Talk:Soviet Union/Archive 7

Pending changes
This article is one of a small number (about 100) selected for the first week of the trial of the Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Pending changes/Queue  are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

However with only a few hours to go, comments have only been made on two of the pages.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially.

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 20:32, 15 June 2010 (UTC).

Ethnic groups II
Below is my proposal for the "Ethnic groups" section. Since in actuality the section deals with both ethnic groups and national policy in the USSR, I propose to rename it accordingly. I took the Colchicum's text (which is generally good) as a start point and did the following changes:
 * Since the first para is devoted to the ethnic composition of the USSR, I moved all relevant material there. I added the mention of the Holocaust and removed all commentary on the causes of population transfers (which are more relevant to daughter articles).
 * I removed the mention of Russification because switching from Roman to Cyrillic is hardly a Russification (especially for the nations that had no alphabet at all)
 * I added more on the history of anti-Semitism in the USSR, because it was officially condemned in early USSR, almost officially promoted under late Stalin and de jure (although not de facto) abandoned later.

Ethnic groups and national policy


 * "Ethnic Russians were the largest ethnic group overall, consistently making up just over half the population. They comprised 52.9% according to the 1926 census and 50,8% according to the 1989 census. The second largest ethnic group were Ukrainians (15.5% in 1989), followed by Uzbeks (5.8%), Belorussians (3.5%), Kazakhs (2.8%) and Tatars (2.3%). Large variation in ethnic composition existed across the constituent republics. The titular ethnicity the republic was named after almost always formed a majority there, the only exception after 1956 being the Kazakh SSR, where no single ethnicity did, as Russians and Kazakhs were two largest groups. Ethnic composition of some regions of the USSR was significantly affected by wars (e.g. extermination of Jews during World War II), famine of 1932-1933 (that hit Kazakh and Ukrainian peoples disproportionally hard) and WWII forced population transfer.


 * Although Russian language was a lingua franca during whole Soviet history, no single official language existed there. Both Russian and local languages were official in all Soviet and autonomous republics (except Georgia and Armenia, where only local language was official). In contrast to the Russification policies of the late Russian Empire, the Soviet Union in the 1920s and early 1930s promoted the national self-consciousness of all the officially recognized non-Russian ethnic groups. Most of them were assigned their territories, provided with native-language education and press, and their own local Communist Party elites were promoted. Roman alphabet writing systems for their languages were developed wherever there had been none or where it had been previously based on Perso-Arabic script. In the 1930s these alphabets were switched to Cyrillic.


 * Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, the government maintained information about the citizens' ethnicity on many administrative records and recorded it in their internal passports. Although anti-Semitism was officially suppressed in early USSR, after the World War II, the authorities switched to promoting anti-Semitism and discriminated the Jews; the policy was officially abandoned after Stalin's death, although undeclared state anti-Semitism persisted in late USSR. The Soviet Jews, heading for Israel and in many cases eventually for the United States, became the single largest emigration wave from the post-WWII Soviet Union after mass emigration of certain ethnic groups had been permitted in the 1970s. During the collapse of the Soviet Union ethnic nationalism gained popularity in the constituent republics. Ethnic tensions reawakened, in particular the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenians and Azerbaijanis and the tensions between Georgians and Abkhazians. It was, among other things, the adoption of nationalism by the constituent republics' ethnic political elites to preserve and bolster their own positions that accelerated the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s."

In connection to "Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, the government maintained information about the citizens' ethnicity on many administrative records and recorded it in their internal passports. " I propose to we-write the sentence to reflect a rather odd situation that, whereas the official Soviet policy was to convert all nations of the USSR into a single national-international entity, the information about ethnicity continued to be recorded at many levels. The present sentence does not disclose this contradiction, although it seems to deserve mentioning.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:24, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, that seems to avoid some old controversial wordings, while still giving the important related links from the Colchicum's version. Sorry for being boring, but I still propose to specify about Russification in the _late_ Russian Empire. You know that strong Russification started only around the reign of Alexander II, and before that the ethnic policy towards at least certain parts of the Empire, like Finland, was fairly liberal. This is of very minor importance in this context, though, and I likely won't advance this position further, if there are objections. Regarding the problematic sentence in the end of your statement, I believe some link to Sovietization or better to the New Soviet man or Soviet nation may be valuable. Greyhood (talk) 21:03, 20 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, this is much more constructive now. Not bad in general, but the Russification paragraph (Although Russians weren't granted their own branch of the Communist Party and didn't enjoyed nominal devolution of power in their namesake republic unlike other major ethnic groups, the 1930s saw some limited Russification within the Russian RSFSR. The ethnic minorities' institutions (national districts and selsoviets, schools, newspapers) were confined to larger autonomies and abolished elsewhere. In order to protect border regions against foreign influence, diaspora ethnicities with strong cross-border ties were transferred to remote inner parts of the country) absolutely has to stay, as it is a major turning point in the Soviet ethnic policy, notable and supported by reliable sources. It is not about alphabets at all, it is very curious how you managed to misconstrue my text this way.


 * There are inaccuracies in your version regarding the official languages, but it is a minor issue to be corrected. And some grammar issues (mostly articles). And probably it is better to replace the only exception after 1956 with the only exception after the abolition of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, otherwise it creates the wrong impression that in 1956 something relevant happened in the Kazakh SSR itself (I realize this is from my version). Strictly speaking, the famine took place from 1931 to 1934 rather than between 1932-1933, despite the title of the Wikipedia article. There are several other important instances of ethnic tensions to list here (Jeltoqsan, Osh).


 * My sources will cover most of it, except for the significant impact of wars and the Holocaust on the ethnic composition of some regions (which is not entirely obvious, and IMO the wars are better left for the general demography subsection) and the suppression of anti-Semitism in the early Soviet Union. It is up to you to provide references for these.


 * Regarding the last point, no, it is explicitely prohibited by policies to stress contradictions unless there is a consensus of reliable sources on that. And it is unlikely that it exists here. Colchicum (talk) 21:47, 20 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I probably took a wrong text. In the text I used there were no para starting from Although Russians weren't granted ... (or I deleted it by accident). Could you please insert this text into the proposed version (an fix inaccuracies) and post it below?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:35, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Preceded/succeeded
As I understand it, these two infobox sections are intended to show from (the territories of) which countries the state in question was founded, and into (territories of) which countries it was dissolved. If this is so, the Baltic states should be excluded from "preceding" as their territories did not participate in the creation of the Soviet Union. --Illythr (talk) 16:44, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Neither did the Baltic republics take part in its dissolution. By the time the Soviet Union officially disintegrated in December, it had already recognized their secession (on September 6). Are there any sources to justify the content of this infobox section at all? Do we really need it in this rather complex case? Colchicum (talk) 01:49, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Main articles and sections
Colchicum has asked me to contribute to the discussions about this article. Currently I do not have much time to spend onwiki, but I will try my best I promise ...

