The international conference spotlighted the most recent contributions to Soviet economic history, a field that recently has been experiencing a tangible revival. Just a few years ago, Western historians generally relied on findings and conclusions of Cold War economists of the 1950s–1980s, who mostly had focused on a topic of economic planning and who often had written their works without access to archival sources. Recent research on consumer culture has encouraged us to reconsider how the Soviet economy actually functioned.1 As a result, the very concept of the “planned economy,” as this conference showed, has limited utility, and historians are searching for more analytically advantageous theories. This growing body of new research also seeks to contribute beyond the Soviet history field and offer a new perspective on the Soviet economy’s transnational impact, especially in the Global South.2

In their opening speech, the conference organizers KATJA BRUISCH (Dublin) and ALEXANDRA OBERLÄNDER (Berlin) called for dethroning the “plan” as the analytical category and exploring other key areas of the Soviet economy that had been previously obscured by the “plan-mania” – such as labor, prices, money, finances and banking, inflation, credit, technology, environment, entrepreneurship, and consumer demand. New concepts will revise the idea of the “planned economy,” which still prevails in historiography, surviving inconsistent and unsuccessful attempts to replace it with the “command economy.” Bruisch and Oberländer speculated that if scholars give up their focus on the plan, this new research might alter the Soviet history’s chronology and fit the Soviet Union better into global trends, like industrialization of agriculture or development of oil and fossil-fuel economies. They also encouraged historians to consider the Soviet economy as a part of material culture, to connect economic and environmental history, and to explore the economy’s influence on social relations (for example, to study how Soviet industries created a special welfare system, which can be described as either paternalism, or a making of homo sovieticus, or semi-serfdom, or – more neutrally – a system of care and provision).

KIRSTEN BÖNKER (Bielefeld) provided an overview of the Cold War historiography of the Soviet economy. She reminded us that at that time the U.S. had wanted to assess the Soviet economic capacities; therefore scholars had attempted to learn who had drawn economic plans, based on what information, and how efficiently plan targets had been fulfilled. Joseph Berliner, Gregory Grossman, Janos Kornai3, and others concluded that Soviet economic plans suffered from the insufficient information and were subject to constant revisions and negotiations, whereas the negligence of consumer goods industries led to chronic shortages and thriving illegal economy. Bönker, however, suggested that a more cultural, comparative, and transnational approach to the “plan” could be productive: she called for a new history of economic planning as a transnational phenomenon on the both sides of the Cold War. A Cold War bias made us forget that planning, a heritage of the Enlightenment, was executed by capitalist economies as well. The Soviet Union also exported economic planning to the Third World and popularized it there as an effective way of modernization.

The rest of the conference presentations fell somewhere between the two agenda. On the one hand, historians still tackled traditional questions of how economic plans were designed and executed, as well as what illegal mechanisms complemented the official economy to keep the whole system working. These scholars, however, often uncovered and skillfully analyzed new archival sources unavailable to the previous generation of researchers. On the other hand, some conference participants attempted to extend discussions beyond the “plan” and to explore prices, labor, and finances in the Soviet Union. The paper presenters provided numerous examples to challenge the notion that the Soviet economy was accurately planned, highly centralized, autarkic, and insensitive to technological innovations.

VASILY BOROVOY (St. Petersburg) studied the “Arctic goal” trust, a Soviet enterprise that operated on the Norwegian territory from 1931 on, to reconstruct the decision-making process from the top down to the enterprise level. Borovoy argued that the plan was an external factor, similar to the market in a capitalist economy, which the enterprise could not change but only adjust to through bargaining and negotiating.

NIKOLAY MITROKHIN (Bremen), on the basis of his larger oral history project (130 interviews with former officials of the Central Committee apparatus), presented twelve life stories of staff from the department of planning and financial authorities, later known as the economic (1982–1989) and social-economic department (1989–1991). The interviews confirmed that economic plans were subject to constant revisions, though the scholar refused to split those officials into a camp of the planned economy proponents and a camp of free-market followers. Questions like financial investments into the military-industrial complex, a technology lag, ineffective price and wage policies, or a low growth of consumer goods industries could divide the apparatus into many groups, depending on what particular problem was at stake.

ERIK RADISCH (Passau) interpreted the reforms of economic planning through the history of de-Stalinization: he argued that rational calculations and scientifically sound plans were expected to help the state resume a monopoly on the truth in the post-Stalinist years without resorting to terror. Unlike Stalinist mobilizing plans that aimed to stir up people’s enthusiasm, scientific planning was to provide a new source of legitimacy for the regime.

PAVEL POKID’KO and ELENA KOCHETKOVA (both St. Petersburg) examined the Priozerskii cellulose-paper plant, Svetogorskii cellulose-paper plant, and Kamennogorskii paper plant to show that the Soviet economy provided more initiatives to develop and implement inventions in non-military industries than scholars had previously thought. Local plant inventors and applied research institutions encouraged the technological upgrade of the timber industry, and the early 1970s appeared as a successful period for industrial innovations. Only later on, when the state gradually decreased cash bonuses for factory inventors and turned innovations into a part of their unpaid obligations, the incentive faded away.

