“And Under Communism Everything Will Be…”: How the Planning Agencies of the USSR Saw the Nation’s Wealth by 1980

Abstract

1950s and 1960s saw the start of constructing a communist society in the USSR. The State Council on Research and Economics of the Council of Ministers played a key role in that process. Its task was to develop a plan for economic development up to 1980. The plan would lay out the development of every sector of the national economy. The document had to contain a quantitative analysis and support for the III Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The section on the nation’s economic well-being is of significant interest, as it contains data on more than 90 indicators starting from 1958 (factual data) and prospective results every five years, from 1960 until 1980. The data show that the Soviet person was regarded not as a subject but an object. He did not choose living conditions, the amount of fruit and vegetables to eat, the number of shoes and clothes to own, etc. The biology of the human being had to be rationalized to make the body totally controllable. Data show that short-term and long-term economic development plans presupposed strict equality between production and consumption. Such an approach excluded any possibility of the unplanned and chaotic trajectory of development. The paper confirms the claim that Soviet authorities of the 1950s and 1960s believed in the ideal that communism was Soviet power and American standards of living would meet.