One of the things that strikes me in this discussions so far as that we discuss new sources and new ideas for the sections that have main articles. E.g. Economy section has the article Economy of the Soviet Union, Demographics section has the article Demographics of the Soviet Union as the main. The sections that have main articles are suppose to be non-controversial summations of the material presented in the main articles. It is simply wrong to introduce new ideas and sources to the summary sections without putting them to the main articles first. I think it will be better to improve the main articles first then put the brief summary (up to the point of copying the ledes) to the summary sections. In the main articles we have much more space to include all relevant point of views and refer all necessary sources and we do not be as aphoristic as in the summary sections.

We also have to check that we cover the most of the relevant points of views. E.g. I do not think that we can state as a fact that the Soviet Union was the second largest economy. AFAIK it is very difficult to calculate GDP of a closed fixed-price economy where statistics is routinely kept confidential or even falsified. Many economists agree that Soviet GDP was greatly overestimated during the Cold War period. Alex Bakharev (talk) 01:41, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Re: "I do not think that we can state as a fact that the Soviet Union was the second largest economy" Frankly, this statement looks really odd, because there is no way to adequately compare market economies with the state controlled economy that was based on state regulated prices and used non-convertible currency. However, since this statement is attributed to the concrete reliable source I see no problem with that (provided that some alternative mainstream estimates are provided).--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:42, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Demographics of the Soviet Union doesn't contain information on the ethnic policies, so we have to agree on some version of the Ethnic groups and national policy section, that we discuss above, and add that version both into the Soviet Union and Demographics of the Soviet Union articles. Economy of the Soviet Union doesn't contain the detailed information on the sectors of economy, so we have to write the subsections I've proposed, and add them both into the Soviet Union and Economy of the Soviet Union. But when it comes to summary of the Soviet economy, I'd like the lede in the Economy of the Soviet Union better than the text proposed by Colchicum, though it also has a number of faults, and mostly lacks sources (supposedly, the related sources are in the main body of the economy article). Perhaps we can take that lede as a basis, add some sources from the article and some material and sources from the Colchicum's version. Greyhood (talk) 12:33, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This is not about what anybody here likes or dislikes. This is about what sources agree on. Moreover, the lead of the Economy of the Soviet Union doesn't even try to explain how the ecomomy was operated. The stagnation which would consume the last years of the Soviet Union was caused by poor governance under Leonid Brezhnev... – it is hard to see what this is meant to say, but if this is meant to say that Brezhnev is to blame, it is POV, and a fairly fringe one. ...and inefficiencies within the planned economy – sure, but this is an extremely watered down phrasing, which doesn't explain anything substantial. From 1928 to 1991 the entire course of the economy was guided by a series of Five-Year Plans -- such were the official claims, of course, and as such they are notable, but they were incorrect and shouldn't be presented in this manner. Corruption and data fiddling became common practice among bureaucracy to report fulfilled targets and quotas thus entrenching the crisis – corruption had very little to do with that. At its peak, from Stalin to early Brezhnev, the Soviet economy grew at the same phase as – not sure what "phase" means, should it be "pace"? This is by far not a consensus position. ...and that of the Russian Empire, its predecessor state –the Russian Empire is not the predecessor state of the USSR in most senses and for many reasons that need not concern us here, and its growth was very uneven to serve as a basis for comparison (even more so as AFAIK there is no consensus on its estimates). The USSR's small service industry accounted for 0.82% of the country's GDP in 1990 while the industrial and agricultural sector contributed 21.9% and 20% respectively in 1991. – first and foremost, this is yet another controversial estimate, and neither 1990 nor 1991 or any other specific year is characteristic of the entire history of the Soviet Union or particularly important in this respect. The labor force totaled 152.3 million people –, and it is not characteristic of the entire period again. Major industrial products include petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, lumber, mining, defense industry – , again, this doesn't make much sense. The USSR is not a currently existing country, so why the present tense? If this sentence belongs there at all (not sure if it does), it should be specified when this was the case. How major were the share of the listed products and how do we know that? Anyway, it is worded very awkwardly. Finally, the sources are few, mostly written by historians and politologists rather than by economists. The ubiquitous CIA factbook has been much criticized. The only major sources that are relatively recent and written by economists are Davies 1998 and Gregory 2004 (surprise!), but little information is actually referenced from them. Colchicum (talk) 16:13, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding likes or dislikes, I've already clarified my position. Your variant of the economy summary is far from encompassing the topic in the entirety of its aspects - sectors, main periods etc. With all of its faults, the lede in the Economy of the Soviet Union is a bit closer to fulfilling that goal. My suggestion is to remove or to clarify the problematic places that you have pointed out in that lede, restructure it so as to follow the historic chronology more strictly, and add some important sourced lines from your version. Later I'll try to perform this task. Greyhood (talk) 16:50, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The lead in question is wrong and poorly referenced. Nothing substantial or significantly different from my version will remain if the problematic places are removed. Anyway, it is curious how you are going to perform the task if you haven't read the sources. I see no point in that. What belongs to the topic, and in what proportion, is decided by sources, not by Wikipedians. Oh well, I have already said that I am done with your arguments of that kind. My version is referenced, concise, value-neutral, and nobody has brought a single reliable source contradicting it so far. The essential history has been here from the very beginning just in case you haven't noticed. If you manage to propose a short and sourced paragraph on sectors, avoiding trivia and weasel words, that's ok with me, of course, if it is properly sourced. But it shouldn't be too long. A section seven times longer doesn't fit here, ask Ron2 about this. Any details (provided they are verifiable and NPOV) are welcome in the subarticle. Colchicum (talk) 18:07, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Be so kind as to leave the question of what sources I've read to me, and stop the guessing. And don't overemphasize your method. No one can read all those endless tons and tons of literature related to the Soviet economy, choose exactly the most reliable sources and pick exactly the facts with the greatest weight from them. Don't be too idealistic - everything is decided not by sources, but by Wikipedians who use the sources. While I don't question so far the credibility of your sourced material and don't necessarily intend to bring anything that contradicts it, I just don't think that we can accept this rather carefully chosen fragment of a picture of the Soviet economy as a good substitute for the wider picture. Regarding the section seven times longer, it really does fit here. The subsections in economy section are needed as much as in the sections on demographics, history and politics. And culture, by the way. But let's focus on the economy summary now, not on the subsections. Greyhood (talk) 18:58, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Sorry, but if you are going to significantly modify others' texts you have to be familiar with their sources, this question is not to be left to your discretion. Other than that, of course you may use any sources as long as they comply with WP:RS, I merely insist that you summarize something rather than engage in original research regarding what the Soviet economy was. I guess it is not difficult to find a source which would discuss the sectoral composition of the Soviet economy and changes therein, that would be a good starting point. Colchicum (talk) 19:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't intend to do any original research beyoud the scope of trivial facts. I don't intend to significantly change any lines from the text you so kindly have offered, but just take some lines out while accepting the others. In fact, Paul Siebert has proposed to make a specific subsection that deals with the peculiarities and shortcomings of the Soviet economy. I guess it could be named something like Economy organisation and shortcomings. If we follow this idea than much of your text may go into that subsection intact. Now, let's stop this branch of discussion until I present my version of the general economy summary. Likely I'll do that tomorrow.
 * Also I propose that you heed to the last answer of Paul Siebert in the Ethnic groups II section of this talk page, so that we could continue the work on ethnicities section and finally post it into the article.
 * And one more thing. I believe that despite our difference in attitudes to certain subjects we could still easily interact in polite and constructive way. If your quite special conduct regarding myself was caused by your suspicions of me being a sockpuppet of some banned user, than let's from now on forget this issue in case my short answer was enough for you (though I don't understand the point of your question - how could you have expected a different answer?). Otherwise, if it is of significance to you, let's further discuss the question on my talkpage or elsewhere, not here. Greyhood (talk) 19:59, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * beyoud the scope of trivial facts
 * As the topic is very large, it is impossible to decide what belongs here and what doesn't in the absence of sources. "An article should not give undue weight to any aspects of the subject but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight appropriate to its significance to the subject" (WP:UNDUE) Significance for that purpose is determined by sources rather than by Wikipedians. Furthermore, trivial facts aren't really needed here, try to avoid them to make your text more informative.
 * a specific subsection that deals with the peculiarities and shortcomings of the Soviet economy.
 * Well, no, shortcomings are in the eye of the beholder and are inseparable from successes, content forking would be a POV disaster. My piece is a general description of how the Soviet would-be-planned economy operated and how this changed over time (not only how it collapsed, despite what Paul Siebert seems to think). This is what is so special about the Soviet economy, and happens to be the most important and interesting subject, judging from the attention economic sources pay to it. Now, what the economy managed to produce, as well as the sectoral composition of its output, is just another matter, not a "general economy summary". Other than that, ok, go ahead with it, we'll see. And try to make it as brief as possible. A seven times larger section won't survive long here, and not because of me. Just like my piece doesn't delve into details and examples, yours should be a summary too. Otherwise you should really consider posting it to the Economy of the Soviet Union. It would be great if you start with sources, whatever they will be, and not with a preconceived list of what you think should be here. Colchicum (talk) 21:21, 21 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oh, and don't forget that we have a much larger section for history, where indiscriminate stuff (space race, Chernobyl and so on) can be dumped much more easily, if it is notable enough. Colchicum (talk) 23:51, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * As I already pointed out, before explaining why Soviet economy collapsed it is necessary to explain what it was. IMO, the Greyhood's proposal is too wordy, however, it is a generally good description of the economy that existed (and was growing) for 70 years. Obviously, before starting to explain that the economy was state controlled it is necessary to say that (i) it was predominantly agrarian in the early USSR, (ii) then it underwent fast and violent industrialisation, that lead to formation of well developed heavy, chemical, aerospace industry, and (iii) made the USSR essentially a self-sufficient country (and a second large economy according to CIA, although other sources give much more modest estimates, which also should be presented). However, then it is absolutely necessary to tell that this economy was build on very unusual principles, and to briefly describe these principles. Finally, it should be explained that as a result of that the Soviet economy was not optimal, to describe huge disbalances and shortcomings and, finally, the mechanism that lead to its collapse. IMO, the first part can be better done by Greyhood whereas the Colchicum can perfectly write the second part. However, the texts should be short, so both Greyhood's and Colchicum's proposals should be considerably shrunken to leave only the most essential points.--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:17, 21 June 2010 (UTC)