The opened archives stimulated historians to utilize a bottom-up approach and to explore the grassroot activities of particular enterprises. Many papers revealed that the output of socialist firms reached beyond the state production sphere. To contribute to discussions about investment cycles of the Soviet economy, ANDREY SMETANIN (Perm) explored accounting reports of two enterprises, the Uritskii tobacco factory in Leningrad, one of the largest firms in this industry, and the mediocre and outdated Molotov tobacco factory in Perm. The earlier research attempted to figure out if the Soviet economy experienced any investment cycles to see if the Soviet authorities wielded a full control over the economy. The two factories’ data for 1945–1970 showed that their obtained financial investments did not constitute a cycle.

OLGA NIKONOVA (Chelyabinsk) examined trade unions of two Chelyabinsk regional enterprises, the Zlatoust metallurgical plant and Zlatoust machine-building plant, from the late 1950s until the early 1970s. The plants, which were expected to be factories of a socialist way of life for their employees, sought to improve the wellbeing of their workers through housing construction. The trade unions distributed plant-owned apartments among the workers and regulated construction cooperatives. Although nepotism and informal personal connections were widely employed to prioritize some employees over the rest, most respondents, interviewed for Nikonova’s project, described the plants’ welfare system as protective and caring.

SHEILA PATTLE (Durham) used two case studies of “Svetlana” and the Perm telephone factory to explore social planning for Soviet enterprises. Social planning presupposed five-year plans for the social development of the workforce and served as a means to manage personnel in order to improve the overall economic performance. Pattle argued that in the Brezhnev period, social planning shaped a new field of social sciences, industrial sociology, and a new profession, a plant sociologist.

ALEKSEY POPOV (Simferopol) described the Crimean nuclear plant construction in an attempt to initiate a discussion about the paradoxes of the late Soviet economy, which, according to him, was modernizing and stable, on the one hand, and stagnant and corrupted, on the other.

MARIANNA ZHEVAKINA (Hamburg), using criminal records of large court cases in the early 1960s when Khrushchev launched a nation-wide campaign against economic crimes, explored a two-fold function of socialist enterprises. The same enterprises that struggled to overfulfill plan targets, to win a socialist competition, and to participate in political meetings, served as an illegal production place for consumer goods and a home to people who sought to gain personal profits from shortages. The transcripts of interrogation shed a light on a process of obtaining input resources, managing personnel, and distributing output by such illegal producers. Zhevakina argued that law breaking had been a necessary condition for enterprises to be economically successful.

The growing interest in Soviet monetary policies challenges the still prevailing stereotypes that money did not matter under socialism and that prices remained rather stable and fixed in the Soviet Union. ANNA IVANOVA (Cambridge, MA) explored the Soviet government’s decisions to raise retail prices for luxuries in 1977–1981 to balance supply and demand. In 1970 the State Bank reported that excess cash in circulation threatened financial stability, and increased retail prices on high-demand goods could force people to spend their extra savings. The price increases, however, led to a massive backlash, mostly in a form of complaint letters to the authorities. Although letter-writers rarely could afford the luxury goods even before the price increases, the governmental price policy opened up possibilities for them to discuss material inequalities and to express concerns about social injustice in the late Soviet society.

FELIX HERRMANN (Bremen) studied the trade of digital technologies between the USSR and GDR from the 1970s on to explain a Soviet technology lag. He showed that prices for East German computers were based on average world market prices of foreign analog types, which allowed the GDR to supply the Soviet Union with high-profit margin microelectronic goods in exchange for cheap raw materials. The GDR industries were interested to produce and sell outdated machines that could be compared to 5-year-old analog types, since the older ones were more expensive. Herrmann proved that the GDR had turned the computer production into a profitable business through skillful actions in the Comecon committees and specific price formation mechanisms.

Finally, some presenters focused on the Soviet economy’s global influences – an understudied topic that has only recently drawn historians’ attention. MAX TRECKER (Munich) examined the competition between capitalist and socialist countries for contracts to build steel plants in India in the late 1950s through the 1980s (e.g., plants at Rourkela, Bhilai, Bokaro, and Visakhapatnam). Although the West German and U.S. competitors presented the state-of-the-art projects and the USSR simply copied the design of the 1930s, some contracts went to the latter. Trecker showed that the Cold War Indian government did not always prioritize technological innovativeness: it sought to industrialize the country through import substitution, to provide jobs for unskilled workers, and to honor local traditions. The Soviet design, though technologically outdated, could accommodate these needs better.

ISABELLE GOUARNÉ (Amiens) and OLESSIA KIRTCHIK (Moscow), analyzing scholarly exchange between French and Soviet economic planning and scientific institutions from the 1960s on, argued that two countries shared many concerns about “scientific management,” algorithmic and mathematical technics of optimization, and data processing. That allowed to perceive “automated” industrial management as ideologically neutral and transferrable between capitalist and communist systems. The scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union also enabled France to defend its own computer industry and to promote an alternative to the American way of management and social control.

