum use scientific and technological progress. 1946 was the most difficult year in the post-war development of industry.

To switch enterprises to the production of civilian products, production technology was changed, new equipment was created, and personnel retraining was carried out. In accordance with the five-year plan, we deployed restoration work in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova. The coal industry of Donbass was revived. Zaporizhstal was restored, and the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Plant came into operation. At the same time, new construction and reconstruction were carried out operating factories and factories. Over the five-year period, over 6.2 thousand industrial enterprises were restored and rebuilt. 1 Particular attention was paid to the development of metallurgy, mechanical engineering, fuel and energy and military-industrial complexes. The foundations of nuclear energy and the radio-electronic industry were laid. New industry giants emerged in the Urals, Siberia, the republics of Transcaucasia and Central Asia (Ust-Kamenogorsk Lead-Zinc Plant, Kutaisi Automobile Plant). The country's first long-distance gas pipeline, Saratov - Moscow, went into operation. The Rybinsk and Sukhumi hydroelectric power stations began to operate.

Enterprises were equipped with new technology. The mechanization of labor-intensive processes in the iron and steel and coal industries has increased. Electrification of production continued. By the end of the five-year plan, the level of electric power in industry was one and a half times higher than the level in 1940. A large volume of industrial work was carried out in the republics and regions included in the USSR on the eve of the Second World War. In the western regions of Ukraine and in the Baltic republics, new industrial sectors were created, in particular, gas and automobile, metalworking and electrical engineering. The peat industry and electric power industry have developed in Western Belarus. Work to restore the industry was largely completed in 1948. But at some metallurgy enterprises it continued in the early 50s. The massive industrial heroism of the Soviet people, expressed in numerous labor initiatives (the introduction of high-speed work methods, the movement for saving metal and high quality products, the movement of multi-machine operators, etc.), contributed to the successful implementation of planned targets. By the end of the Five-Year Plan, the level of industrial production was 73% higher than the pre-war level. However, the priority development of heavy industry and the redistribution in its favor of funds from the light and food industries led to further deformation of the industrial structure towards an increase in the production of group “A” products. The restoration of industry and transport, new industrial construction led to an increase in the number of the working class. After the war, the country was in ruins, and the question of choosing the path of economic development became acute. An alternative could be market reforms, but the existing political system was not ready for this step. The directive economy still retained the mobilization character that was inherent in it during the first five-year plans and during the war. Millions of people were organized in an organized manner to restore the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Plant, metallurgical plants of Krivoy Rog, Donbass mines, as well as to build new factories, hydroelectric power stations, etc. The development of the USSR economy rested on its excessive centralization. All economic issues, large and small, were resolved only in the center, and local economic bodies were strictly limited in resolving any matters. The main material and monetary resources necessary to fulfill planned targets were distributed through a large number of bureaucratic authorities. Departmental disunity, mismanagement and confusion led to constant downtime in production, storming, huge material costs, and absurd transportation from one end to another of the vast country. The Soviet Union received reparations from Germany in the amount of $4.3 billion. As reparations, industrial equipment, including even entire factory complexes, was exported from Germany and other defeated countries to the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet economy was never able to properly manage this wealth due to general mismanagement, and valuable equipment, machines, etc. were gradually turned into scrap metal. 1.5 million German and 0.5 million Japanese prisoners of war worked in the USSR. In addition, the GULAI system during this period contained approximately 8-9 million prisoners, whose work was practically unpaid. The division of the world into two hostile camps had negative consequences for the country's economy. From 1945 to 1950, foreign trade turnover with Western countries decreased by 35%, which had a noticeable impact on the Soviet economy, which was deprived of new equipment and advanced technologies. That's why in the mid-1950s. The Soviet Union faced the need for profound socio-economic and political changes. Since the path of progressive changes of a political nature was blocked, narrowed to possible (and even then not very serious) amendments to liberalization, the most constructive ideas that appeared in the first post-war years concerned not politics, but the economic sphere. The Central Committee of the CPSU (b) considered various proposals from economists in this regard. Among them is the manuscript “Post-war Domestic Economy”, owned by S.D. Alexandru. The essence of his proposals boiled down to the following: - transformation state enterprises into joint-stock or share partnerships, in which the workers and employees themselves are the shareholders, and are governed by an authorized elected board of shareholders; - decentralization of the supply of raw materials to enterprises by creating district and regional industrial supplies instead of supplies under the people's commissariats and central administrations; - abolition of the state system procurement of agricultural products, granting collective and state farms the right to free sale on the market; - reform monetary system taking into account gold parity; - liquidation of state trade and transfer of its functions to trading cooperatives and share partnerships. These ideas can be considered as the foundations of a new economic model, built on the principles of the market and partial denationalization of the economy, very bold and progressive for that time. True, the ideas of S.D. Alexander had to share the fate of other radical projects; they were classified as “harmful” and written off in the “archive”. The Center, despite certain hesitations, remained staunchly committed to its previous course on fundamental issues concerning the fundamentals of constructing economic and political models of development. Therefore, the center was receptive only to those ideas that did not affect the fundamentals load-bearing structure, i.e. did not encroach on the exclusive role of the state in matters of governance, financial security, control and did not contradict the main tenets of ideology. The first attempt to reform the command-administrative system is closely connected with the end in March 1953 of the Stalinist period in the history of the USSR, when the government of the country was concentrated in the hands of three politicians: Chairman of the Council of Ministers G.M. Malenkov, Minister of Internal Affairs L.P. Beria and Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N.S. Khrushchev. A struggle broke out between them for sole power, during which each of them counted on the support of the party and state nomenklatura. This new layer of Soviet society (secretaries of the Central Committee of republican communist parties, regional committees, regional committees, etc.) was ready to support one of these leaders of the country, provided that he was given greater independence in resolving local issues and, most importantly, guarantees of personal safety, the end of political “purges” and repression.

