Why the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and Brezhnev failed with the complex mechanization of agriculture: International aspects (1953-1986)

The State Committee often lacked the control over the complicated and under Khrushchev variable distribution of competences. Petrov (Ministry of Agriculture) was annoyed by the State Committee's requests beyond his field of competence. For instance, the State Committee asked him to send the Soviet agricultural machinery after testing to Burma. On March 5, 1961, Petrov responded that the production of machinery was not in the Ministry's competence; therefore, he could not arrange any delivery of agricultural machinery.

Although the Soviet agriculture lagged behind `capitalist' countries in agricultural technology and needed all available resources for its development, Khrushchev forced the Ministry of Agriculture to participate in his campaign of offering the economic aid to the nonbloc countries by providing them with specialists and equipment. The absurdity of the situation became evident, when countries like Iraq, Ceylon and Syria, taking advantages of the American help too, started `anti-Soviet campaigns': tractor and harvester drivers, who previously used reliable American agricultural machinery and tractors, now had to work on the poor Soviet agricultural machinery not suitable for the climate of their countries, which was always breaking down, needed repair, and stood idle due to the lack of spare parts. As the USSR delivered the same poor and unreliable agricultural machinery to the `less developed' countries, this became a reason for mockery. Soviet officials interpreted it as `anti-Soviet campaigns'. Although the Ministry of Agriculture could only send abroad what the national industry produced, it faced reproaches in providing junk machinery RGAE. F. 7486. D.8477. L. 1-13; D. 8652. L. 204-223, 294-301; .

Conclusion

agricultural funding international delegation

The Ministry of Agriculture was well aware of the Western expertise due to delegation trips, organizations of the United Nations, consultants for agriculture in the embassies in `capitalist' countries, bilateral exchange and cooperation contracts and membership in international agricultural associations. The Ministry insisted on importing models of the advanced agricultural technology to test them in the Soviet conditions and improve the quality of the national agricultural machinery. The Ministry made attempts to transfer the Western production expertise to the USSR in order to develop the Soviet agriculture to the world standard and reduce labor inputs and production costs.

However, the Western knowledge was hardly used. Often the CC and CM issued decrees following the Ministry of Agriculture's recommendations to improve the national production. But the Gosplan and State Committee of Science and Technology delayed or blocked these decrees' execution, and, in accordance with the Stalin's legacy, refused to give priority to agricultural development for modernization of the outdated Soviet agricultural machinery industry would have needed huge investment. To partly overcome this blockage, since the mid-1960, the Ministry had tried to made the block partners produce at least part of the advanced machinery for the Soviet agriculture.

The Ministry considered the transfer of the Western expertise as primarily a technical matter, although the Soviet industry produced machinery in all respects significantly below the world standards. The question whether the transfer from market economies to the Soviet command industry would work was tabooed. The failure to copy the superior Western technology was partly determined by the divided competence for decision making in the USSR's bureaucratic structures under Brezhnev. While in the West, the marketcompetition made the companies producing agricultural machinery constantly improve their quality and develop new technologies, Soviet producers of agricultural machinery were monopolists -- their clients had no chance to refuse the purchase of poor or even defective machinery, and lacked free access to other producers under the state command. In the Western market economies, producers also provided efficient repair services. Soviet industrial plants were not responsible for the farms' losses due to the poor technology and lack of repair services.

In the implementation of its recommendations, the Ministry depended on actors beyond its control -- chemical and machinery industry, construction trusts, governing bodies allocating resources and finances, research and test institutions. They all had different interests and tasks in `their' plans not linked to the task of improving the efficiency of the Soviet agricultural production. Ministers like Matskevich often had working experience in the Gosplan or the CM; therefore, they understood these institutions' constrains in distributing limited finances and resources between the national economy branches. Neither the CC nor the CM really controlled the execution of their decrees for the Gosplan distributed funding and resources, and gave orders. While the Gosplan certainly blocked the supply of highly efficient inputs and machinery to agriculture, it is beyond the scope of this article to discuss the Soviet systemic constraints and deficiencies or answer the question if the Gosplan had alternatives. In a subsequent article I will discuss why for the stable rule the Party leadership needed the poor quality of the Soviet machinery, and why the low-cost alternative of giving the freedom of decision-making to the qualified heads of the collective and state farms, the `Khudenko experiment', was rejected by the Brezhnev administration with the fatal consequences in the late 1960s.

I would like to finish the article with the impressions of the American delegation of the Soviet agriculture in the summer of 1963, as reported by the consultant for agriculture in the US: the delegation was impressed by the personal reception at Khrushchev; praised the high qualification of the soviet agricultural specialists in seed production; but at the same time was shocked by shortcomings -- high labor inputs, lack of machinery, storage, fertilizers and pesticides, and slow development of grain drying RGAE. F. 7486. D.8800. L. 147-155..

References

1. Merl S. (2002) Entstalinisierung, Reformen und Wettlauf der Systeme 1953-1964. S. Plaggenborg et.al. (Eds.). 1945-1991. Vom Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs bis zum Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion, Anton Hiersemann, pp. 175-318.

2. RGAE (Rossiisky Gosudarstvenny Archiv Ekonomiki) [Russian State Archive of Economy], Fond 650 (Gosagroprom), Opis 1 (14.11.1985 -- 11.4.1989).

3. Schinke E. (1967) Die Mechanisierung landwirtschaftlicher Arbeiten in der Sowjetunion, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

4. Taubman W. (2003) Khrushchev. The Man and His Era, New York & London: W.W. Norton & Company.

5. Wegren S.K., Nikulin A.M., Trotsuk I.V. (2018) Food Policy and Food Security. Putting Food on the Russian Table, Lexington: Lanham.

Размещено на Allbest.ru