Cybernetics for the command economy: Foregrounding entropy in late Soviet planning

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-51
Author(s):  
Diana Kurkovsky West
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Central Planning ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Command Economy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Face ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Soviet Planning

The Soviet Union had a long and complex relationship with cybernetics, especially in the domain of planning. This article looks at Soviet postwar efforts to draw up plans for the rapidly developing, industrializing, and urbanizing Siberia, where cybernetic models were used to develop a vision of cybernetic socialism. Removed from Moscow bureaucracy and politics, the various planning institutes of the Siberian Academy of Sciences became a key frontier for exploring the potential of cybernetic thinking to offer a necessary corrective to Soviet planning. Researchers there put forth a vision of a dynamic Soviet economy managed through partially automated subsystems, which, while decentralized, would grant the central planning apparatus flexibility, a capacity for emergence, and overall solvency in the face of increasingly complex factors that required consideration.

North Korea’s parallel economies: Systemic disaggregation following the Soviet collapse

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Habib
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Foreign Aid ◽  
Economic Reform ◽  
Central Planning ◽  
Command Economy ◽  
Great Famine ◽  
The Soviet Union

This article aims to introduce the concept of parallel economies to explain the transformation of North Korea’s command economy during the 1990s. The article summarises North Korea’s pre-1991 command economy, before identifying the collapse of the Soviet Union and the great famine (1994–1998) as causes for the splintering of the old command system into parallel economiesdthe official, military, illicit, court and entrepreneurial economies—separated from the central planning matrix. It concludes that the existence of parallel economies makes system-wide economic reform unlikely and increases the importance of foreign aid in maintaining the viability of the regime’s political architecture.

Some Recent Changes in Soviet Economic Policy

1956 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Work Force ◽  
Soviet Economy ◽  
Economic Assistance ◽  
Economic Competition ◽  
Industrial Growth ◽  
Rate Of Growth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Future

SOVIET economic policy in the few years since Stalin's death has been characterized by flamboyance and ferment. In an attempt to free economic growth from the bottleneck of stagnation in agriculture, Khrushchev has sponsored some extravagant gambles in corn-growing and in expansion of the sown acreage. Policy toward the consumer has gone through two complete reversals: the regime at first experimented with offering the population an improvement in the standard of living, but is now once again asserting that abundance in the future requires austerity today. Perhaps the most startling innovation of all emerged in the past year when the regime began to develop a program of foreign economic assistance as a weapon in its economic competition with the capitalist part of the world. Because of their spectacular nature, these shifts of policy have attracted considerable attention in the West and have been commented on at length. Aware diat the Soviet Union is expanding her economic power at a more rapid rate than are the capitalist countries, Western students of the Soviet economy have sought in these policy changes-some clue as to whether its rate of growth is likely to decline or to be maintained in the future. The early indications of a rise in standards of living that would cause a reduced growth of heavy industry and so a decline in investment and in the rate of growth have now been dispelled. The inability of Soviet agriculture to provide an expanding food supply for a growing work force certainly appears to be a real threat to industrial growth, and with die failure of Khrushchev's gambles, this threat remains. Thus the evidence as to the over-all effect of these changes on the rate of expansion of die Soviet economy is still inconclusive.

Flowers Through Concrete

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane Fürst
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Psychiatric Hospitals ◽  
Stable Relationship ◽  
Youth Cultures ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Socialism

Flowers through Concrete: Explorations in Soviet Hippieland does what the title promises. It takes readers on a journey into a world few knew existed: the lives and thoughts of Soviet hippies, who in the face of disapproval and repression created a version of Western counterculture, skilfully adapting, manipulating, and shaping it to their late socialist environment. This book is a quasi-guide into the underground hippieland, situating the world of hippies firmly in late Soviet reality and offering an unusual history of the last Soviet decades as well as a case study in the power of transnational youth cultures. It tells the almost forgotten story of how in the late sixties hippie communities sprang up across the Soviet Union, often under the tutelage of a few rebellious youngsters coming from privileged households at the heart of the Soviet establishment. Flowers through Concrete recounts not only a compelling story of survival against the odds—hippies were harassed by police, shorn of their hair by civilian guards, and confined in psychiatric hospitals by doctors who believed nonconformism was a symptom of schizophrenia. It also advances a surprising argument: despite obvious antagonism the land of Soviet hippies and the world of late socialism were not incompatible. Indeed, Soviet hippies and late socialist reality meshed so well that the hostile, yet stable, relationship that emerged was in many ways symbiotic. Ultimately, it was not the KGB but the arrival of capitalism in the 1990s that ended the Soviet hippie sistema.