Subject to these conditions, the nomenklatura was ready to agree to reforms within certain limits, beyond which it could not and did not want to go. During the reforms, it was necessary to reorganize or abolish the Gulag system, stimulate the development of the agricultural sector of the economy, carry out reforms in the social sphere, and reduce the tension of constant “mobilization” in solving economic problems and in the search for internal and external enemies. As a result of a complex struggle on the political “Olympus,” N.S., supported by the nomenklatura, came to power. Khrushchev, who quickly pushed aside his rivals. In 1953, L. Beria was arrested and executed on the absurd charges of “collaboration with imperialist intelligence services” and “conspiracy to restore the rule of the bourgeoisie.” In January 1955, G. Malenkov resigned. In 1957, the “anti-party group” consisting of G. Malenkov, L. Kaganovich, V. Molotov and others was expelled from the top leadership. Khrushchev, being the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, in 1958 also became Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Political changes in the USSR needed to be consolidated by changes in the economy. Speaking in August 1953 at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, G.M. Malenkov clearly formulated the main directions of economic policy: a sharp rise in the production of consumer goods, large investments in light industry. Such a radical turn, it would seem, should have forever changed the fundamental guidelines for the development of the Soviet economy, established in previous decades. But this, as the history of the country’s development has shown, did not happen. After the war, various administrative reforms, but they did not make fundamental changes to the essence of the planning and administrative system.

In the mid-1950s, attempts were made to abandon the use of mobilization measures in solving economic problems. After a few years, it became clear that this task was insurmountable for the Soviet economy, since economic incentives for development were incompatible with the command system. It was still necessary to organize masses of people to carry out various projects. Examples include calls for young people to participate in the development of virgin lands, in the construction of grandiose “communist construction projects” in Siberia and the Far East. An example of a not very well-thought-out reform is the attempt to restructure management along territorial lines (1957). During this reform, many sectoral union ministries were abolished, and territorial councils of the national economy (economic councils) appeared in their place. The only ministries in charge of military production, the Ministry of Defense, Foreign and Internal Affairs and some others were not affected by this restructuring. Thus, an attempt was made to decentralize control. In total, 105 economic administrative regions were created in the country, including 70 in the RSFSR, 11 in Ukraine, 9 in Kazakhstan, 4 in Uzbekistan, and in the remaining republics - one economic council. The functions of the USSR State Planning Committee remained only general planning and coordination of territorial and sectoral plans, distribution of the most important funds among the union republics. The first results of the management reform were quite successful. So, already in 1958, i.e. a year after it began, the increase in national income was 12.4% (compared to 7% in 1957). The scale of production specialization and intersectoral cooperation has increased, and the process of creating and introducing new technology into production has accelerated. But, according to experts, the resulting effect is not only a consequence of perestroika itself. The point is also that for some period the enterprises turned out to be “ownerless” (when the ministries actually no longer functioned and economic councils had not yet been formed), and it was during this period that they began to work noticeably more productively, without feeling any leadership “from above.” But as soon as the new management system took shape, the previous negative phenomena in the economy began to intensify. Moreover, new aspects have appeared: localism, stricter administration, an ever-growing “in-house” local bureaucracy. And although outwardly the new, “sovnarkhoz” system of management was significantly different from the previous, “ministerial” one, its essence remained the same. The previous principle of distribution of raw materials and products, the same dictate of the supplier in relation to the consumer, was preserved. Economic levers simply could not become decisive under the conditions of the absolute dominance of the command-administrative system.

All reorganizations ultimately did not lead to noticeable success. Moreover, if in 1951-1955. industrial production increased by 85%, agricultural production - by 20.5%, and in 1956-1960 by 64.3 and 30%, respectively (and the growth of agricultural production was mainly due to the development of new lands), then in 1961-1965 these figures began to decline and amounted to 51 and 11%.

