Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

“Under Communism, We’ll Have Everything…”: State Planning of Living Standards for the Soviet Man by the Year 1980

  • Published:
Herald of the Russian Academy of Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The 1950s and 1960s saw the start of building a communist society in the Soviet Union. The State Council for Science and Economy (Gosekonomsovet) under the USSR Council of Ministers played a key role in this process. Its task was to develop the General Prospects of Economic Development until the Year of 1980 (GPED), a document that specified long-term development targets for every sector of the national economy and every republic of the Soviet Union. The document was to determine quantitative indicators based on the principles established by the Third Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Of  high scholarly interest are the GPED sections on the growth of economic welfare in the Russian State Federative Socialist Republic, which contains factual data on more than 90 indicators starting from 1958 and planned indicators for every five years from 1960 up until 1980, and the section “Rational family budget (in per capita terms),” calculated for the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In the plans analyzed, the Soviet man is treated as an object rather than a subject. It is decided for people what housing conditions they should live in, how much fruit and potatoes they should eat, how much clothing and footwear they should possess. The communism planned by 1980 differs markedly from the concept of communism in the works by the classics of Marxism–Leninism. For example, it is planned to retain commodity–money relations and state control over labor resources. It is concluded, inter alia, that the Soviet leadership of the 1950s–1960s employs the formula that communism is the Soviet government plus the American standard of living.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. Fokin, A.A., Kommunizm ne za gorami. Obrazy budushchego u vlasti i naseleniya SSSR na rubezhe 1950–1960-kh godov [Communism Not Far off. Images of the Future Held by Powers-That-Be and the Population of the Soviet Union at the Turn of the 1950s–1960s], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2017.

  2. Taubman, W., Khrushchev: The Man and His Era, W.W. Norton & Co., 2003.

  3. Kaganovich, L.M., Pamyatnye zapiski rabochego, kommunista-bol’shevika, profsoyuznogo, partiinogo i sovetsko-gosudarstvennogo rabotnika [Memoirs of a Laborer, Communist Bolshevik, Trade Unionist, Party Worker, and Soviet Statesman], Moscow: Vagrius, 1996.

  4. Aksyutin, Yu.V., Khrushchevskaya “ottepel’” i obshchestvennye nastroeniya v SSSR v 1953–1964 gg. [Khrushchev’s “Thaw” and Public Sentiment in the Soviet Union in 1953–1964], Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2004, p. 448.

  5. Berelowitch, A., Semidesyatye gody XX veka: replika v diskussii [The seventies of the 20th century: a remark in the discussion], Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniya, 2003, no. 4 (66), p. 64.

  6. Ivanova, G.M., Na poroge “gosudarstva vseobshchego blagosostoyaniya”. Sotsial’naya politika v SSSR (seredina 1950-kh–nachalo 1970-kh godov) [At the Doorstep of the “Welfare State”: Social Policy in the Soviet Union (Mid-1950s–Early 1970s)], Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 2011, p. 274.

  7. Reid, S., Cold War in the kitchen: Gender and de-Stalinisation of consumer taste in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, Slavic Review, 2002, vol. 61, no. 2, pp. 211–252.

  8. Lebina, N.B., Povsednevnost’ epokhi kosmosa i kukuruzy. Destruktsiya bol’shogo stilya. Leningrad, 1950–1960-e gody [Everyday Life in the Era of Space and Corn: Destruction of a Major Style. Leningrad, 1950–1960s], St. Petersburg: Kriga, 2015.

  9. Ivanova, A., Magaziny “Berezka”: paradoksy potrebleniya v pozdnem SSSR [The Berezka Shops: Paradoxes of Consumption in the Late Soviet Union], Moscow: NLO, 2017.

  10. Russian State Archives of Economic Documents (hereinafter, RSAED), Fund 7. State Council for Science and Economy (Gosekonomsovet) under the USSR Council of Ministers, 1959–1962.