 * it is a generally good description of the economy that existed It is up to reliable sources. How many times are we going to argue this over and over again? It's in the policies, not negotiable.
 * (i) it was predominantly agrarian in the early USSR Good point. I have no problem with that. And we should describe what happened to it later.
 * (ii) then it underwent fast and violent industrialisation It has been here from the beginning.
 * (iii) made the USSR essentially a self-sufficient country The USSR (just as well as the vast majority of other countries) was neither self-sufficient, nor even "essentially self-sufficient" (however evasively worded it is) during most of its history, being dependent on American grain, machinery and technology, Guinean bauxite and great many other things from abroad. And there was nothing wrong in that, if it worries you. The industrialization itself was dependent on Western technology, and the impact of industrialization on other sectors was far from contributing to autarky.
 * (and a second large economy according to CIA, although other sources give much more modest estimates, which also should be presented). No, per Alex' reasoning. Colchicum (talk) 18:07, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Economy II
Here is my proposal for economy, based on Colchicum's. The composition of this text hasn't gone too much close to the lines I've expected, and I have had to intrude into Colchicum's sentence structure in many cases, to make the text shorter. One the other hand, almost all of Colchicum's basic points were left in the text. I have tried also to provide references and related links to most of my additions, and to pay attention to the remarks of Paul Siebert.

Economy
The Soviet Union became the first country that adopted planned economy, whereby production and distrubution of goods were to be centralized and directed by the government. Initially, during the Russian Civil War, Bolsheviks installed the policy of military communism, involving nationalization of industry, centralized distribution of output, coercive requisition of agricultural production, and attempts to eliminate money circulation, as well as private enterprises and free trade. One one hand, this was an utopian attempt to implement the principles of Marxist-Leninist economy in a short span of time, and on the other hand it was a policy aimed to cope with immediate necessities of war, in particular with desperate food shortages. Though Bolsheviks were able to gain enough resources for winning the Civil War, their economic policies catastrophically aggravated the hardships experienced by the population and caused severe economic collapse. In 1921 Lenin proclaimed that War Communism had been a forced and temporary measure and replaced it with the New Economic Policy (NEP), legalizing free trade and private ownership of smaller businesses. The economy subsequently recovered fairly quickly.