So, the centrifugal forces have noticeably weakened economic potential countries, many economic councils turned out to be incapable of solving major production problems. Already in 1959, the consolidation of economic councils began: weaker ones began to join more powerful ones (by analogy with the consolidation of collective farms). The centripetal tendency turned out to be stronger. Soon enough, the previous hierarchical structure in the country's economy was restored. Scientists economists and practitioners tried to develop new approaches to the country's economic development, especially in the field of long-term planning and forecasting, and the determination of strategic macroeconomic goals. But these developments were not designed for quick results, so they were not given enough attention. The country's leadership needed real results at the present time, and therefore all efforts were directed towards endless adjustments to current plans. For example, a detailed plan for the fifth five-year plan (1951-1955) was never drawn up, and the Directives of the Nineteenth Party Congress became the starting document that guided the work of the entire economy for five years. These were just the outlines of a five-year plan, but there was no specific plan. The same situation arose with the sixth five-year plan (1956-1960). Traditionally, so-called grassroots planning has been weak, i.e. drawing up plans at the enterprise level. Basic plan targets were often adjusted, so the plan turned into a purely nominal document, directly related only to the accrual process wages and bonus payments, which depended on the percentage of fulfillment and overfulfillment of the plan. Since, as noted above, the plans were constantly being adjusted, the plans that were carried out (or rather not carried out) were completely different from those that were adopted at the beginning of the planning period (year, five-year plan). The State Planning Committee “bargained” with the ministries, and the ministries with enterprises about what plan they could implement with the available resources. But the supply of resources for such a plan was still disrupted, and “bidding” began again on the figures of the plan, on the amount of supplies, etc. All this confirms the conclusion that the Soviet economy did not depend to a greater extent on literate people. economic developments, but from political decisions that are constantly changing in directly opposite directions and most often lead to a dead end. Fruitless attempts were made in the country to improve the structure of the state apparatus, to vest ministers, heads of central administrations, and directors of enterprises with new rights or, conversely, to limit their powers, to divide existing planning bodies and create new ones, etc. There were many such “reforms” in the 1950s and 1960s, but none of them brought real improvements to the functioning of the command system. Basically, when determining the priorities of the post-war economic development, when developing the fourth five-year plan - the recovery plan - the country's leadership actually returned to the pre-war model of economic development and pre-war methods of conducting economic policy. This means that the development of industry, primarily heavy industry, had to be carried out not only to the detriment of the interests of the agricultural economy and the sphere of consumption (i.e. as a result of the corresponding distribution budget funds), but also largely at their expense, because the pre-war policy of “pumping” funds from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector continued (hence, for example, the unprecedented increase in taxes on the peasantry in the post-war period)

1. The state of the USSR economy after the end of the war.

The victory over fascism came at a high cost to the USSR. A military hurricane raged for several years over the main regions of the most developed part of the Soviet Union. Most industrial centers in the European part of the country were hit. All the main breadbaskets - Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and a significant part of the Volga region - were caught in the flames of war. So much was destroyed that restoration could take many years, even decades.

The war resulted in huge human and material losses for the USSR. It claimed almost 27 million human lives. 1,710 cities and towns were destroyed, 70 thousand villages were destroyed, 31,850 factories and factories, 1,135 mines, 65 thousand km of railways were blown up and disabled. Cultivated areas decreased by 36.8 million hectares. The country has lost approximately one third of its national wealth.

In the context of the transition from war to peace, questions arose about the ways of further development of the country's economy, about its structure and management system. It was not only about the conversion of military production, but also about the advisability of maintaining the existing economic model. In many ways, it was formed under the emergency conditions of the thirties. The war further strengthened this “extraordinary” nature of the economy and left its mark on its structure and system of organization. The years of war revealed the strong features of the existing economic model, and in particular, very high mobilization capabilities, the ability to quickly establish mass production of high-quality weapons and provide the army and military-industrial complex with the necessary resources by overstraining other sectors of the economy. But the war also strongly emphasized the weaknesses of the Soviet economy: the high proportion of manual labor, low productivity and the quality of non-military products. What was tolerable in peacetime, pre-war times, now required a radical solution.

The post-war period required a restructuring of the type of work of government bodies to solve two contradictory problems: the conversion of the huge military-industrial complex that emerged during the war, with the goal of quickly modernizing the economy; the creation of two fundamentally new weapons systems that guarantee the security of the country - nuclear weapons and invulnerable means of their delivery (ballistic missiles). The work of a large number of departments began to be combined into intersectoral targeted programs. This was a qualitatively new type of public administration, although it was not so much the structure of the bodies that changed, but rather the functions. These changes are less noticeable than structural ones, but the state is a system, and the process in it is no less important than the structure.

As a result of the mass evacuation of industry to the east and the destruction of 32 thousand industrial enterprises in the European part during the occupation and hostilities, the economic geography of the country changed greatly. Immediately after the war, a corresponding reorganization of the management system began - along with the sectoral principle, they began to introduce the territorial principle into it. The point was to bring management bodies closer to enterprises, for the sake of which the ministries were disaggregated: during the war there were 25, and in 1947 there were 34. For example, coal mining was now managed by the People's Commissariat of the Coal Industry of the western regions and the People's Commissariat of the Coal Industry of the eastern regions. The People's Commissariat of the Oil Industry was similarly divided.

On this wave, among economic managers and economists, aspirations began to appear to reorganize the economic management system, to soften those aspects of it that restrained the initiative and independence of enterprises, and in particular, to weaken the shackles of over-centralization.

An explanation for such sentiments can be sought in the situation that developed during the war. The country's economy during the war, the life of the population, and the organization of work of local authorities acquired unique features. With the transfer of the work of the main industries to meet the needs of the front, the output of peaceful products sharply decreased; ensuring the life of the population and supplying them with the most necessary goods and services began to be carried out primarily by local authorities, organizing small-scale production, attracting handicraftsmen and artisans to the production of necessary goods. As a result, handicraft industry developed, private trade revived, not only in food, but in industrial goods. Centralized supplies covered only a small part of the population.

The war taught many leaders at all levels to have a certain independence and initiative. After the war, local authorities made attempts to expand the production of goods for the population not only in small handicraft workshops, but also in large factories subordinated directly to central ministries. The Council of Ministers of the Russian Federation, together with the leadership of the Leningrad region, organized a fair in the city in 1947, at which enterprises not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other republics sold materials they did not need. The fair opened up the possibility of establishing independent economic ties between industrial enterprises bypassing the center. To a certain extent, it contributed to the expansion of the scope of market relations (several years later, the organizers of this fair paid with their lives for their initiative).

