Stalinist Strategy Research Articles

Колхозно-совхозная система СССР 1946–1964 годов в научной и публицистической литературе советской эпохи

The study objective was to analyze scholars’ and publicists’ views of the Soviet era on the development of the collective-state farming system during two decades after World War II. The key aims were to reveal the influence of ideological and political attitudes of the supreme authority on researchers’ opinion, similarities and differences in the views of historians, economists and publicists regarding the issues. Collective farm peasant problematics have dominated scientific literature. The works of economists of the 1960–1980s have highly assessed «destalinization» of the collective farming system of the mid-1950s and substantiated the necessity of using cooperative starters and market mechanisms on farms. Historians in their fundamental works on this subject published in the second half of the 1980s have cautiously evaluated the agrarian “destalinization” by N. S. Khruschev and paid tribute to the Stalinist strategy of collective farming. State farming issues became popular due to large-scale construction of state farms developed under the guidance of N. S. Khruschev in the second half of the 1950s. During the period of his leadership (1953–1964), researchers gave this undertaking a high appraisal, however after 1964 critical judgments started appearing in the works of scientists, primarily regarding the policy of transforming collective farms into state ones. During the years of Perestroika, the attitude of scholars and publicists towards the Soviet system became more critical from the supreme power. There was an opinion that the collective-state farming system was never and would not be an effective economic mechanism due to incurable «generational traumas» of past experiences. Opponents of this opinion argued that it lost its fundamental shortcomings in the post-Stalin period, and continued to have a future.

中国经济转轨的真实起源

摘要 中国在改革前选择了斯大林发展战略，将全国的农业剩余集中到国家财政再转化为国家投资，制造出一个投资集中在重工业，大量剩余劳动力集中在农业和中间是轻工业投资及消费品空缺的二元经济结构。从1979年开始的提高国家农产品收购价格使农业剩余从国家财政向农村剩余劳动力反向回流，使他们得到了购买重工业投资品的资金，从而使乡镇工业的就业和产值规模迅猛扩张去填补轻工业的发展空白，所以是农业剩余的反向回流在把改革前的不平衡经济结构扭转向平衡时引发了中国的经济起飞。这一反向回流的实质是中国改革前的投资来源（占 GDP 的33%）被改革前转移农业剩余的计划体制渠道进行了大规模的宏观再配置。它说明中国的改革是宏观起步的存量改革，而林毅夫等人主观臆想的“微观起步，增量改革和市场把增量资源配置到劳动密集型产业的中国转轨模式”颠倒了历史。它也说明中国是在其人口仍旧以农村人口为主时就放弃了斯大林发展战略，所以中国的经济转轨能从一场迅猛的农村工业化浪潮开始。但这种浪潮不会在前苏联和东欧国家出现，因为它们的人口主体在它们开始放弃斯大林发展战略时已经城市化和工业化了。

中国经济转轨的真实起源

In the early 1950s China adopted the Stalinist strategy and transferred a vast amount of farm surplus into investment in state-owned heavy industry. This created a typical dual economy with heavy industry on one side, and agriculture and its vast surplus labor on the other side, and a vacuum of light industry in between. Around 1980, a rise in the state purchasing price of farm products made farm surplus flow from the state to peasants. This brought both capital and investment goods to the surplus labor and induced a sudden expansion in rural industrialization to fill the development gaps in light industry. Hence it was this reverse flow of farm surplus that launched China’s economic take-off by changing the unbalanced economic structure to a balanced one. The essence of this reverse flow was that China’s pre-reform source of investment (33% of GDP) was largely redistributed by the same system of the pre-reform era to transfer farm surplus from peasants to the state. It shows that China’s economic reform was a model involving macroeconomic changes in which the pre-reform resources were redistributed by the planned system, while Lin Yifu et al. (1994) have reversed history by emphasizing supposed microeconomic changes in which newly added resources were allocated by the market system to the labor intensive sector. It also shows that China started to give up the Stalinist strategy when the majority of its population was still rural. Thus, its economic transition could begin with a rapid expansion in rural industrialization, but the Eastern European countries could not because when they abandoned the Stalinist strategy, the majority of their population were already urban and industrialized.This article is in Chinese.中国在上世纪五十年代选择了斯大林发展战略，将全国的农业剩余集中到国家财政再转化为国家投资，制造出一个投资集中在重工业、大量剩余劳动力集中在农业和中间是轻工业投资及消费品空缺的二元经济结构。从1979年开始的提高国家农产品收购价格使农业剩余从国家财政向农村剩余劳动力反向回流，使他们得到了购买重工业投资品的资金，从而使乡镇工业的就业和产值规模迅猛扩张去填补轻工业的发展空白，所以是农业剩余的反向回流在把改革前的不平衡经济结构扭转向平衡时引发了中国的经济起飞。这一反向回流的实质是中国改革前的投资来源（占GDP的33%） 被改革前转移农业剩余的计划体制渠道进行了大规模的宏观再配置。它说明中国的改革是宏观起步的存量改革，而林毅夫等人主观臆想的“微观起步，增量改革和市场把增量资源配置到劳动密集型产业的中国转轨模式”颠倒了历史。它也说明中国是在其人口仍旧以农村人口为主时就放弃了斯大林发展战略，所以中国的经济转轨能从一场迅猛的农村工业化浪潮开始。但这种浪潮不会在前苏联和东欧国家出现， 因为它们的人口主体在它们开始放弃斯大林发展战略时已经城市化和工业化了。