Following a lengthy debate among the Soviet economists and members of Politburo over the course of economic development, by 1928-1929, upon gaining the upper hand in the power struggle, Joseph Stalin had abandoned the NEP and pushed for full central planning, starting forced collectivization of agriculture and enacting draconian labor legislation. The resources were mobilized for rapid industrialization, which greatly expanded Soviet capacity in heavy industry and capital goods during the 1930s. New industries were created from scratch, as for example, in the sectors of agriculture, aerospace and armament. Preparation for war was one of the main driving forces behind industrialization, mostly due to distrust of the outside capitalistic world. As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian society into a great industrial power, and the basis was provided for its emergence as a superpower after recovering from the devastation of the World War II. A wide range of developed industries later constituted the Soviet industrial sector, including petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, heavy industries, electronics, food processing, lumber, mining and defense. By the early 1970s, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest industrial capacity and produced more steel, oil, pig-iron, cement and tractors than any other country.

By the early 1940s, the Soviet economy had become relatively autarkic; for most of the period up until the creation of Comecon, only a very small share of domestic products were traded internationally. After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, external trade rose rapidly. However, both enterprises and households were protected from the influence of world economy by fixed domestic prices and state monopoly on the foreign trade. Driven by needs of the industrialization, since 1930s the Soviet economy imported high-technology machinery in vast numbers. Bauxite, phosphate rock, grain and certain types of consumer manufactures eventually became other important import articles. Petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a wide variety of manufactured goods were exported from the country. In the 1970s-1980s, the Soviet Union heavily relied on fossil fuel exports to earn hard currency. At the peak level in 1988, it was the largest producer and second largest exporter of crude oil, surpassed only by Saudi Arabia.

Science and technology in the Soviet Union played an important role in the economic development, however the most remarkable Soviet successes in technology, such as Sputnik in 1957 and the first man in space in 1961, typically were the military responsibility. During the arms race of the Cold War the Soviet economy became increasingly burdened by military expenditures, heavily lobbied by the powerful bureaucracy dependent on the arms industry and estimated as 12-17% of the GDP in the mid-1980s. At the same time the Soviet Union became the largest arms exporter to the Third World. Much of the Soviet resources during the Cold War were allocated in aid to the other communist countries.

Since the 1930s and until its collapse in the late 1980s, the way the Soviet economy operated had remained essentially unchanged. The economy was directed by scientific central planning, carried out by Gosplan and organized into five-year plans. The plans, however, were highly aggregated and provisional, subject to ad hoc intervention by superiors. All key economic decisions were taken by the political leadership. Allocated resources and plan targets were normally denominated in rubles rather than in physical goods. Credits were discouraged, but widespread. Final allocation of output was achieved through relatively decentralized, unplanned contracting. Although in theory prices were legally set from above, in practice the actual prices were often negotiated, and informal horizontal links were pervasive.

For most of the later part of its history, the Soviet economy enjoyed very low inflation and unemployement rates. A number of basic services were free, such as education and medicine. However, heavy industry and defense were assigned higher priority than consumer goods production, which led to a number of problems. Consumer goods, in particular outside large cities, were often in short supply, of poor quality and limited choice, as under command economy consumers' preferences wielded almost no influence over production, changing demands of the population with growing money incomes couldn't be matched by supplies at rigidly fixed prices. A massive unplanned second economy existed alongside the planned one at low levels, providing some of the goods and services that the planners could not. Legalization of some elements of the decentralized economy was attempted with the reform of 1965.

Although statistics of the Soviet economy is notoriously unreliable and its growth is difficult to estimate, by most accounts it continued to expand positively until 1989-1990. During the "Golden Age of Communism" in 1950s and 1960s the Soviet economy performed with comparatively high growth rates and was catching up with the West. However, after 1970 the growth, while still positive, steadily declined, much more quickly and consistently than in other countries, despite rapid increase in the capital stock, surpassed only by that in Japan. In 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev pushed to reform the economy with his program of Perestroika in an attempt to revitalize it. His policies relaxed state control over enterprises, but hadn't yet allowed it to be replaced with market incentives, ultimately resulting in a sharp decline in production output. The economy, already suffering from reduced petroleum export revenues, started to collapse. Prices were still fixed, property was still largely state-owned until after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Just prior to its collapse the Soviet economy was estimated to be the second largest in the world by GDP (PPP).

Regarding the GDP estimates, I believe there is no much need in further notes than the already given remark that statistics of the Soviet economy is notoriously unreliable. Also I believe that ranking the Soviet economy as the world's second after World War II is very common thing and far less controversial than specific GDP estimates, so it should necessarily be mentioned, while the figures may be left out. Greyhood (talk) 19:28, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Economy subsections to follow some time later. Perhaps when they added, some of the information in economy summary may be contracted. Also I'd prefer to start working on subsections when the ethnic groups and economy summary are already in the article. Greyhood (talk) 19:28, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Versions comparison