Hopes for changes in economic management turned out to be unrealistic. From the late 40s, a course was taken to strengthen the previous administrative-command methods of leadership and to further develop the existing economic model.

Also during this period, the question arose: what was the Soviet economic system (it was called socialism, but this is a purely conventional concept that does not answer the question). Before the end of the war, life posed such clear and urgent tasks that there was no great need for theory. Now it was necessary to understand the meaning of the plan, goods, money and market in the economy of the USSR.

However, the country faced the central task of reconstruction only after the end of the war.

At the end of May 1945, the State Defense Committee decided to transfer part of the defense enterprises to the production of goods for the population. Somewhat later, a law was passed on the demobilization of thirteen ages of army personnel. These decisions marked the beginning of the Soviet Union's transition to peaceful construction. In September 1945, the State Defense Committee was abolished. All functions of governing the country were concentrated in the hands of the Council of People's Commissars (in March 1946, transformed into the Council of Ministers of the USSR).

Measures were taken aimed at resuming normal work in enterprises and institutions. Mandatory overtime work was abolished, the 8-hour working day and annual paid leave were restored. The budget for the third and fourth quarters of 1945 and for 1946 was reviewed. Appropriations for military needs were reduced and expenditures for the development of civilian sectors of the economy increased. The restructuring of the national economy and social life in relation to peacetime conditions was completed mainly in 1946. In March 1946, the Supreme Council of the USSR approved a plan for the restoration and development of the national economy for 1946-1950. The main objective of the Five Year Plan was to restore the areas of the country that were subject to occupation, achieve pre-war levels of industrial and agricultural development, and then surpass them. The plan provided for the priority development of heavy and defense industries. Significant financial resources, material and labor resources were allocated here. It was planned to develop new coal regions and expand the metallurgical base in the east of the country. One of the conditions for fulfilling planned targets was the maximum use of scientific and technological progress.

1946 was the most difficult year in the post-war development of industry. To switch enterprises to the production of civilian products, production technology was changed, new equipment was created, and personnel retraining was carried out. In accordance with the five-year plan, restoration work began in Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. The coal industry of Donbass was revived. Zaporizhstal was restored, and the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Plant came into operation. At the same time, construction of new and reconstruction of existing plants and factories was carried out. Over the five-year period, over 6.2 thousand industrial enterprises were restored and rebuilt. 1 Particular attention was paid to the development of metallurgy, mechanical engineering, fuel and energy and military-industrial complexes. The foundations of nuclear energy and the radio-electronic industry were laid. New industry giants emerged in the Urals, Siberia, the republics of Transcaucasia and Central Asia (Ust-Kamenogorsk Lead-Zinc Plant, Kutaisi Automobile Plant). The country's first long-distance gas pipeline, Saratov - Moscow, went into operation. The Rybinsk and Sukhumi hydroelectric power stations began to operate.

Work to restore the industry was largely completed in 1948. But at some metallurgy enterprises it continued in the early 50s. The massive industrial heroism of the Soviet people, expressed in numerous labor initiatives (the introduction of high-speed work methods, the movement for saving metal and high quality products, the movement of multi-machine operators, etc.), contributed to the successful implementation of planned targets. By the end of the Five-Year Plan, the level of industrial production was 73% higher than the pre-war level. However, the priority development of heavy industry and the redistribution in its favor of funds from the light and food industries led to further deformation of the industrial structure towards an increase in the production of group “A” products.

The restoration of industry and transport, new industrial construction led to an increase in the number of the working class.

After the war, the country was in ruins, and the question of choosing the path of economic development arose. An alternative could be market reforms, but the existing political system was not ready for this step. The directive economy still retained the mobilization character that was inherent in it during the years of the first five-year plans and during the war. Millions of people were organized in an organized manner to restore the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Plant, metallurgical plants of Krivoy Rog, Donbass mines, as well as to build new factories, hydroelectric power stations, etc.

The development of the USSR economy rested on its excessive centralization. All economic issues, large and small, were resolved only in the center, and local economic authorities were strictly limited in resolving any matters. The main material and monetary resources necessary to fulfill planned targets were distributed through a large number of bureaucratic authorities. Departmental disunity, mismanagement and confusion led to constant downtime in production, storming, huge material costs, and absurd transportation from one end to another of the vast country.

The Soviet Union received reparations from Germany in the amount of $4.3 billion. As reparations, industrial equipment, including even entire factory complexes, was exported from Germany and other defeated countries to the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet economy was never able to properly manage this wealth due to general mismanagement, and valuable equipment, machines, etc. were gradually turned into scrap metal. 1.5 million German and 0.5 million Japanese prisoners of war worked in the USSR. In addition, the Gulag system during this period contained approximately 8-9 million prisoners, whose work was practically unpaid.

