Economic Strategies at the “Khrushchev Decade” : Illusions and Disappointments

Artemov, Evgeny and Vodichev, Evgeny (2024) Economic Strategies at the “Khrushchev Decade” : Illusions and Disappointments. RUSSIANSTUDIES.HU, 6 (2). pp. 133-153. ISSN 2677-0660

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Abstract

The article is devoted to an analysis of the USSR’s socioeconomic development strategy during the “Khrushchev decade” and an assessment of its practical results. Based on an interpretation of the key factors and determinants of strategy formation, the authors clarify a number of controversial issues existing in historiography and attempt to explain systemic failures in achieving the stated goals. The role and significance of ideological, institutional, structural-production and personal aspects in choosing the paths, methods and mechanisms of the chosen strategy are articulated. When interpreting specific historical material, key theoretical provisions of the concepts of post-industrial development, catch-up modernization and the administrative-bureaucratic market are used, which are significant for the analysis of the fundamental principles of practical politics and the reconstruction of the real process of economic management. It is concluded that the policy of the Khrushchev leadership, in addition to its inability to ensure the acceleration of socioeconomic development, had one important, albeit unforeseen, consequence. It contributed to the transformation of the Stalinist “command” economy into an “economy of approvals” with its inherent reproduction of “institutional traps”, insusceptibility to innovation and fading dynamics. The latter, in the long term, ensured the preservation of the country’s previous model of economic development, contributed to the formation of negative trends in the further evolution of the Soviet economy and played a decisive role in the subsequent collapse of the USSR.

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