Les nouvelles coopératives soviétiques : essor et contraintes

Abstract

The new Soviet Cooperatives : advances and limitations From the end of NEP until recently, Soviet cooperative enterprises have consisted primarily of large collective farms (kolkhozy) virtually undistinguishible from state farms and of consumption cooperatives especially in housing. The latest wave of radical reform in the USSR has led to the important rediscovery and revamping of cooperatives ; after encouraging policy pronouncements and Government decrees in 1987, a Draft Law on Soviet Cooperatives was published in March 1988, and after considerable public discussion and modifications, it was approved at the end of May 1988. In the year ending July 1988, the total number of Soviet cooperatives grew from 3,709 to 32,561 while their turnover grew from 29.2 mn to 1.04 bn rubles. This paper reviews and compares draft and final texts of the Law, and stresses both the significant progress made through this legislation towards the development of the non-state sector and the « marketisation » of the USSR, and at the same time the limitations of the new legal regime on Soviet cooperatives. Some of these limitations are due to the specific provisions of the Law : the detailed list of sectors of activity, their lack of competitive access to resources, their inability to set prices. Some are related to the general limitations of traditional cooperatives : restrictive employment policy, inefficiency deriving from likely attempts at maximising income per member, and investment bias due to the non appropriability of self-financed investment. The introduction of shares might solve these problems but the Law envisages no more than variable interest bonds without vote, redeemable at face value (except in case of liquidation when a participation in cooperative net capital is possible, but only partially). The conflict between equality and efficiency in the taxation of cooperatives and their members has not been resolved. In these conditions it is doubtful whether Soviet cooperatives' « immense potential » will be fully realised.