The division of the world into two hostile camps had negative consequences for the country's economy. From 1945 to 1950, foreign trade turnover with Western countries decreased by 35%, which had a noticeable impact on the Soviet economy, which was deprived of new equipment and advanced technologies. That's why in the mid-1950s. The Soviet Union faced the need for profound socio-economic and political changes. Since the path of progressive changes of a political nature was blocked, narrowed to possible (and even then not very serious) amendments to liberalization, the most constructive ideas that appeared in the first post-war years concerned not politics, but the economic sphere. The Central Committee of the CPSU(b) considered various proposals from economists in this regard. Among them is the manuscript “Post-war Domestic Economy”, owned by S.D. Alexander. The essence of his proposals boiled down to the following:

transformation of state-owned enterprises into joint-stock or share partnerships, in which the workers and employees themselves are the shareholders, and are governed by an authorized elected board of shareholders;

decentralization of the supply of raw materials to enterprises by creating district and regional industrial supplies instead of supplies under the people's commissariats and central administrations;

abolition of the system of state procurement of agricultural products, granting collective and state farms the right to free sale on the market;

reform of the monetary system taking into account gold parity;

liquidation of state trade and transfer of its functions to trading cooperatives and unit partnerships.

These ideas can be considered as the foundations of a new economic model, built on the principles of the market and partial denationalization of the economy, very bold and progressive for that time. True, the ideas of S.D. Alexander had to share the fate of other radical projects; they were classified as “harmful” and written off in the “archive”.

The Center, despite certain hesitations, remained staunchly committed to its previous course on fundamental issues concerning the fundamentals of constructing economic and political models of development. Therefore, the center was receptive only to those ideas that did not affect the fundamentals of the supporting structure, i.e. did not encroach on the exclusive role of the state in matters of management, financial support, control and did not contradict the main tenets of ideology.

Political changes in the USSR needed to be consolidated by changes in the economy. Speaking in August 1953 at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, G.M. Malenkov clearly formulated the main directions of economic policy: a sharp rise in the production of consumer goods, large investments in light industry. Such a radical turn, it would seem, should have forever changed the fundamental guidelines for the development of the Soviet economy, established in previous decades.

But this, as the history of the country’s development has shown, did not happen. After the war, various administrative reforms were carried out several times, but they did not make fundamental changes to the essence of the planning administrative system. In the mid-1950s, attempts were made to abandon the use of mobilization measures in solving economic problems. A few years later it became clear that this task was insoluble for the Soviet economy, since economic incentives for development were incompatible with the command system. It was still necessary to organize masses of people to carry out various projects. Examples include calls for young people to participate in the development of virgin lands, in the construction of grandiose “communist construction projects” in Siberia and the Far East.

An example of a not very well-thought-out reform is the attempt to restructure management along territorial lines (1957). During this reform, many sectoral union ministries were abolished, and territorial councils of the national economy (sovnarkhozes) appeared in their place. The only ministries in charge of military production, the Ministry of Defense, Foreign and Internal Affairs and some others were not affected by this restructuring. Thus, an attempt was made to decentralize control.

In total, 105 economic administrative regions were created in the country, including 70 in the RSFSR, 11 in Ukraine, 9 in Kazakhstan, 4 in Uzbekistan, and in the remaining republics - one economic council. The functions of the USSR State Planning Committee remained only general planning and coordination of territorial and sectoral plans, distribution of the most important funds among the union republics.

The first results of the management reform were quite successful. So, already in 1958, i.e. a year after it began, the increase in national income was 12.4% (compared to 7% in 1957). The scale of production specialization and intersectoral cooperation has increased, and the process of creating and introducing new technology into production has accelerated. But, according to experts, the resulting effect is not only a consequence of perestroika itself. The point is also that for a certain period the enterprises turned out to be “ownerless” (when the ministries actually no longer functioned and economic councils had not yet been formed), and it was during this period that they began to work noticeably more productively, without feeling any leadership "above". But as soon as the new management system took shape, the previous negative phenomena in the economy began to intensify. Moreover, new aspects have appeared: localism, stricter administration, a constantly growing “in-house” local bureaucracy.

So, centrifugal forces noticeably weakened the country’s economic potential; many economic councils turned out to be incapable of solving major production problems. Already in 1959, the consolidation of economic councils began: weaker ones began to join more powerful ones (by analogy with the consolidation of collective farms). The centripetal tendency turned out to be stronger. Quite soon the previous hierarchical structure in the country's economy was restored.

Traditionally, so-called grassroots planning has been weak, i.e. drawing up plans at the enterprise level. Basic plan targets were often adjusted, so the plan turned into a purely nominal document, directly related only to the process of calculating wages and bonus payments, which depended on the percentage of fulfillment and overfulfillment of the plan.

Since, as noted above, plans were constantly being adjusted, the plans that were carried out (or rather were not carried out) were completely different from those that were adopted at the beginning of the planning period (year, five-year plan). The State Planning Committee “bargained” with the ministries, and the ministries with enterprises about what plan they could implement with the available resources. But the supply of resources for such a plan was still disrupted, and “bidding” began again on the figures of the plan, on the amount of supplies, etc.

All this confirms the conclusion that the Soviet economy depended to a greater extent not on competent economic developments, but on political decisions, constantly changing in directly opposite directions and most often leading to a dead end. Fruitless attempts were made in the country to improve the structure of the state apparatus, to endow ministers, heads of central administrations, and directors of enterprises with new rights or, conversely, to limit their powers, to divide existing planning bodies and create new ones, etc. There were many such “reforms” in the 1950s and 1960s, but none of them brought real improvements to the work of the command system.

Basically, when determining the priorities of post-war economic development, when developing the fourth five-year plan - the recovery plan - the country's leadership actually returned to the pre-war model of economic development and pre-war methods of conducting economic policy. This means that the development of industry, primarily heavy industry, had to be carried out not only to the detriment of the interests of the agricultural economy and the sphere of consumption (i.e., as a result of the appropriate distribution of budget funds).