 * I have a very large number of reservations, but I haven't enough time to explain them right now. All in all, mostly I don't see how this expansion is helpful. Don't take offense. Although there are a couple of worthy points, some POV problems, inaccuracies and misinterpretations are introduced, at times rather outrageous, a crucial paragraph is deleted, sources are not perfect (and as I understand it, some part of this is brought directly from the very poorly sourced Economy of the Soviet Union), the text is diluted with overly evasive and sometimes awkward wording and it is unnecessarily long. My suggestion is for you to write your part (some of the stuff you introduced here is better placed there) and leave this to me for the time being, then it would be easier to sort this out. Remember, the more you expand this part, the less space is left to other stuff. Let's see what some others have to say. Colchicum (talk) 21:50, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, I propose to restrain from too general arguments and opinions like I don't see how this expansion is helpful, and discuss the places in question one by one, when you have a time to do so. Now I'll answer on the deletion of the paragraph that you consider crucial:
 * The decisions deemed minor were delegated from top to bottom through ministries (or, for some time during Khrushchev's rule, regional economic councils), but subordinates routinely funneled them back upwards to limit their own responsibility. The administrative burdens on the top decision-makers thus became tremendously heavy. Information available to them to make rational economic decisions was unreliable, as production managers had incentives to distort their reports. This led to huge investment blunders, evident in a large number of unfinished construction projects throughout the country. Successful decisions, mostly concerning the technologies of defense and heavy industry, were usually informed by the monitoring of progress abroad.
 * I don't think this para is of much importance because all these problems are not unique for the Soviet, nor for planned, nor for socialist economy. The problems of responsibility and misinformation and investment failures are very typical for any economical structure with hierarchical management, be that a Soviet state economy or one of the Western corporations or states as a separate economic players.
 * Then, a large number of unfinished construction projects can't be described exclusively or predominantly as the investment failures because of the misinformation when planning these projects. During the first Five Year Plan, a number of projects were cancelled or delayed just because of the start of the Great Depression, contracting of Soviet exports and not having hard currency to buy enough machinery for the new projects. Another large wave of unfinished projects was caused by the start of World War II, like the Palace of the Soviets. Yet another wave was caused by voluntaristic decisions by Kruschev and his fellows after Stalin's death, like terminating the construction of Salekhard–Igarka Railway (as subsequent history shows, that might have been not so much an investment blunder if completed). Finally, many unfinished projects were caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union. So the number of unfinished projects doesn't tell anything about the efficiency of original planning and investing. No, it is completed projects that proved to be inefficient tell about inefficiency in the initial planning.
 * Successful decisions, mostly concerning the technologies of defense and heavy industry, were usually informed by the monitoring of progress abroad. - again, monitoring of the progress abroad is very typical for any big modern era economy, not just the Soviet. The West and the Third World monitored the Soviet achievements as well. Soviet Union was never too much isolated in the scientific and technological respect. And the Western economy and science were much bigger than Soviet and had many good things to copy, so there is no wonder that a large number of developments in the Soviet economy and technology was assisted by monitoring the foreign developments. At the same time, the Soviet Union had many of its own technological priorities, that were either copied by the West or influenced the related developments in the Western technology. Greyhood (talk) 22:56, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think this para is of much importance
 * Well, the source (Gregory) thinks it is important, as it is one (incidentally, the first one) of nine points in his overall summary of what studies in the Soviet archives have revealed concerning the Soviet economy, and without this paragraph the flow of the prose is hopelessly disrupted anyway. What sources say is the only thing that is important here. Now, as a side note (unimportant here), it is certainly not characteristic of Western economies, the role of the government is fairly limited there.
 * So the number of unfinished projects doesn't tell anything about the efficiency of original planning and investing.
 * This is what WP:OR is about. The source says otherwise. Oh, and as a side note (unimportant for the purposes of Wikipedia), you are wrong here. a number of projects were cancelled or delayed just because of the start of the Great Depression, contracting of Soviet exports and not having hard currency to buy enough machinery for the new projects - sure, this is what some inherent vices of central planning are.
 * ''again, monitoring of the progress abroad is very typical for any big modern era economy, not just the Soviet. The West and the Third World monitored the Soviet achievements as well."
 * Sure, there is nothing wrong in it. So what? As a criticism of the paragraph this is misguided. We (I, at least) don't discuss who was better and who was worse, and who they are lynching, drop this attitude, please. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar an not an evil anti-Soviet conspiracy. We report what sources say. According to the sources, it was important to the relative success of certain Soviet sectors. I am not even going to bring Anthony Sutton's volumes here, no need to worry. And this section is exclusively about economy, not about politics, inventions in general, victories and the like. Again, most of your stuff can easily be placed in the history section as long as it is notable. Colchicum (talk) 23:40, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
 * >Well, the source (Gregory) thinks it is important, as it is one (incidentally, the first one) of nine points in his overall summary of what studies in the Soviet archives have revealed concerning the Soviet economy, and without this paragraph the flow of the prose is hopelessly disrupted anyway.
 * Don't think that there are any problems with the flow of prose. And while the Grerory's point is correct in principle, it doesn't convey in itself the really important information, that is why these management problems seem to have had an especial meaning in the Soviet case. To answer this question one must bring much more information about the Soviet bureaucracy, such as ineffective placement of people on important positions due to their status in the Communist party rather than their skills, the ineffective state structure where all the important state institutions and levels of state hierarchy were doubled, connected to, and monitored by the respective Communist party organizations etc. If you agree to make a separate subsection on organization and direction of the Soviet economy and provide all this important information, I wouldn't argue with the inclusion of that point of Gregory. Otherwise it is not really valuable, whatever the place Gregory assigns to it.
 * >it is certainly not characteristic of Western economies, the role of the government is fairly limited there.
 * Wrong. The state owns much of the economic assets in many Western countries, such as France, so the role of government is huge there. In the United States big corporations are of importance, and they have the same problems within their own structures.
 * >This is what WP:OR is about. The source says otherwise.
 * It is not OR. I can bring sources on why the particular major projects or groups of projects were cancelled and unfinished. Nothing prohibits us from challenging the certain statements even in the most reputable sources. But this is the case when one controversial statement requires too many other sources to refute it, so it is better just not to include it here. Besides, it contains a bit of logical fallacy: one cannot estimate the true efficiency or ineffiecency of many projects until they are completed.
 * >a number of projects were cancelled or delayed just because of the start of the Great Depression, contracting of Soviet exports and not having hard currency to buy enough machinery for the new projects - sure, this is what some inherent vices of the central planning are.''
 * This is what some inherent vices of any planning are. Currently, due to the generally unforseen coming of the 2008-2010 world crisis many projects are delayed or cancelled in many economies of the world. This has nothing to do with them being central planned economies or not.
 * >As a criticism of the paragraph this is misguided.
 * No, it is not misguided as critisism of the specific line in that paragraph. That line simply doesn't convey any information of particular importance in the context of the Soviet economy. I don't intend going into who they are lynching, but still we should stick here to the specific and unique features of the Soviet economy, not to the common places like monitoring the foreign technology. Greyhood (talk) 00:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Although the Greyhood's version is still crude and definitely need to be shortened, it reflects some important points that are missing in the Colchicum's version. It can be shortened by removal of some redundant details like mention of bauxite; the discussion of War Communism (which ended before the USSR was formed) should be limited with one short sentence, the story about low inflation and unemployement rates should be removed: it is impossible to talk seriously about that in the country where to be unemployed was illegal (hence all unemployment was latent) and prices were state regulated.
 * And, finally, it is absolutely necessary to tell about catastrophis effect of WWII on the Soviet economy, because this country was the most severely affected by the war.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:18, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've tried to fix these points in my version, though I haven't erased the line on unempolyment and inflation completely. Perhaps you can point out some other places where we can make this account shorter? Greyhood (talk) 01:52, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Most certainly agree with this one. The above and below mentioned Mark Harrison goes into some detail about the economic impacts of WWII on SU and provides some concrete estimates IIRC of how much of a hit it took. The thing is the Soviet economy actually recovered relatively quickly, particularly in terms of its physical capital stock, which is an achievement in and of itself and shouldn't be underestimated, but it also explains why the growth rates were so high in the period right after the war (easy to grow when you start with little and diminishing returns haven't kicked in yet - similar phenomenon occurred in Western Europe and other places tho on a different scale).radek (talk) 01:44, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I've added the sourced, but very short and generally worded reference about World War II effects. Perhaps you can make it more detailed and bring a reference from Harrison. Greyhood (talk) 01:51, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That book's somewhere in a box in a closet or in my office (and its summer) so gimme some time to dig it out.radek (talk) 01:58, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

