Abstract
Gosplan, unlike all the other major government departments, did not manage or control any specific sector or function of the economy. It was established in February 1921 not as a People’s Commissariat but as the ‘State General Planning Commission’.1 It was responsible to the Council of Labour and Defence (STO), the permanent committee for economic affairs. STO was in turn a sub-committee of the Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), the supreme executive body. Gosplan was not legally a part of but attached to STO; this arrangement emphasised both that it was more autonomous than an ordinary government department, and also that its status was advisory rather than executive. This was its formal status. In practice, however, the Politburo was the supreme decision-making body; and the role of Gosplan was to act as an adviser to the political leaders in the Politburo, and it frequently reported directly to them.
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Notes
Sobranie uzakonenii, 1921, art. 106 (dated 22 February) legislation of the Russian Federation; Gosplan was transferred to the USSR when the latter was established in 1923, and was renamed ‘State Planning Commission (Izvestiya, 14 July 1923; A.V. Venediktov, Organizatsiya gosudarstvennoi promyshlennosti v SSSR (Moscow, 1961) ii, p. 33) and further Gosplans were established in each of the republics of the Union.
See N. Jasny, Soviet Economists of the Twenties (Cambridge, 1972) pp. 92–123;
and N. Valentinov, Novaya ekonomicheskaya politika i krizis partii posle smerti Lenina: vospominaniya (Stanford, 1971) passim.
Protokoly prezidiuma Gosplana 1923g., i (1991), 193 (session of 23 May). Krzhizhanovsky added that ‘we take market relations into account, we want to be realists, but at the same time we will firmly hold the wheel in the direction which is necessary’. See also citations from Krzhizhanovsky and Strumilin in R.W. Davies, The Socialist Offensive (London, 1980) 35.
E.H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, 1924–1926 (London, 1958) i, 503–8.
These measures are described in E.H. Carr and R.W. Davies, Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926–1929 (London, 1969) pp. 299–302,667–9,684–91, 773–6,816–18.
See personnel changes reported in R.W. Davies, et al. (eds) Soviet Government Officials, 1922–1941: A Handlist (Birmingham, 1989), 71–2.
See R.W. Davies, The Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 1929–1930 (London, 1989) pp. 399–400.
V.I. Kuz’min, V bor’be za sotsialisticheskuyu rekonstruktsiyu, 1926–1937 (Moscow, 1976) pp. 187–8.
A.S. Tochinskii, Byli industrial’nye (Moscow, 1970) 186–8 (Tochinskii’s own account written many years later, and biased in his own favour).
XVII konf. (1932), 149 (Molotov’s report); see also p. 170 (Kuibyshev); the prices are not stated (see E. Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth (London, 1980) p. 117).
See E. Zaleski, Planning for Economic Growth in the Soviet Union, 1918–1932 (Chapel Hill, 1971) p. 217; the revised figures appear in an article sent to press in May (PKh, 1, 1932, 133).
O.V. Khlevnyuk, et al. (eds), Stalinskoe Politbyuro v 30-e gody (Moscow, 1995) pp. 90–2.
On the work of Gosplan on plan balances, which were strongly emphasised from 1936 onwards, see S.G. Wheatcroft’s article in S.G. Wheatcroft and R.W. Davies eds, Materials for a Balance of the Soviet National Economy, 1928–1930 (Cambridge, 1985) 43–4.
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Davies, R.W., Khlevnyuk, O. (1997). Gosplan. In: Rees, E.A. (eds) Decision-making in the Stalinist Command Economy, 1932–37. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25295-4_3
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