A look at the economic reforms of the nineties

For more than twenty years, disputes about the need and options for radical economic reforms that occurred in the nineties have not ceased in Russian society. The points of view are polar.

And the restructuring of Gorbachev and the reforms of Yeltsin, Gaidar, Chubais, some extremely literate citizens of the country even call fascism. Not much thinking about the meaning of the term.

Faszio, from which the term fascism is derived, is a bunch of Latin, and fascism itself means a political system characterized by the unity of the people, the party and the leader of the party and state. Something familiar, is not it?

And it was the founder of fascism, Benito Mussolini, who was the first to organize cultural centers with amateur art groups, rest homes and sanatoria for workers. That he then borrowed both Stalin and Hitler ...

Well, come on, that's not it. The Stalin economy was imprisoned solely for military production, based on the strictest discipline of the order, and when the "guard tired" became inoperative. In the notes of Beria's son there is information that already Lavrenty Pavlovich planned something like the resumption of the NEP, but it did not happen.

Nikita did some reforms, too, but he was too shy from side to side, as a result he was accused of voluntarism. Nevertheless, we owe it to him with some liberalization in the political sphere.

Was conceived and began economic reform and Kosygin, prime minister under Brezhnev. It was assumed that the planned indicators would significantly decrease, and the economic independence of enterprises would increase. From the words of Kosygin's son-in-law Gvishiani, he was very positive about such form of ownership as joint-stock companies.

But the opposition of Brezhnev, Suslov, and other members of the Politburo prevented the implementation of reform.

Those who happily sigh about Soviet times, believing that in those years everything was exactly as it was written on the pages of Pravda, I recommend that you google Google Nagybin's Diary. A very successful writer, praised by the Soviet authorities, kept a diary for himself, not hoping for publication. His relatives published after his death in the nineties. There are very vivid descriptions of the agriculture of the Russian outback of the seventies.

The author of these lines happened to be in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the eighties to the nineties, and a couple of times to hear at the party meetings "closed" letters (well, it was assumed that not for extraneous ears) letters from the CPSU Central Committee to the members of the party. The keynote of the letters was one: the economy was at its last gasp. True, the only thing the Central Committee offered was to strengthen and corrupt ...

Andropov, having come to power, began experiments with the improvement of labor remuneration, but they were so insignificant, and the term of office of this secretary general is so short ...

Therefore, when Gorbachev came to power, he could not not begin to change something. He just did not know how. In the eighty-sixth, the Paris Maten published an article in which she wrote that in the USSR they would smoke for several years and realize that, apart from market reforms, there are no other options. Clearly, Pravda published an angry rebuff ...

Gorbachev constantly repeated like a mantra that we must prove the historical advantages of socialism, completely not knowing what they are.

If we take into account that in addition to the eighty-fifth oil prices that fell sharply in the fall, he himself deprived himself of the vodka budget by launching an anti-alcohol campaign, and having organized an "acceleration of scientific and technical progress" to the heap, accompanied by an infusion of huge money into engineering, As a result of which unprecedented inflation, which in the Soviet years had been hidden, was unraveled.

Ie, at stable state prices, the goods themselves disappeared. And the dollar, which cost another 86 rubles on the black market 4 rubles, was already 20 rubles in the 90's, in August 91-35 rubles.

And somewhere by the summer of the eighty-ninth the industry almost stopped working. There were no incentives, the ruble discredited itself as a means of payment, everyone wanted either SCR or barter.

In order not to be unfounded ... In 91-m, the author worked in a cooperative that manufactured containers of stainless steel. We did not sell them for rubles, we did not need them, they could not buy anything. Meat and eggs were exchanged for the agricultural enterprises of the Leningrad Region ...

In November 1991, when Yeltsin appointed Gaidar prime minister, Russia's gold and currency reserves for various sources were 16-50 million. Rubles. Ludicrous figures for a huge country.

And it was necessary to do something, and urgently, otherwise the country was waiting for devastation and starvation.

The first step was Gaidar's liberalization of prices, which made the ruble a means of payment. And, within six months of his stay in power, Gaidar did not publish money, there was no inflation. The dollar, which cost in January 92nd 120 rubles, in June cost 90r. The printing press again launched, unleashing inflation, which came to the government Chernomyrdin.

Well, and privatization on Chubais, finally. In the 91st industry stood, no one was interested in production. To restart it, the owner was simply needed.

To sell for money would mean that the property would have gone to Western companies, they did not have such money yet, they appeared later, by the mid-nineties. By the way, with the beer, tobacco, and many other branches of the diet this is what happened: they went to Western companies. But the strategically important oil industry was given to its own.

Is it good? .. A private company is a priori managed better than the state. The interest of the state is the same as that of the private owner, so that he gets more profits from assets so that the state can take more taxes.

As it turned out, it is difficult to judge. Capitalism in Russia was heading forward eight years. But in these years there were extremely low oil prices. When they grew up, a movement began in the direction of the reverse stateization of the economy, the return of assets to the state, the creation of state corporations.

Although what we have today, in my personal opinion is still better than in the times of the USSR. Forward, thanks to economic reforms, we nevertheless stepped forward. The main thing is to move forward, not backward ...