some quick comments after a quick reading
Colchicum asked me to look over this. I'll have to look into the details later on but really quickly here's some initial impressions: That's it for now.radek (talk) 00:25, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I see you guys already got Mark Harrison in the refs, which is good because he's probably one of the most notable scholars of the subject. However, some of his work is somewhat outdated (not by much, fifteen, twenty years) and may rely on outdated data (in particular CIA's overestimates of Soviet industrial production in the 70's and 80's). There is a recent literature review in one of the economic history journals that just came out which I briefly glanced at a few weeks ago but I'll have to dig it out again.
 * Taking a bird's eye view it seems the disagreement is more about emphasis rather factual inaccuracies or original research. I don't see anything that's glaringly "WRONG!" in either version. This makes it a bit more of a judgement call.
 * Having said that, there are a few smaller inaccuracies and a few more errors of omission. For example "Although statistics of the Soviet economy is (sic) notoriously unreliable and its growth is difficult to estimate,[47][48] by most accounts it continued to expand positively until 1989-1990" should be pushed back a bit. Like it says statistics are sketchy but there was most likely a good bit of negative growth in the 80's (and low growth in the 70's). Either way, a strong claim like that certainly needs its own inline citation.
 * The biggest error of omission is about the RELATIVELY low growth rate, even when the ABSOLUTE growth rate was high in the 50's and early 60's. Basically, growth in income per capita comes about either because of technological improvements (which also have to diffuse and have economy wide effects) or as a result of investment in physical and human capital. The latter kind comes at the expense of current consumption and standard of living. The Soviet economy was notorious for having insanely high (forced) saving rates (matched only by the more or less voluntary saving rates in the East Asian economies in the post war period) but getting only modest (and declining) growth out of them. Sort of like putting almost all your money in the bank, living off of scraps, and getting a very lame, but still positive, interest rate. There is a big literature on what explains this (the main hypothesis being, off the top of my head, drag due to military spending, bureaucratization and lack of substitution between capital and labor) - Stanley Fischer and William Easterly had a big paper on this (they argued for the lack of substitution hypothesis).
 * I think the "deleted paragraph" certainly contains notable information. While it is true that information flows can pose a difficulty for any hierarchical organization (even Wikipedia) they play a central role in the centrally planned economy (and some, like Hayek would have argued that they characterize it). The idea played a large role in the so called Socialist Calculation Debate - though that may be a little too academic for this article - the whole idea of "market socialism" (or whatever you wanna call it, the reforms tried by Yugoslavia and some others) were specifically intended to deal with this problem, and it served as a hypothesis for explaining economic stagnation in the Brezhnev era.
 * The "Second Biggest Economy" thing. Real GDP, which is what this refers to, is theoretically independent of prices which means that it could be computed for market and planned economies alike. In practice however, given the way that data is gathered, usually nominal GDP, which is not independent of prices or exchange rates, is calculated first and then adjustments are made to convert it into real. This means that while it's theoretically possible, it's practically very difficulty. People do of course (above mentioned Harrison among them) but it means the numbers are going to be sketchy for reasons that go beyond shoddy underlying data. That's one reason to just skip it. The second reason to skip including the 2ndBE thing is that it is essentially a meaningless number, aside from being headline-grabbing. All it really means in this context (ie time period of Soviet era) is "very populous country, not quite as poor as China and India". You got lots of people you will (might) produce lots of output. But it doesn't say anything about the standards of living in the country or output per person. The line may mislead readers into thinking that 2ndBE means "Second richest economy" which is of course far from the truth, hence I think it's better to skip it altogether (I think similar statements should be removed from articles on other contries' economies as well)
 * Re: "The line may mislead readers into thinking that 2ndBE means "Second richest economy"" Cannot agree. Leaving the question of the CIA report's validity beyond the scope, in this particular case no wrong impression is created, because two countries with similar population sizes are compared (the USA and the USSR). Moreover, taking into account that considerable part of Soviet population lived in poor (and poorly developed) Central Asia republics, per capita GDP figures even understate the economic level of central regions of the USSR.--Paul Siebert (talk) 00:56, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, no. The comparison is also with other likely contenders for 2nd place, such as West Germany, France, Canada, UK and Japan. Indeed, Japan, with about a third of the population of the SU, did become the 2nd largest economy in the 80's if not earlier. This actually brings up another way that the number is misleading; if the SU was indeed the 2nd largest economy after the US, it was a very very distant 2nd (US having roughly 4 to 6 times the per capita income of the SU during this time). Furthermore, in terms of population, the SU had US beat by about 50 million people, or 20 million more than the entire population of Canada. This again underscores how meaningless such a statistic is.
 * Just to be clear let me reiterate that I GENERALLY think these aggregate GDP numbers (in contrast to per capita) are not very useful for much of anything, certainly not for any kind of discussion of the economic well being of a country's citizens. I'd want similar things removed from other countries' articles.
 * Finally, your point about the Central Asian republics is true (though OTOH the Baltics always were substantially richer than central SU) but it's also irrelevant here for two reasons. One, it's a point about per capita GDP not total GDP which is what the "2nd largest" refers to (see, you seem to be thrown off by that number and the confusion between "richest" and "largest" yourself) and two, this is an article about the Soviet economy not the economy of Russia.radek (talk) 01:39, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * >I don't see anything that's glaringly "WRONG!" in either version.
 * Thank you, radek. I'm pretty much relieved to hear this in the context when Colchicum seems to oppose almost any my point or addition. We all really should be more inclined to the general consensus even if we disagree with some points.
 * >I think there's the sufficient conditions for building consensus present here, yes.radek (talk) 01:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * >I think the "deleted paragraph" certainly contains notable information.
 * The problem is that the larger part of this paragraph requires extensive additional clarification, while the smaller part contains one sourced but controversial statement (though notable in the sense that there were really pretty much unfinished projects left by the USSR) and one very common place statement.
 * >I'll try to get a better wording then, though I think *something* like it most certainly belongs in the article.radek (talk) 01:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * >Sort of like putting almost all your money in the bank, living off of scraps, and getting a very lame, but still positive, interest rate.
 * Well, perhaps it makes sence to add something about the high (forced) saving rates in the USSR. But I'd be careful not to present it in too much negative light, given the present situation in the United States and the some Western economies, where there is the opposite problem - too few savings and huge debts.
 * >The fact that it was forced is not really the issue (or rather, a separate one). The fact that the investment rates were so high and only generated modest (and later, none) growth is the issue. Also present US situation is not quite comparable due to the fact that US is an open economy so savings and investment rates (which is what matters here) do not have to equal, while for a relatively autarkic one like the SU "investment rate" and "saving rate" are more or less interchangeable.radek (talk) 01:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * >The line may mislead readers into thinking that 2ndBE means "Second richest economy" which is of course far from the truth, hence I think it's better to skip it altogether