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The Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 ended victoriously with the complete defeat of Nazi Germany. Following the cessation of the war in Europe, with the defeat of Japanese imperialism, the war in the Far East also ended. Second World War ended. The transition from war to peace has begun. In capitalist countries, this transition usually ends in crisis and mass unemployment. The Soviet economy has the fortunate feature that here the post-war restructuring of the national economy excludes both a crisis and any kind of unemployment.

Transfer from war economy to a peaceful economy in the USSR is carried out without crises and depressions through the systematic solution by the Soviet state of the following tasks of the post-war restructuring of the national economy.

Firstly, by defining new proportions in the development of the socialist economy in comparison with the proportions of the period of the war economy. It is quite obvious that the proportions in the development of the national economy of the USSR that developed in the pre-war peace years will not be exactly repeated in the post-war period, but the basic laws of expanded socialist reproduction are also mandatory for the post-war restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR. They mean the need for priority and faster restoration and development of the metallurgical, fuel and energy industries, railway transport of the USSR, as well as domestic mechanical engineering, ensuring the technical and economic independence of our homeland.

Secondly, the transition to a peaceful economy is carried out through redistribution work force, as well as the main and revolving funds between sectors of the national economy.

This means the need in the balance of the national economy of the USSR to increase, compared with the period of the war economy, the share of heavy industry and railway transport, as well as to create in the national economy, primarily in industry and transport, material reserves and reserves that ensure the elimination of seasonal delays in growth production and preventing the emergence of partial imbalances in the national economy.

Thirdly, the transition to a peaceful economy is carried out through the use of most of the military and production capacities for the restoration and development of the national economy.

This means that many hundreds of the largest enterprises engaged in military orders during World War II are switching to the production of equipment for heavy industry and transport, for the production of tractors, agricultural machinery and fertilizers, and for the production of consumer goods.

Fourthly, the transition from a military to a peaceful economy is carried out by increasing the share of accumulation in the national income, without which the rapid restoration of the national economy and its accelerated growth is unthinkable.

This means increasing the share of the social product used for the purposes of accumulation and reproduction by reducing military spending. The post-war development of the Soviet economy will far exceed the scale of accumulation and capital construction that took place during the war economy.

Fifthly, the transition is carried out by increasing the level of consumption of workers and transferring workers in factories and factories to normal working hours during the peace period.

This means the abolition of compulsory overtime, the restoration of normal rest for workers and employees, and an increase in the fund of social product that goes into consumption.

In the structure of the USSR budget in the most general view shows the post-war restructuring of the national economy of the USSR. If in the pre-war year 1940 expenditures on armed forces The USSR accounted for 32.5% of all budget expenditures, then in the 1944 war year they increased to 52%. Since then, the share of military expenditures in the USSR budget has decreased and in 1946 it amounted to only 23.9%.

In connection with the restructuring of the national economy, the Soviet state incurs certain costs caused by the fact that when transferring enterprises from the production of military products to the production of civilian products, a certain time is required, during which many workers do not provide full productivity, and machines do not provide full production capacity. Unlike capitalist enterprises, which, during the period of restructuring of production, throw out workers and drive them into the army of the unemployed, a socialist enterprise helps the worker to retrain and pays him the average wage during the period of restructuring of production.

The task is to minimize the costs associated with the restructuring of the national economy, and reduce the restructuring time as much as possible and ensure high rates of reproduction. High rates of growth in the production of socialist products largely depend on the correct relationship (proportions) between various industries material production, between production and consumption, accumulation and national income, between industry and agriculture, production and transportation. Disproportions in the development of the national economy lead to a decrease in the rate of production and reproduction. For example, a disproportion between the level of production and the size of transport could lead the national economy to a dead end. To prevent such a disproportion, it is necessary to take care of transport, build new transport routes, create and increase rolling stock, and improve transport technology.

To quickly eliminate any imbalance or economic difficulties that have arisen, it is necessary to have serious material reserves in the national economy. It would be naive to deny the possibility of partial imbalances or difficulties in the development of the Soviet economy. The guarantee against such partial imbalances and difficulties is the presence of material reserves in the national economy. Long-term plans and the balance of the national economy of the USSR must take into account the accumulation of such inventories and reserves.

To prevent imbalances in the development of the national economy and solve new economic tasks Long-term state plans are of the greatest importance. For the Soviet economy, this is a tried and tested path of systematic expanded reproduction of the national economy, a path of organized and powerful development of productive forces.

The five-year plan for the post-war restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR provides for the complete restoration of the national economy of the regions of the USSR that were subject to German occupation, and the elimination of losses inflicted by Nazi Germany on the national economy and the peoples of the Soviet Union. Throughout the national economy of the USSR, based on the restoration of production in the liberated areas and the further development of all regions of the USSR, especially Siberia and the Far East, the post-war five-year plan plans to significantly exceed the pre-war level of development, including in industrial production, by 1.5 times.

The task is to ensure the priority restoration and development of heavy industry and railway transport, without which the rapid and successful restoration and development of the entire national economy of the USSR is impossible. It is necessary to overcome the gap between railway transport and the growing needs of the national economy of the USSR and eliminate the seasonal (winter) difficulties experienced by railway transport through the technical re-equipment of transport and the introduction of diesel and electric locomotives on the most important railway routes.