The conference discussions outlined numerous topics for the future research. Of all apt suggestions, I would underline Susanne Schattenberg’s remark to connect the history of emotions with the Soviet economy: for example, economically successful illegal production required strong feelings of trust among all participants. Alexandra Oberländer reminded that we still knew little about economic reforms, with some exception of the Kosygin ones, and the future research on this topic may answer the question if the reforms themselves or the lack of reforms led to the Soviet economy’s failure. Oscar Sanchez-Sibony pointed out that the history of capitalism could help understand Soviet prices since under capitalism pricing on electricity, labor force, and housing did not work according to the demand-supply curve. Galina Orlova’s comment on the technological conservation of socialism made me think that digital systems could not only promote innovations but also turn into tools for Soviet local officials to preserve the political status quo.

Conference overview:

Katja Bruisch (Trinity College, Dublin), Alexandra Oberländer (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin): Welcome and introduction

Panel 1: The Enterprise as a Social Micro Cosmos
Chair: Katja Bruisch (Trinity College, Dublin)
Discussants: Sergei Alymov (Russian Academy of Science, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Moscow), Sergei Zhuravlev (Russian Academy of Science, Institute of Russian History, Moscow)

Olga Nikonova (South Ural State University, Chelyabinsk): How the Director of the Lenin Factory Got Hit, or: The Social Functions of the Enterprise in the System of Soviet Planning

Vasily Borovoy (Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg): The Edges of the Planned Economy: The Trust “Arktikugol” on the Norwegian Archipelago Spitsbergen

Sheila Pattle (Durham University): Planning the “Human Factor”: Industrial Sociology and Enterprises’ Social Development Plans under Brezhnev

Panel 2: Enacting the (Un-)Planned Economy
Chair: Alexandra Oberländer (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin)
Discussants: Susanne Schattenberg (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen), Katja Bruisch (Trinity College, Dublin)

Marianna Zhevakina (University of Hamburg): Tsekhoviki: The Organization of Illegal Production in Socialist Enterprises

Anna Ivanova (Harvard University): Price Increases in the Brezhnev Soviet Union: Between Economic Rationality and Ideological Compromise

Andrey Smetanin (University of Perm): Microeconomic Data and Debates about the Cyclic Character of the Soviet Economy

Keynote address
Chair: Mikhail Lipkin (Russian Academy of Science, Institute of World History, Moscow)

Kirsten Bönker (University of Bielefeld): Vse idet po planu? Rethinking Late Soviet Economic History

Panel 3: Soviet Planning and the Outer World
Chair: Susanne Schattenberg (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen)
Discussants: Oscar Sanchez-Sibony (University of Hongkong), Nikita Pivovarov (Russian Academy of Science, Institute of World History, Moscow)

Felix Herrmann (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen): Money and Friendship Don’t Mix: Price Formation in the CMEA Trade with Computer Technology

Max Trecker (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich): How Soviet Designs Beat the West: The Success of Soviet Steel in India

Panel 4: Planning Elites and Institutions
Chair: Sandra Dahlke (German Historical Institute, Moscow)
Discussants: Matthias Uhl (German Historical Institute, Moscow), Alexandra Oberländer (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin)

Nikolay Mitrokhin (Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen): Productivists vs. Planners: Confrontation within the Economic Department of the Central Committee

Erik Radisch (University of Passau): The “Scientification of the Plan” as a Measure to Cope with Post-Stalinist Realities

Panel 5: Technology Between Fetish and Challenge
Chair: Matthias Uhl (German Historical Institute, Moscow)
Discussants: Mikhail Lipkin (Russian Academy of Science, Institute of World History, Moscow), Galina Orlova (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)

Pavel Pokid’ko (European University, St. Petersburg), Elena Kochetkova (Higher School of Economics, St. Petersburg): Industrial Innovation in the Planned Economy – The Case of the Soviet Timber Industry, 1945-1991

Aleksey Popov (University of Simferopol): Never-Ending Nuclear Construction: The Building of the Crimean Nuclear Powerplant as a Diagnosis of the Late-Soviet Planned Economy (1969-1989)

Isabelle Gouarné (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Amiens), Olessia Kirtchik (Higher School of Economics, Moscow): Computers for the (Un)Planned Economy: From Planning to Engineering Economic Governance (Franco-Soviet Dynamics)

Katja Bruisch (Trinity College, Dublin) / Alexandra Oberländer (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin): Conclusion

Notes:
1 See, for example, Julie Hessler, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953, Princeton 2004; David Crowley / Susan Reid (Hrsg.), Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc, Evanston 2010; Paulina Bren / Mary Neuberger (Hrsg.), Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War Eastern Europe, New York 2012; Natalya Chernyshova, Soviet Consumer Culture in the Brezhnev Era, London and New York 2013.
2 See, for example, David Engerman, The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in India, Cambridge, MA 2018.
3 Joseph Berliner, Factory and Manager in the USSR, Cambridge, MA 1957; Gregory Grossman, The Second Economy in the USSR, in: Problems of Communism 26 (1977), S. 25–40; Janos Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism, Princeton 1992.