The Genesis of China’s Economic Transition

Structural transition from an unbalanced to a balanced economy in China induced a sudden expansion in the number of TVE workers, which in turn led to a high growth in output in the 1980s. Before 1979 China adopted the Stalinist strategy and transferred a vast amount of farm surplus into state investment. This created a typical dual economy with investments concentrated on heavy industry and a vast surplus labor in agriculture. Around 1980, a reverse flow of farm surplus from the state to peasants brought both capital and investment goods to the surplus labor. It was this reverse flow that launched China’s economic transition in the early 1980s. The essence of the reverse flow was a large-scale redistribution of China’s investment (about 33% of GDP), although there was no privatization in the 1980s. This shows that China started to give up the Stalinist strategy at an opportune moment when the majority of its population was still rural. Thus, its economic transition could begin with a rapid expansion in rural industrialization, whereas in the Eastern European countries the majority of their population was already urban and industrialized when they abandoned the Stalinist strategy.

Labor Discipline, the Use of Work Time, and the Decline of the Soviet System, 1928–1991

The issue of labor lay at the very heart of the antagonistic rela tionship between the Soviet elite and its work force. That discipline was slack in Soviet factories has long been noted by Western and Soviet com mentators alike: high labor turnover; absenteeism, closely tied to heavy drinking on and off the job; and, more importantly, a highly irregular pace of work, with periods of intensive labor (usually involving forced overtime) interspersed with countless opportunities for time wasting, slow work, and a general disregard for production quality. The historical genesis of this system of work is complex, and beyond the scope of this article, but one factor in particular deserves special stress. In order to consolidate its rule, the emerging Stalinist elite had to break down actual and potential opposi tion emanating from virtually the entire society: the peasants who resisted forced collectivization, and the industrial workers (largely drawn from that same peasantry), the majority of whom resented and to a certain extent resisted the hardships and pressures of industrialization. This required an atomization of the population, in particular the working class?not per haps a total destruction of mutual solidarity, but the elimination of its ability to function collectively as a class, and the erosion of its conscious ness of itself as a class. At the same time, the bureaucratic, almost cavalier planlessness of the Five Year Plans created a deep labor shortage. For the regime this was to prove a fatal combination: a depoliticized, but alienated and bitter work force which, because labor power was desperately scarce, could neither be induced nor compelled to work efficiently. The result was that workers became a central?but by no means exclusive?cause of the long-term trend toward chronic inefficiency and economic decline which plagued the Soviet system. Workers, while politi cally powerless to alter the system, compromised the elite's ability to ex tract and dispose of the surplus product. They thereby became a prime cause of its instability. Virtually every phase of Soviet history therefore witnessed a concerted struggle by the elite to find ways to improve labor performance. Under Stalin, the emphasis was on naked coercion; to the extent that such measures proved unsuccessful, the economic losses this entailed were compensated by the existence of a massive slave-labor sector. The failure of the Stalinist strategy produced two major periods of at tempted reform, under Khrushchev and Gorbachev, which sought to solve the problems of poor motivation and effort by combining the incentives of political liberalization with the economic sanctions of tighter wage policies

Pluralism and Vanguardism in the Nicaraguan Revolution

One of the major principles of the Nicaraguan constitution is that state guarantees the existence of political (Article 5). One clear aspect of such pluralism is the maintenance of a multiparty system. Indeed discussion with representatives of the Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, or FSLN) as well as active scholars within Nicaragua reveals that political pluralism is often simply identified with a multiparty system.' Yet it is clear that the FSLN as the sees its function as guiding the revolution. Traditionally the concept of a vanguard party has been connected with the notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat and a monopoly of state power by a single party; in a word, it has been associated with Stalinist strategy for maintaining political control through the Communist Party. How, then, can these two concepts work together? Here I will not speculate on the view that these concepts are combined only as a sort of cynical manipulation on the part of the FSLN.2 Only the future can show whether this is in fact the case. Here my concern is to show that the concepts of pluralism and of the vanguard have been synthesized in Nicaraguan theory and practice in a manner that does violence to neither of them. Further, I hope to show that such a synthesis can yield valuable theoretical insights which can go beyond the particular context of contemporary Nicaragua; the dynamism of contemporary Nicaragaun life is partially derivative of the combination in practice of two apparently contradictory notions. This example demonstrates that a creative approach to the combination of old political ideas can yield practical realities that go beyond old expectations. The notion of hegemony constitutes a key linkage between the concepts in question here. Hegemony, often associated with the thought of Gramsci, but commonly used in the Nicaraguan context without clear relation to his works, suggests that particular social orders function within the context of

China's new agricultural-policy program: Major economic consequences, 1979–1983

While the bulk of the farm surplus is still compulsorily siphoned off to support the Stalinist strategy of maximizing growth of heavy industry, the new policy attempts to ease the agricultural constraints by drastically raising procurement prices, reparcelizing farmland to the households, and promoting rural diversification to help accommodate both redundant labor and increased local demands for consumables. The new emphasis on maximization of short-run investments makes it difficult to cope with natural disasters and to undertake large-scale irrigation projects. Hence bureaucratic correctives appear to remain indispensable, hopefully without impairing peasants' incentives. J. Comp. Econ., Dec. 1984, 8(4), pp. 353–375. Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong; School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London WC1E 7HP.