India of 1920s as Seen by Soviet Playwright, Consulting Indologists, Theater Critics

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-144
Author(s):  
Igor Yu. Kotin ◽  
Nina G. Krasnodembskaya ◽  
Elena S. Soboleva
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
10Th Anniversary ◽  
Russian Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
Detailed Picture

The authors of this contribution analyze the circumstances and the history of a popular play that was staged in the Soviet Union in 1927-1928. Titled Jumah Masjid, this play was devoted to the anti-colonial movement in India. A manuscript of the play, not indicating its title and the name of its author, was found in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences among the papers related to A.M. and L.A. Meerwarth, members of the First Russian Expedition to Ceylon and India (1914-1918). Later on, two copies of this play under the title The Jumah Masjid were found in the Russian Archive of Literature and Art and in the Museum of the Tovstonogov Grand Drama Theatre. The authors of this article use archival and published sources to analyze the reasons for writing and staging the play. They consider the image of India as portrayed by a Soviet playwright in conjunction with Indologists that served as consultants, and as seen by theater critics and by the audience (according to what the press reflected). Arguably, the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia in 1927 and the VI Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1928 encouraged writing and staging the play. The detailed picture of the anti-colonial struggle in India that the play offered suggests that professional Indologists were consulted. At the same time the play is critical of the non-violent opposition encouraged by Mahatma Gandhi as well as the Indian National Congress and its political wing known as the Swaraj Party. The research demonstrates that the author of the play was G.S. Venetsianov, and his Indologist consultants were Alexander and Liudmila Meerwarth.

Ethnicity and Anthropology in the Soviet Union

1977 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Gellner
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
The West ◽  
Academic World ◽  
Soviet Academy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Interaction History ◽  
Academy Of Sciences ◽  
The Revolution

InThePastDecade, a minor revolution has taken place within Soviet Anthropology. ‘Ethnography’ is one of the recognised disciplines in the Soviet academic world, and corresponds roughly to what in the West is called social anthropology. This revolution has as yet been barely noticed by outside observers (1). Its leader is Yulian Bromley, a very Russian scholar with a very English surname, Director of the Institute of Ethnography of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. The revolution consists of making ethnography into the studies of ethnos-es, or, in current Western academic jargon, into the study of ethnicity—in other words the study of the phenomena of national feeling, identity, and interaction. History is about chaps, geography is about maps, and ethnography is about ethnoses. What else ? The revolution is supported by arguments weightier than mere verbal suggestiveness; but by way of persuasive consideration, etymology is also invoked.

Chen Duxiu and Leon Trotsky: New Light on their Relationship

1985 ◽  
Vol 102 ◽  
pp. 253-276
Author(s):  
Peter Kuhfus
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Communist Movement ◽  
Leon Trotsky ◽  
Far Eastern ◽  
Chen Duxiu ◽  
The Relationship

After the 1927/28 upheaval in the communist movement, a complex relationship evolved between Chen Duxiu (1879–1942) and Leon Trotsky (1879–1940). To date little has been written about this relationship in the west. The relationship between Chen and Trotsky, however, deserves treatment in its own right for various reasons. First, an elucidation of the contacts between them should close a significant gap in the respective biographies of the two Opposition leaders. The intention is not only to define Trotsky's role as seen from Chen's perspective, but also to emphasize the Far Eastern component hitherto underestimated in biographies of Trotsky. Secondly, the reconstruction of the relationship between Chen and Trotsky constitutes an important, correcting supplement to our knowledge of the developments ( = Wirkungsgeschichte) of “Trotskyism” in China, as it has been described as a concrete phenomenon as well as an ideological-political undercurrent. Thirdly, a study of the relationship between Chen and Trotsky should provide a better understanding of relations between the Communists of China and of the Soviet Union.

scholarly journals Dyplomacja Nicolae Ceauşescu wobec przemian politycznych w Polsce w 1989 roku

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 239-258
Author(s):  
Krzysztof Nowak
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Warsaw Pact ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Communist Leader ◽  
Armed Intervention ◽  
Communist Countries ◽  
Gorbachev Era ◽  
Nicolae Ceausescu

Nicolae Ceauşescu’s Diplomacy in the Face of Political Changes in Poland in 1989 In 1989, Romania belonged to the communist countries, which particularly strongly attacked communist Poland for carrying out democratic reforms. For many months the diplomacy of communist leader Nicolae Ceaşescu tried to organize a conference of socialist countries on the subject of Poland, but as a result of Moscow’s opposition it did not come to fruition. During the Gorbachev era, the Soviet Union rejected the Brezhnev doctrine, while Romania actually urged its restoration. This was in contradiction with the current political line of Ceauşescu in favor of not interfering in the internal affairs of socialist countries. However, in 1989 it was a threat to communism, which is why historians also have polemics about Romanian suggestions for the armed intervention of the Warsaw Pact in Poland. In turn, Romania did not allow Poland to interfere in the problems of the Polish minority in Bukovina.

scholarly journals Richard Pipes: A Life Against the Tide (1923-2018)

2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 135-149
Author(s):  
Wojciech Łysek
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
The United States ◽  
Scientific Activity ◽  
Political Activities ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Political Studies ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Academy Of Sciences

The article discusses the life and work of the outstanding Sovietologist Richard Pipes, who was born in a Polonized Jewish family in Polish Cieszyn. After an adventurous trip to the United States in 1939 and 1940, he graduated in history from Harvard University and devoted himself to scientific work. For the next half a century, Pipes dealt with the historical and contemporary aspects of Russia. In his numerous publications, including more than 20 monographs, he emphasised that the Soviet Union continued rather than broke with the political practice of tsarist Russia. In his professional work, he thus contested views prevailing among American researchers and society. From the 1960s, Pipes was involved in political activities. He was sceptical about détente, advocating more decisive actions towards the Soviet Union. Between 1981 and 1983, he was the director of the Department of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the National Security Council in the administration of President Ronald Reagan. Although retiring in 1996, he did not give up his scientific activity. Pipes died on 17 May 2018; according to his last will, his private book collection of 3,500 volumes has been donated to the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

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