Choosing Stagnation. The Kosygin Reforms and the Rise of Brezhnev’s Stagnationary Coalition

AbstractThis essay seeks to restore stagnation as a category of analysis to understand late-Soviet socialism. It argues that the conservative politics of the Brezhnev period and its tepid economic growth were the results of a choice by Soviet elites to prioritise political stability over a consumerist reconfiguration of the Soviet growth model. This choice was undertaken in the context of the Kosygin reforms, measures aimed at arresting the looming stagflation of the late Khrushchev era. The defeat of the reforms marked a political caesura at which stagnation became an acceptable risk for the party elite. Disclosure statement:No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 In an open economy, a persistently high savings rate can be sustained if the state runs a perpetually high trade surplus thereby importing consumer demand.2 In the literature and this essay, investment is discussed in two senses. The first indicates the deployment of resources to create new capacity in a particular sector. The second is an approach to rapid ‘catch-up’ growth through expansion in the capacity in the producer goods sectors, or the repression of domestic consumption and reliance on export profits. The latter has been termed ‘investment-led’ growth in the literature on late modernising in Asia. Because of the ubiquity of this term in the literature and my reliance on it, I will use ‘investment-led growth’ to describe the Soviet growth model (Pettis Citation2001; Ahuja & Nabar Citation2012; Dos Santos Citation2015; Pirie Citation2018).3 Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Akademii nauk (hereafter ARAN), f. 1705, op. 1, d. 166, ll. 14–26. Translated by Ethan Pollack for the Cold War International History Project Digital Archive, available at: http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/110984, accessed 9 June 2015.4 Officially, the plan did not sufficiently take into account new advances in science and thus underinvested in the petrochemical industry. Other accounts speak to the Sixth Five-Year Plan’s insufficiently ambitious and well-defined targets.5 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (hereafter RGAE), f. 2324, op. 28, d. 2427, ll. 32–43.6 RGAE, f. 2324, op. 28, d. 2427, ll. 32–43.7 ARAN, f. 1849, op. 1, d. 51, ll. 1–12. Soviet calculations of aggregate labour productivity were measured by the percent difference between the gross volume of production between two plan periods and the change in the labour force employed. Hourly and factor calculations were done for short-term branch planning (Golov Citation1968).8 Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter, GARF), f. 5446, op. 99, d. 430, ll. 77–8.9 GARF, f. 5446, op. 99, d. 1, ll. 8–18.10 Emphasis added. RGAE, f. 9480, op. 7, d. 261, ll. 1–6.11 RGAE, f. 9480, op. 7, d. 261, ll. 7–8.12 RGAE, f. 9480, op. 7, d. 261, ll. 30–47.13 GARF, f. 5446, op. 99, d. 431, l. 134.14 RGAE, f. 4372, f. 66, op. 3962, ll. 1–3.15 RGAE, f. 4372, f. 66, op. 3962, ll. 1–3.16 RGAE, f. 2324, op. 28, d. 2651, ll. 46–8.17 GARF, f. 5446, op. 105, d. 6, ll. 5–7.18 Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (hereafter, RGANI), f. 5, op. 6, d. 227, ll. 49–51.19 RGAE, f. 9480, op. 9, d. 540, ll. 60–1.20 GARF, f. 5446, op. 105, d. 10, l. 16.21 RGANI, f. 80, op. 1, d. 90, ll. 3–68.22 XXIV s’ezd KPSS: stenograficheskii otchet (Moscow, Gospolitizdat, 1971).23 RGANI, f. 80, op. 1, d. 314, ll. 10–40.24 RGANI, f. 80, op. 1, d. 168, l. 1.Additional informationFundingParts of this research were supported by the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Development Research Abroad (DDRA) grant, the University of Pennsylvania, and the INET-Harvard History Project.Notes on contributorsYakov FeyginYakov Feygin, The Berggruen Institute, Bradbury Building, 304 S. Broadway, Suite 500, Los Angeles, CA 90013, USA. Email: yfeygin@berggruen.org