 * This is easily amended by adding the information about GDP per capita.
 * >Better yet, how about replacing it with (much more meaningful) information about GDP per capita.radek (talk) 01:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * >I think similar statements should be removed from articles on other contries' economies as well
 * Well, you know that scores of Wikipedians would oppose you on this. While I myself consider GDP a meaningless indicator in many ways, it seems to be an established tradition on Wikipedia (and not only on Wikipedia) to pay much attention to GDP.Greyhood (talk) 01:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * >It's not the concept of per capita GDP I have a problem with - or the concept of GDP itself (though there are issue with them). It's the usage of *aggregate* GDP as a measure of economic well being or performance.radek (talk) 01:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, for me GDP is meaningless mostly due to the methods by which it is counted, so GDP per capita is really no better all in all. And while the placement of the Soviet economy as world's second seems to be more certain because of the large gap between Soviet Union and all other contenders (except perhaps Japan), the information that Soviet GDP per capita was 33rd (according to CIA) is much more unreliable. So I propose to leave the 2ndBE estimate (without absolute figures) - afterall, the aggregated measure supposedly shows the aggregated power of a nation, and the Soviet Union was considered to be the only superpower except of the United States for the most of Cold War. To fix the problem, the addition should be made, that in per capita terms Soviet GDP was much behind that of the First World countries. Greyhood (talk) 02:13, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * But the large gap was not between SU and other contenders for 2nd place (West Germany, France, Japan, UK ... probably also Brazil) were all close to the SU. The large gap was between the 1st place US and the 2nd place (whoever that was). If the comparison is being made just between US and SU (as Paul suggests above) then it would be just simpler and more informative to state "the Soviet economy was smaller than that of the US".
 * There might be a link between aggregate GDP and military potential - though it appears to be tenuous and in this particular case it's overshadowed by the role of the *share* of GDP devoted to military spending. At any rate I don't see an explicit connection being made (much less sourced) so it doesn't seem like a good reason to include it. The CIA per capita GDP number may be problematic (though note that this isn't the same number from the 80's - in light of new data and criticism these numbers have been revised substantially... downward, the CIA notoriously overestimated Soviet GDP (pc and agg) in order to exaggerate the 'threat' posed by the Soviets (the "missile gap" and the "mineshaft gap") and get more funding for itself), but there are also other numbers available.radek (talk) 02:41, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, the gap between USSR and West Germany, France, UK was very large, both in CIA statistics and in reality, I guess. Japan is the only problem to place the USSR firmly on the second position. Aggregate GDP is a bad estimate, but still it is a coomon measure to estimate the role of the country in the world economy. Also, I believe that CIA estimates are much more in accordance with the ongoing Russian statistics, that trace how Russian GDP evolved from that of the Russian RSFSR, compared to the results from those new studies. But, OK, I propose to specify that those estimates, that place the USSR on the second place, are higher estimates. Greyhood (talk) 05:03, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, here are some things I consider mildly (or not so mildly) problematic in Greyhood's version. I would appreciate if Radeksz comments on the issues.
 * 1) Unnecessary and extremely POV (references to Lenin? C'mon!) expansion of the war communism part. War communism is here merely for the background (just to show that the collectivization and industrialization drive was not the first Soviet experiment in planned economy), it is strictly speaking pre-USSR. And there is no consensus on whether it was an emergency measure or not, as discussed at length above.
 * 2) Undue emphasis on matters that have little to do with economy (superpower politics and so on).
 * 3) Somewhat evasive wording (WP:WEASEL) and liberal use of "however" out of place.
 * 4) New industries were created from scratch, as for example, in the sectors of agriculture, aerospace and armament. - "From scratch" is overkill in any case, and concerning the sector of agriculture, words fail me. It was destroyed rather than created.
 * 5) Preparation for war was one of the main driving forces behind industrialization, mostly due to distrust of the outside capitalistic world. This (the second part in particular) is politics, somewhat off-topic here.
 * 6) As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian society into a great industrial power Agrarian society => Agrarian economy. We don't talk society here. As a result of industrialization _and collectivization_.
 * 7) A wide range of developed industries later constituted the Soviet industrial sector, including petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, heavy industries, electronics, food processing, lumber, mining and defense.
 * It would benefit from better sourcing and a more precise time reference (later – when). Not sure in particular about motor vehicles, telecommunications, electronics, food processing.
 * 8) produced more steel, oil, pig-iron, cement and tractors than any other country
 * Same here. Not sure if the 1991 CIA factbook is good enough as a source.
 * 9) Science and technology in the Soviet Union played an important role in the economic development
 * Did they? What does it mean, important?
 * 10) By the early 1940s, the Soviet economy had become relatively autarkic
 * Not sure. The early 1940s are WWII. What about Lend-Lease and the fairly extensive Soviet trade with Germany?
 * 11) However, both enterprises and households were protected from the influence of world economy by fixed domestic prices and state monopoly on the foreign trade
 * This is an extremely POV and condescending wording.
 * 12) Bauxite, phosphate rock, grain and certain types of consumer manufactures eventually became other important import articles.
 * I may be wrong here, but to my knowledge consumer manufactures were not particularly important imports.
 * 13) Petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a wide variety of manufactured goods were exported from the country
 * i) it is absolutely necessary to point out when this was the case ii) petroleum, natural gas, metals, wood are ok, regarding the export of petroleum _products_, agricultural products and manufactured goods I am not so sure.
 * 14) The economy was directed by scientific central planning, carried out by Gosplan and organized into five-year plans.
 * No, this is a misrepresentation of the sources I used and Greyhood now reuses. Of course it was officially claimed that it was directed by scientific central planning, but in practice largely it wasn't. To take Soviet propaganda at its face value here is not on.
 * 15) For most of the later part of its history, the Soviet economy enjoyed very low inflation and unemployement rates
 * Well, regarding inflation, to me this sounds rather outrageous and this is not what I recall from sources. Very low unemployment is controversial as well, there was no unemployment statistics in the Soviet Union, and then it is a must to mention the fact that "social parasitism" was criminalized in the first place.
 * 16) A number of basic services were free, such as education and medicine.
 * In a sense there is no such thing as a free service. Replace it with state-funded to make it less POV and more precise, and I am ok with that. Perhaps. Lousy quality of Soviet healthcare is inextricably linked to that, quite possibly it is worth mentioning here, if we are to discuss healthcare at all.
 * 17) "Golden Age of Communism"
 * C'mon. WTF is this? A ridiculous POV that would make a disservice to this article's credibility.
 * 18) Sourcing. I don't think sources written in the early 1990s or earlier are appropriate here, let alone Lenin. Neither do I think that writings by political scientists and historians are good sources for this section.
 * And it would be interesting to hear Radeksz' suggestions concerning Greyhood's proposal above (Talk:Soviet_Union). Colchicum (talk) 02:27, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