The task is to widely expand the restoration and construction of Soviet cities and villages destroyed by Nazi Germany, creating for this a highly industrial production base for the factory production of residential buildings and individual building structures and parts.

The post-war five-year plan for the restoration and development of the national economy of the USSR provides for the rise of agricultural production and the consumer goods industry, and on this basis - an increase in the pre-war level of national income over the five-year period by 1.4 times and the creation in the country of an abundance of food and consumer goods, ensuring the flourishing of material well-being peoples of the Soviet Union and the abolition of the rationed supply of goods to the population.

Based on the growth of the material well-being of the people, ensuring universal education and the development of material production technology through electrification and automation, we must take a further step forward towards raising the cultural and technical level of the working class, the progressive and leading force of socialist society, to the level of engineering and technical workers .

It is necessary to organize further technical progress in industry, transport and agriculture of the USSR on the basis of high mechanization of labor-intensive industries, further electrification of the national economy and gasification of urban life and industry. It is necessary to ensure the widespread development of advanced modern technology for the national economy: the transmission of high-power direct current over long distances, the introduction of oxygen and electric current into production processes, the use and development of reactive and nuclear technology, the comprehensive development of radar and television, the use and application of infrared technology, development of synthetic types of production.

“Having ended the war with victory over its enemies, the Soviet Union entered a new, peaceful period of its economic development. At present, the Soviet people are faced with the task of consolidating their conquered positions and moving forward to a new economic upsurge. We cannot limit ourselves to consolidating these positions, because this would lead to stagnation; we must move further forward to create conditions for a new powerful rise in the national economy. We must as soon as possible heal the wounds inflicted by the enemy on our country and restore the pre-war level of development of the national economy in order to significantly exceed this level in the near future, increase the material well-being of the people and further strengthen the military-economic power of the Soviet state" (Stalin) .

Foreign capitalist countries have repeatedly tried and are trying to adopt the experience of planning the national economy of the USSR. It is difficult to name any country where there are no attempts to plan their national economy. Passion for planning foreign countries is not random.

It follows from the lessons of the First World War and the industrial crises that periodically recur in capitalist countries. The fundamental difference between the planning of the national economy of the USSR and the “planning” of the national economy in foreign capitalist countries is that in the Soviet Union planning is based on the social mode of production. Here the people, organized into the Soviet state, mastered the social laws of development; economic planning is scientifically based and has the force of law. “Planning” in foreign capitalist countries, based on the dominance of private ownership of the means of production, is a wish that is not based on any real economic forces.

Characteristic is the fate of the National Resource Planning Administration of the United States of America, which during 1941–1943 developed plans for the post-war economic structure of the United States. In 1943, this department ceased to exist, since the Congress of the United States of America refused financial allocations for its maintenance, and the main reason for the termination of the department’s work was not so much financial considerations as dissatisfaction with the direction of its work. The National Administration proposed developing a six-year public works plan, according to which it was intended that in the event of an increase in unemployment due to the economic crisis, public works would be immediately launched at previously planned sites. This was supposed to provide the population with work. Thus, the plan of the US National Resource Planning Administration did not eliminate the crises of overproduction, depression and unemployment. On the contrary, this plan assumed crises, depression, unemployment and sought only to mitigate these inevitable phenomena of capitalist production with public works and social insurance at the expense of the workers themselves. However, this plan also seemed excessive to the Congress of the United States of America, the management was denied funding to please the capitalist sharks, and it died in 1943. After the end of the Second World War, the state of the United States of America, fulfilling the will of the rulers of American monopoly capital, stopped any attempts to plan production and circulation. Instead of planning, the President of the United States of America began to exhort the monopoly capitalists to reduce the excessively high and constantly rising prices for goods that are unaffordable for the American people. When these admonitions were exposed as hypocritical and the end of demagoguery came, the rulers of the United States of America began to demand that the people reduce their needs and tighten their belts.

During the Second World War, the state capitalist tendency, based on monopoly capitalism, intensified in foreign countries. In the United States of America, three-quarters of the value of all military orders was concentrated in the hands of hundreds of capitalist corporations. These orders, which had a guaranteed market in the form of the US government, temporarily contained the contradictions between production and consumption. However, government military orders and state-capitalist “regulation” of production during the war came to an end in the post-war period. Orders from capitalist enterprises and concerns are again beginning to be completely regulated by the spontaneous laws of the average rate of profit, the law of spontaneous supply and demand, the law of crises.

Despite the many “plans” for post-war development, in the capitalist United States of America and England, people look into their post-war future with a great deal of skepticism. There is a lot of talk and fear in these countries about the post-war crisis, depression and increasing unemployment. A serious post-war problem for US industry is the reduction in the overall level of industrial production, since pure US military production during the World War was estimated at $60 billion per year. This reduction could put at least 10 million American workers out of work unless US industry converts military production into civilian products and finds new markets for these products.

The year 1938 in the United States of America was the year of another economic crisis, and this year production decreased compared to the pre-crisis year of 1937 by 21% and in 1939 by 4%. In relation to this reduced level of 1939, the US production index in 1943 rose to 219. However, in 1945 it fell to 186, and in 1946 to 156 and continues to decline in an environment of growing antagonism between the social nature of production and the capitalist mode of appropriation production results.

