Trajectories of Economic Transformations. Lessons from 2004 for 2024 and Beyond. Valery Kushlin

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      Inconsistency and superficiality in the formulation of the main goals of state policy had a particularly destructive effect. As early as 1986, almost immediately after the announced decisions to “accelerate scientific and technological progress” and the short-lived propaganda of this direction, another slogan appeared, focusing on “overcoming technocratic approaches” in socio-economic policy. Moreover, it was presented in such a way that it disavowed the value of the task of deploying technological progress and the transition to qualitatively new technologies. At the same time, the idea of a “social reorientation of the economy” and its subordination to the “human factor” began to be intensively promoted. This formulation, which was justified in principle and even belated in many respects, was then taken to a primitive extreme, which blurred the previously initiated actions to reorient investment policy in the direction of technological progress.

      An insidious role was played by the idea of regional self-financing, which gained special favor in the Soviet Baltic republics. It was used to show the supposedly significant driving forces of economic development that are revealed in the event of the separation of regions (republics) from the center that binds them into an independent circuit. To this end, the launched information about “injustices” in the macroeconomic exchange between the Russian Federation and the Baltic republics was actively circulated. The problem of “exploitation by the Russian Federation” was especially persistently raised in some circles in Estonia. None of the official statistics based on input-output balances, which testify to other (contrary to the emotional conclusions of local politicians) ratios of imports and exports between Russia and Estonia (other republics) were considered. Such sentiments have spread in a few other Union and autonomous republics. They contributed in no small measure to the collapse of the USSR as an integral state and as an economic complex.

      Significant and far-reaching damage was caused by the ill-conceived advancement of the tasks of a universal turn in politics to “universal values.” This turn, seemingly logical in its essence, was again brought to the point of absurdity and eventually turned our own fundamental goals into tasks secondary to certain global values inherent in an abstract “civilized” community.

      Many researchers, including the author of these lines, wrote about the mistakes and dangers of such a course at the time, but this was not perceived by the political elite. As an example, let us cite our statements on the situation and economic policy in the country, published in June 1991.

      Based on the analysis of the dynamics of the main socio-economic indicators, we then tried to identify the “stage” causes that led to the escalation of the crisis in the economy. One of these reasons is related to the structurally unadjusted investment boom of 1986, when there was a sharp increase in capital investment in the national economy as a whole and in industrial facilities, especially in mechanical engineering. This boom turned out to be purely extensive, even though a policy was proclaimed for the use of qualitative factors of growth and for the effective acceleration of scientific and technological progress. Such a significant drawback of investment policy was later supplemented by the disproportion caused by an ill-conceived anti-alcohol campaign, as well as populist interpretations of the policy of social reorientation of the national economy and “overcoming technocratic approaches” in the economy. This, on the one hand, served to further deaden production investments in the unfinished construction of facilities of the technological level the day before yesterday, and on the other hand, prepared the conditions for a serious imbalance of supply and demand in the consumer market due to a sharp decline in the receipt of consumer goods (-10 billion rubles), accompanied by an increase (uncovered by resources) of cash income in the investment sector.

      Another concentration of imbalances was 1988, when the growth of monetary incomes of the population increased by 2.5 times, and the output of consumer goods by 6.4%, but if we do not consider alcoholic beverages, then only by 5%. The state budget deficit reached a record level (81 billion rubles), having increased by 5.8 times compared to 1985. In 1988, there were high absolute increases in GNP (50 billion rubles against 26 billion rubles in 1987) and produced national income (31 against 12 billion). But there were no adequate increases in the physical quantities of the product behind this.

      The dynamics of production in physical terms for the most important items of the nomenclature of industrial products considered in monthly reporting (158 items) is characteristic. If in 1986 there was a steady growth, and in 1987 a decrease in output affected a part of the products, mainly mechanical engineering, then in 1988 there was a decline in the production of every fifth type of product, and in 1989 – almost half of its most important types. The year 1988 was a springboard of inflation and economic anarchism, which was caused by unsuccessful laws on enterprise and cooperation, and the ill-considered breakdown of the old state structures. A huge destructive impact was exerted by the rapid removal of the previously existing distinction between cash and non-cash money turnover. All this has created space for the egoistic aspirations of the leaders of enterprises and cooperatives, the speculative elements, who are the most dexterous in redistributive actions.

      In 1990—1991, the logic of events, prompted by the pressure of the concepts of economic romanticism and populism, led to a state of the national economy that can be characterized as close to collapse. In 1990, there was an abrupt shift from a positive to a negative trajectory in the production of GNP and national income. The imbalance of economic relations of almost all enterprises has exceeded the critically permissible level. The economic efficiency of the development of the material and technical base of the national economy has become not just declining, but negative.

      One of the serious reasons for all this is the tendency towards the destruction of statehood. The economic reality that took shape in 1989—1991 became a synthesis of the worst features inherent in both the centralized model of management (its cumbersomeness, multiplied by the elimination of almost all incentives for power coercion) and the market mode of interaction (atomism, which develops into anarchy, the barter-speculative nature of relations, and the monopoly of the seller in relation to the buyer).22

      The author of the article mentioned in the footnote noted that the contradictions that became the subject of the analysis stemmed from the fact that “the main landmarks of reforms were the forms, not the content, of economic development. The objective criterion of progress, which is limited to the dynamics of the productive forces of society and the satisfaction of the material and spiritual needs of the population, has been lost.”

      Exploring Alternative Paths of Transformation

      The Soviet Union and its national economic complex collapsed (if we single out purely economic reasons for this) precisely because of the loss of sources for the sustainable implementation of the process of expanded reproduction of its economy. Extensive sources of reproduction were exhausted, and intensive factors could not be used because they were concentrated in the “non-economic” defense sector of the economy.

      There is no doubt that the economies of Russia and other countries of the former USSR were to undergo radical transformations. What kind of transformations would be optimal?

      At that time, the most active part of the initiators of the transformations had no doubts that it was necessary to quickly form a market-type economy, the prototype of which was the economic models of the most developed Western countries. At the same time, theoretical positions that were based on the belief in the possibility of socialist principles of economic management, if they could be implemented in some form “cleansed” of the negativity of Soviet practice, also remained widespread. They, however, СКАЧАТЬ