The "New Course" in the Soviet Economy

Abstract

Soviet people have the right to demand of us... durable, well-finished and high quality articles, said Malenkov in his speech before the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in August of 1953. It is our task to make sharp improvement in the production of consumer goods and to ensure faster development of light and food industry.' Malenkov's speech thus gave an official sanction to series of unusual developments, both in the Soviet Union and on the satellite scene. So divergent did those developments seem to be from the happenings of the last years of Stalin's era that there was strong temptation, among outside observers as well as among the Communists themselves, to coin new terms, and the post-Stalin developments were referred to as the New Course, 'New Line, New Look, and even as New Economic Policy. No lesser person than the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, K. Voroshilov, designated the envisaged changes as a new stage in the development of Soviet economy.2 Yet less than one-and-one-half years later the New Course came under sharp attack. Under the leadership of Nikita S. Khrushchev campaign was launched, in December of 1954 and January of 1955, against the vulgarizers of Marxism who had abandoned the only correct line of all-round development of heavy industry.3 Malenkov's subsequent demotion and admission of guilt on February 9, 1955, though primarily result of the clash of personal rivalries, was adroitly used to dramatize the reversion to the Marxian-Leninist orthodoxy. The industrial ingredient of the New Course was cut out. Only its agricultural facet was allowed to extend into the Khrushchev-Bulganin era, although even there the screw began again to be tightened after the relative ease of the first post-Stalinist year. Now that that peculiar episode of the New Course has been virtually brought to its close, the time has come to strike and assess its balance. That is the purpose of this article.