Brezhnev economic stagnation (1964-82)

Question 1

What was the annual economic growth rate in Russia by the mid-1970s?

Answer 1

2%

Question 2

Two thirds of the USSR’s income from exports came from the sale of a single item. What item?

Answer 2

Oil

Question 3

What word describes the Soviet attitude of needing to offer a kickback or bribe by anyone who wanted to secure any kind of service?

Answer 3

Graft

Question 4

What percentage of the Soviet GNP was the black market thought to be responsible for?

Answer 4

20%

Question 5

What fraction of household income in the countryside was being spent on alcohol?

Answer 5

1/3

Question 6

What discovery ‘saved’ Russia from real economic trouble and helped to mask its structural problems?

Answer 6

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.

Question 7

During Brezhnev’s era the USSR became the world’s biggest importer of what?

Answer 7

Grain - 1/3 all baked goods made from imported grain.

Question 8

What area received significant increased funding under Brezhnev?

Answer 8

The military - military spending increased from 11% GPM in 1964 to 13% in 1970. Cold War - 18% Russia’s resources put into armaments.

Question 9

What word describes policies such as increasing welfare benefits in order to soften or hide the severity of economic problems?

Answer 9

ameliorative

Question 10

What was the rapid growth of government ‘jobs’ likened to?

Answer 10

Mushrooms - if you worked for govt, would have access to diff shops and services compared to rest of population - stocked with goods from abroad.

Question 11

4% of Russian agricultural land was farmed as private plots by peasants. What percentage of agricultural produce did this 4% of land yield?

Answer 11

40%

Question 12

Which technology was not vigorously pursued by the USSR as they simply didn’t understand them?

Answer 12

Electronics - viewed typewriters and photocopiers with suspicion - worried they might encourage spread of dissident behaviour.

Question 13

The USSR had a reasonable number of tractors and farm machinery, but what was the problem with them?

Answer 13

No availability of spare parts

Question 14

What items were scarcest in ordinary Russian shops?

Answer 14

Meat and dairy products

Question 15

What percentage of the workforce worked in the military and related industries?

Answer 15

30%

Question 16

Kosygin reforms

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

Agriculture

Answer 17

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.

Question 18

Industry

Answer 18

Industrial growth slowing down - govt decided to publish far less statistics.

Question 19

Ninth FYP

Answer 19

Targets comprehensively not met - no attempt to suggest they had been.

Question 20

Education system

Answer 20

successful - educated Russians well.

Question 21

Job choice

Answer 21

Jobs people likely to get when they left school = mundane + low skilled - little incentive to work hard.

Question 22

Evidence to suggest that B was afraid of making significant changes and did not want to make huge reforms to the system?

Answer 22

1979 - Deputy PM Krillin delivered speech calling for major restructuring of economy - he was sacked and his speech suppressed.

Question 23

Economic disaster of the Aral Sea in Turkestan.

Answer 23

Diverted rivers to irrigate land for cotton.

Sa dried up leaving salt desert behind.

Question 24

How was the money from Oil spent?

Answer 24

Consumer goods

Military - 1979 - invaded Afghanistan - 10 year war.

Question 25

How did B spend money to sustain the fiction that the Union was giving a better life to its people?

Answer 25

Spent money on unemployment benefits, transport and on subsidising heating bills.

Question 26

What was the problem with B’s policy regarding consumer goods?

Answer 26

State deciding what the people might wasn’t to buy, rather than the people themselves.

Question 27

Social problems and dissidence.

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

Black market

Answer 28

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.