  11. Nekrasov, V.L., Sovetskii ekonomicheskii reformism epokhi N.S. Khrushcheva: avtoritarnyi reformator, partiino-gosudarstvennaya sistema i akademicheskoe soobshchestvo [Soviet economic reformism of Khrushchev’s era: authoritarian reformer, party–state system, and academic community], Novyi istoricheskii vestnik, 2017, no. 54, pp. 71–91.

  12. Burlatskii, F.M., Glotok svobody [A Jolt of Freedom], Moscow: RIK Kul’tura, 1997, vol. 1, p. 98.

  13. Khrushchev, S.N., Nikita Khrushchev: reformator [Nikita Khrushchev: A Reformer], Moscow: Vremya, 2010, p. 753.

  14. Russian State Archives of Social and Political History (hereinafter, RSASPH), Fund 586, Inventory 1, File 201, fol. 34.

  15. Khrushchev, N.S., O kontrol’nykh tsifrakh razvitiya narodnogo khozyaistva SSSR na 1959–1965 gody [On the control figures for the development of the national economy of the Soviet Union for 1959–1965], in Vneocherednoi XXI S”ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza. 27 yanvarya–5 fevralya 1959 goda: stenograficheskii otchet: v 2 tomakh [Special Extraordinary 21st Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. January 27–February 5, 1959: Verbatim Record: in 2 vol.], Moscow: Politizdat, 1959, vol. 1, p. 49.

  16. Gak, G., Kommunizm i lichnaya sobstvennost’ [Communism and personal property], Kommunist, 1961, no. 1, pp. 70, 72.

  17. Lenin, V.I., Gosudarstvo i revolyutsiya: Uchenie marksizma o gosudarstve i zadachi proletariata v revolyutsii [State and revolution: the teaching of Marxism on the state and the tasks of the proletariat in the revolution, in Lenin V.I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Complete Collection of Works], vol. 33, p. 96.

  18. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 71.

  19. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 132.

  20. Programma Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza [Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union], in XXII S”ezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza. 17–31 oktyabrya 1961 goda: stenograficheskii otchet: v 3 tomakh [22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. October 17–31, 1961: Verbatim Record: in 3 vol.], Moscow: Politizdat, 1962, vol. 3, pp. 295–296.

  21. RSASPH, Fund 586, Inventory 1, File 201, fol. 14.

  22. Russian State Archives of Contemporary History, Fund 1, Inventory 4, File 13, fol. 13.

  23. Kommunizm vkhodit v nashu zhizn’ [Communism Comes in Our Lifetime], Ed. by S.N. Novikov, Moscow: Politizdat, 1961, pp. 4–5.

  24. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 71, fols. 1–16.

  25. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 71, fols. 1–16.

  26. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 71, fols. 1–16.

  27. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 71, fols. 1–16.

  28. Programma Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soyuza… [Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union…], p. 297.

  29. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 71, fols. 12–14.

  30. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 132, fol. 2.

  31. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 132, fols. 4–5.

  32. RSAED, Fund 7, Inventory 3, File 132, fols. 5–6.

Funding

This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation, project no. 20-18-00342 “Institutional and neo-institutional rituals in late Soviet society (1956–1985).”

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chelyabinsk State University, Chelyabinsk, Russia

    S. A. Bakanov

  2. Tyumen State University, Tyumen, Russia

    A. A. Fokin

Authors
  1. S. A. Bakanov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. A. A. Fokin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to S. A. Bakanov or A. A. Fokin.

Ethics declarations

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Additional information

Translated by A. Kobkova

Sergei Alekseevich Bakanov, Dr. Sci. (Hist.), is an Assoc. Professor and Head of the Department of the History of Russia and Foreign Countries, Chelyabinsk State University. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Fokin, Cand. Sci. (Hist.), is an Assoc. Professor at the School of Environmental and Social Studies (Anthroposhcool), Tyumen State University.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Bakanov, S.A., Fokin, A.A. “Under Communism, We’ll Have Everything…”: State Planning of Living Standards for the Soviet Man by the Year 1980. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 92 (Suppl 10), S973–S982 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331622160031

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331622160031

Keywords:

Search

Navigation