Foreign sovietologists on the potential for development of the agricultural sector of the ussr of the late socialist period

Issue № 6, 2021, article № 15, pages 138-143

Section: International relations and world agricultural experience

Language: Russian

Original language title: ЗАРУБЕЖНЫЕ СОВЕТОЛОГИ О ПОТЕНЦИАЛЕ РАЗВИТИЯ АГРАРНОГО СЕКТОРА СССР ПОЗДНЕСОЦИАЛИСТИЧЕСКОГО ПЕРИОДА

Keywords: PLANNED ECONOMY, ECONOMIC CAPACITY, ECONOMIC POLICY, SCENARIOS, SOVIETOLOGY, EFFICIENCY, ECONOMIC REFORMS, RETROSPECT, AGRICULTURE, PRIVATE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR

Abstract: This article examines the perceived options for the development of agriculture in the Soviet Union, in the spectrum of the country's overall economic development, in the second half of the 1980s. Its reviewing part analyzes presumed by Western researchers scenarios of possible economic reforms in the USSR of the late socialist period, nominated by Western researchers as in this historical period, and modern — with regard to subsequent changes in social, economic and political condition of the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. It is shown that the assessments and data contained in foreign studies suggested the need to reform the Soviet economy but none of the researchers assumed possibility of radical reforms due to their riskiness for the economic system of the USSR in particular and the country as a whole. It was pointed out that the Soviet economy is markedly different from the economy of the Eastern European socialist countries and does not allow the introduction of market elements, primarily due to the fact that it does not have the space for such implementation. None of the forecasts were able to predict the reforms of 1985-1991, known as Perestroika.

Authors: Nazarenko Maksim Borisovich