Brezhnev economic stagnation (1964-82) Flashcards
What was the annual economic growth rate in Russia by the mid-1970s?
2%
Two thirds of the USSR’s income from exports came from the sale of a single item. What item?
Oil
What word describes the Soviet attitude of needing to offer a kickback or bribe by anyone who wanted to secure any kind of service?
Graft
What percentage of the Soviet GNP was the black market thought to be responsible for?
20%
What fraction of household income in the countryside was being spent on alcohol?
1/3
What discovery ‘saved’ Russia from real economic trouble and helped to mask its structural problems?
Oil - 1973 - World Oil Crisis - fivefold increase in in price of oil per barrel - 30 billion roubles spent on the Baikul Amur railway to more easily get to these oil reserves + expensive pipe built to link Siberia to the West.
During Brezhnev’s era the USSR became the world’s biggest importer of what?
Grain - 1/3 all baked goods made from imported grain.
What area received significant increased funding under Brezhnev?
The military - military spending increased from 11% GPM in 1964 to 13% in 1970. Cold War - 18% Russia’s resources put into armaments.
What word describes policies such as increasing welfare benefits in order to soften or hide the severity of economic problems?
ameliorative
What was the rapid growth of government ‘jobs’ likened to?
Mushrooms - if you worked for govt, would have access to diff shops and services compared to rest of population - stocked with goods from abroad.
4% of Russian agricultural land was farmed as private plots by peasants. What percentage of agricultural produce did this 4% of land yield?
40%
Which technology was not vigorously pursued by the USSR as they simply didn’t understand them?
Electronics - viewed typewriters and photocopiers with suspicion - worried they might encourage spread of dissident behaviour.
The USSR had a reasonable number of tractors and farm machinery, but what was the problem with them?
No availability of spare parts
What items were scarcest in ordinary Russian shops?
Meat and dairy products
What percentage of the workforce worked in the military and related industries?
30%
Kosygin reforms
Kosygin = PM for early part of Brezhnev’s rule.
Unable to make a huge impact.
Example - stated that because state farms = inefficient should have their funding cut and the money should be put into light industry.
Abandoned after 1968 - concerns it might create too much instability - might lead to political instability.
Agriculture
B tried to improve status of the peasant - kolkhoz farmers = 2nd class citizens e.g. allowed them to have same welfare benefits as those in the cities.
Most rural households still lacked running water, electricity and proper sanitation.
Reforms made very little improvement to living standards or agriculture.
Industry
Industrial growth slowing down - govt decided to publish far less statistics.
Ninth FYP
Targets comprehensively not met - no attempt to suggest they had been.
Education system
successful - educated Russians well.
Job choice
Jobs people likely to get when they left school = mundane + low skilled - little incentive to work hard.
Evidence to suggest that B was afraid of making significant changes and did not want to make huge reforms to the system?
1979 - Deputy PM Krillin delivered speech calling for major restructuring of economy - he was sacked and his speech suppressed.
Economic disaster of the Aral Sea in Turkestan.
Diverted rivers to irrigate land for cotton.
Sa dried up leaving salt desert behind.
How was the money from Oil spent?
Consumer goods
Military - 1979 - invaded Afghanistan - 10 year war.
How did B spend money to sustain the fiction that the Union was giving a better life to its people?
Spent money on unemployment benefits, transport and on subsidising heating bills.
What was the problem with B’s policy regarding consumer goods?
State deciding what the people might wasn’t to buy, rather than the people themselves.
Social problems and dissidence.
Orlando Figes - villages were ‘ghettos of the old, the infirm and the alcoholic’.
Reason for alcoholism = people unhappy with their lives.
Average age of men dropped from 66 in 1964 to 62 in 1980.
10 million people arrested by police for being drunk.
No terror - people less afraid
Had to resort to fairly heavy handed oppression to contain dissidence e.g. labelling dissidents as having health problems and kept under sedation in psychiatric hospitals.
Black market
Allows rest of system to limp on.
Everyone including B knew about the black market - it was illegal but tolerated - undermined respect for official market.