In England, W. Baveridge’s plan, which the author puts forward as a way to “eliminate need,” gained a certain popularity. This plan is based, as W. Beveridge states in his article “Eliminating Want,” “on the principle of issuing benefits that are due by right in compensation for contributions made, and not on direct distributions from the public treasury.” This means that workers and employees at work pay a flat premium by purchasing an insurance stamp weekly or over a period of several weeks. From these contributions, insurance benefits are paid to workers and employees for unemployment, in case of loss of ability to work and a retirement pension, medical care is provided and a funeral benefit is provided.

Consequently, W. Baveridge's "social insurance" plan is based on the deferment by workers and employees who are at work of spending their wages until the period when they lose money; work, become unemployed or lose their job upon reaching incapacity or illness. By reducing their current consumption, workers and employees create the opportunity for themselves to have a minimum means of subsistence during periods of unemployment, illness or old age. This is a kind of installment plan for the needs of the English worker over the entire period of his life. It turns out in fact that W. Baveridge’s plan is designed to reduce living wage workers and employees during the period of their work and maintaining a semi-starvation minimum during the period of their unemployment.

W. Baveridge's "social insurance" plan proceeds from the fact that need in England, as shown by his own observations of social conditions in a number of the main cities of England, usually arose as a result of a break in work, that is, unemployment. The main purpose of this plan is to establish and maintain a living wage for the worker and employee of England during the period of his unemployment. Thus, the plan for “eliminating” need is based on the presence and persistence of unemployment in England for significant sections of the English working class, instead of finding ways and means of eliminating the crisis, impoverishment and unemployment itself as the main basis of social need in England.

It is difficult for the working class and all working people of the Soviet Union to be carried away by Sir William Baveridge's plan for the “elimination of want”, since it is based “on the preservation of private ownership of the means of production. Ensuring the standard of living of the working class and all working people of the Soviet Union is based on eliminating the basis of the people's “need” - the exploiting classes and private ownership of the means of production. It is based on the elimination of industrial crises and the causes that give rise to them, on the elimination of unemployment in the city and the impoverishment of residents in the countryside. It is based on the general rise in material production and culture of the peoples of the Soviet Union. It is finally based on a state guarantee medical care population, state benefits for mothers of many children and state aid workers who are elderly or temporarily disabled.

The peoples of the Soviet Union, on the basis of restoration and further, even more powerful, post-war development of the national economy, resumed their forward movement, interrupted by the Great Patriotic War, along the path of completing the construction of a classless socialist society and the gradual transition from socialism to communism.

The USSR will boldly move forward along the path of flourishing productive forces and building a communist society, without fear of crises of overproduction. From restoring the national economy of the USSR and achieving the pre-war level of production, we will move to a higher stage of development to the implementation of the general economic task USSR - to catch up and overtake economically, i.e., in terms of production per capita, the main capitalist countries, including the United States of America.

The peoples of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics are confidently solving their historical tasks, despite the new military provocations of the imperialist states. The contradictions among the allies in the war against Germany and Japan regarding the goals of the war and the post-war structure of the world (between the USSR on the one hand and the United States of America and England on the other) in the post-war period grew into an open struggle between two opposing political lines.

The USSR, in alliance with other democratic countries, is pursuing an anti-imperialist and democratic policy designed to undermine imperialism, strengthen and develop democratic systems and eliminate the remnants of fascism. The capitalist United States of America, in alliance with its vassals, is pursuing an imperialist and anti-democratic policy designed to achieve world domination by American imperialism and destroy democratic orders throughout the world.

The monopoly capitalism of the United States of America, fattened on the blood of the people during the Second World War, now stands at the head of the imperialist and anti-democratic camp and has become the instigator of imperialist expansion in all parts of the world. The imperialist expansion of the United States is aimed at unleashing a new war as a way of gaining world domination, as a way of strangling democracy and preventing economic crisis and opposition of the working class in its own country.

The anti-imperialist and democratic camp, led by the USSR, is fighting against imperialist expansion and the threat of a new war. The undermining of the plans of the aggressors and provocateurs of a new war depends on the strength and unity of the democratic and anti-imperialist camp. As a result of the First World War and the Great October Socialist Revolution, capitalism lost power in Russia, the system of socialism arose and strengthened in the person of the USSR, and a general crisis of capitalism began. As a result of the Second World War and democratic reforms, new people's republics, countries of people's democracy, emerged in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Global capitalism has lost power in a number of other democratic countries. The forces of democracy and socialism have grown, and the general crisis of capitalism has intensified.

The development of the socialist economy in the USSR cannot fail to take into account the post-war changes in the international situation. The peculiarities of socialist reproduction in the USSR, developing in the neighborhood of capitalist countries, oblige the Soviet state to maintain the necessary level of military capacity in production and strengthen its military-economic power. As long as the capitalist encirclement remains, it is necessary to keep the powder dry. As long as imperialism exists, there remains the danger of an attack on the USSR, the danger of a new third world war. Only an armed people with powerful productive forces can prevent it.

Thus, the task of the post-war development of the Soviet economy is to restore in the coming years in the liberated regions of the USSR the economy destroyed by the German occupiers, and to significantly exceed the pre-war level of production throughout the Soviet territory. By solving the problem of restoration and further powerful development of the national economy of the USSR, we are taking a significant step forward in the construction of a communist society and in the implementation of the general economic task - to catch up and surpass economically the main capitalist countries.

Topic: “The economy of the USSR after the Second World War. Economy of the USSR after the Second World War The situation of the economy of the USSR after the Second World War

Introduction

The state of the USSR economy after the end of the war

1. The state of the USSR economy after the end of the war.

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