The Relevance of Border-region Experience to Nation-Building in China, 1949–52

In the course of establishing an interpretative chronology of the post-1949 political and economic development of China, scholars have often assumed that in the early and mid-1950s there was a continuum in terms of the progressive application of Soviet organizational methods and strategic perspectives in China. In other words, the Chinese Communist leadership in the early 1950s not only “leaned to one s side” in international terms, it endorsed and implemented an essentially Stalinist strategy with its consequent implications of rigid hierarchical management and lop-sided investment patterns in favour of rapid heavy industrialization at the expense of agricultural production in the countryside.

Agriculture in the Industrialization of Communist China and the Soviet Union

China and the Soviet Union adhered to a common development design, aptly called by some the Stalinist strategy of economic development.' The strategy is one of selective growth under conditions of austerity.2 Selectivity is taken to be in favor of the modern heavy industrial sector, whose absolute size, as Moscow and Peking see it, constitutes the principal determinant of national power. The strategy relegates the role of agriculture to that of an instrument and food production to that of an intermediate good. To be sure, even with Stalin, consumption must remain the ultimate goal of production. But the long view implicit in his strategy in no way negates the validity of Bergson's epigrammatic statement that for any relevant planning period under consideration steel was a final good to Stalin, and bread an intermediate one.3 At the same time, a policy of growth under austerity renders inoperative the income-demand mechanism implicit in the ordinary two-sector models. The modified two-sector model relevant to the Stalinist setting departs significantly from the well-known Kuznetsian framework of considering agricultural development in terms of its factor, product, and market contributions to general growth. This in turn compromises the theoretical foundation for evaluating agricultural policy on the basis of a simple output test.4 Thus, to gain insight into policy-making and to appraise comparative performance in the agriculture of the two countries under review, it is necessary to develop first a framework that incorporates the salient analytical coordinates of the Stalinist model as well as the technical and economic realities of the settings. The purposes of this paper are several-fold: * This paper draws in part on a larger study [17] prepared for the SSRC Conference on the Economy of Mainland China. Additional research was made possible by a summer grant from Vanderbilt University. Clerical assistance was provided by the Economic Research Center of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where the author visited during 1966-67.

The Partisans of Peace

W X tHAT I have to say falls into four parts: first, the origins of the remarkable movement now called The Partisans of Peace; secondly, its skilled, in some ways brilliant, technique; thirdly, its place in Stalinist strategy; and lastly, some general comments. The press and radio output and comment on the movement-most of it by Communists-has been considerable, as can be proved by consulting the material on the subject in the Press Library at Chatham House. For the immediate history of the movement-the roots of which lie in Leninist teaching and in the anti-Fascist movements of the nineteen-thirties--I think one should refer to the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace which was held at Wroclaw (formerly Breslau) in Poland on 25 August I948. That promised to be a quite remarkable meeting; over five hundred artists, musicians, dramatists, scientists, writers, journalists, attended from some forty-four countries. Among the delegates were many who went under the impression that the discussions would be useful and constructive and would lead to genuine intellectual co-operation for peace; I still think that they might have been so. Unfortunately, the meeting started off with an introductory speech by the Soviet delegate, Fadeyev, in which he descended to what one can only call, by any standard of reasonable criticism, vulgar abuse. His speech developed quickly into a sustained attack on Western culture, Western ideas, and particularly on American civilization. In one of the classic phrases of the speech, Fadeyev said that American culture gave off the stench of decay. He then paraded the names of several wellknown writers, for example, T. S. Eliot, Sartre, Eugene O'Neill, Dos Passos, and said of these writers, 'If hyenas could type and jackals could use a fountain pen they would write such things' as were produced by these men. One can have all sorts of opinions about those writers, but this was not the way to open a congress of intellectuals who had been summoned from the ends of the earth for the very important purpose of discussing how intellectuals could co-operate for peace. At the end of the congress a liaison bureau was formed to continue its work on an international basis. At this point three things were really quite clear. One was that the peace campaign was strongly anti-American: that was almost its leading note. In so far as the peace campaign was directed against the only Power which Communists represent as aggressive, and a Power which has, or had, the monopoly of the atomic bomb, it was logical that any movement of this kind should be strongly anti-American-unless it aimed at overcoming rather than stimulating bitterness and fear. The next feature discernible at this point is that the movement was