On #4 I agree. "Out of scratch" should be changed to something more neutral and references to agriculture should be dropped. In fact, Soviet agriculture had low productivity - Soviet state agriculture had actually abysmally low productivity but this was offset to some extent by the introduction of small private farms (which were very productive) under Kruschev though they never compromised a large enough share of the ag sector to pull up the overall productivity numbers. Soviet harvests even in the "boom" 50's were still as low or lower than the ones in the 10's and 20's. Actually, the nature of Soviet agriculture should be expounded upon.

On #'s relating to superpower politics I think it's okay (maybe some tweaks) as for a state like the SU the economic and military matters were inextricably linked. So I'm fine with #2 and #5.

On #6 changing "society" to "economy" makes sense though I think this is minor.

On #s 7,8 like I said above, the information is pretty much correct though it could use better sourcing (if you gonna use a CIA Factbook, pick one from at least 1995 or later). It's true that #9 refers to a statement that's simultaneously somewhat banal (when doesn't technology and science matter for development?) and misleading (depends on what you mean by "development"). If you're talking economic outcomes then not really true - indeed, part of the problem for the SU was that while it achieved great things in "abstract" science (invention) those achievements failed to translate into productivity advances (innovation) or to have discernible economy wide effects (diffusion); a sort of "put a man on a moon while people are hungry" phenomenon.

On #10 again, depends on what it means to be "autarkic". Certainly after WWII and the establishment of the satellites in Eastern Europe and other places, the SU "traded" with them through the COMECON (as an aside, Poland was probably a net beneficiary of the arrangement initially). I think though that in fact the SU is generally regarded as "autarkic" until the 40's. The Soviet trade and mutual assistance with Nazi Germany is notable because ... well, because it was with Nazi Germany but I'm not sure if in economic terms it constituted a significant enough quantity for the label "autarkic" to be dropped. Perhaps something along the lines of "aside from its trade with Nazi Germany in the late 1930's, the Soviet economy was autarkic until the 1940's" would be more accurate.

On #11, yes the wording of "protected" is certainly POV. Monopolies, state or capitalist, generally don't "protect" their consumers, quite the opposite really. "Protection" from world prices can be good or bad depends on which way they're moving, what you're selling and what you're buying. Change it to a purely factual statement of "goods prices were fixed and foreign trade was run by a state monopoly" without the implicit value judgements.

No problems with current wording in re to #12 and #13.

On #14, definitely drop "scientific" and perhaps expound on how the 5 year plans were carried out in practice. The GOSPLAN actually did try to run the economy according to the plans, at least initially (some good economic research came about as a result, by people like Eugene Slutsky, Leonid Kantorovich, Nikolai Kondratiev (though he actually opposed the 5yr plans) - trouble is, it was hardly implemented) but soon some of the problems alluded to above (like the information flows) and political considerations put a stop to it.

On #15, yes "enjoyed" is POV here. The concept of "unemployment" doesn't necessarily make sense in a centrally planned economy. Similarly, but to a lesser extent same is true for inflation (though the actual parallel would be "fixed prices with periodic adjustments").

On #16, yes, change to "state funded".

On #17 drop POV phrasing

On #18, Lenin is a reliable source for what Lenin (and those influenced by him) thought. For statistics, claims about economic performance and the like, he is not.radek (talk) 03:17, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I think I've already fixed all of your serious concerns except #11. Now I'll try to do this... Greyhood (talk) 04:40, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Now, good points from Greyhood's version:
 * During the war the Soviet economy and infrastructure suffered massive devastation and subsequently required extensive reconstruction.
 * Much of the Soviet resources during the Cold War were allocated in aid to the other communist countries. (just to reword it slightly, "much of the Soviet resources" is not the phrase we need here) Colchicum (talk) 02:45, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * second statement - true with some exceptions, particularly Hungary and Romania in the immediate post war period did not receive aid, but rather vice versa, for obvious reasons.radek (talk) 03:17, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * The wording does't presuppose that all other communist countries received aid, so no problem in this respect. I can't came up with the better wording right now, so I expect somebody else to fix it. Not a big issue, anyway. Greyhood (talk) 04:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) I have removed Lenin references in order of further making my version shorter. But, by the way, the phrase first Soviet experiment in planned economy is not quite right, since there wasn't much planning during civil war. It was a heavily directed, not planned economy. Gosplan was established only in 1921.
 * 2) Undue emphasis on matters that have little to do with economy (superpower politics and so on).
 * Superpower has everything to do with the economy, and the Soviet industrialization by most accounts had a great role in the Soviet rise to superpowerdom. Also, the quick pace and general effects of Soviet industrialization are quite notorious on historical scale. I've tried to avoid giving not very reliable specific growth figures (according to your method), but some qualititative estimate of Soviet industrialization absolutely has to stay.
 * 3) Somewhat evasive wording (WP:WEASEL) and liberal use of "however" out of place.
 * Hardly a big issue. Anyway, it is not clear of what places you are talking.
 * 4) New industries were created from scratch, as for example, in the sectors of agriculture, aerospace and armament. - "From scratch" is overkill in any case, and concerning the sector of agriculture, words fail me. It was destroyed rather than created.
 * "From very modest beginnings". "Agricultural machinery". And you are very wrong on agriculture except for short term effects.
 * 5) Preparation for war was one of the main driving forces behind industrialization, mostly due to distrust of the outside capitalistic world. This (the second part in particular) is politics, somewhat off-topic here.
 * Not a big issue.
 * 6) As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian society into a great industrial power Agrarian society => Agrarian economy. We don't talk society here. As a result of industrialization _and collectivization_.
 * First part fixed. Second part is already implied there, and I don't see how to insert it in a good wording manner.
 * 7) A wide range of developed industries later constituted the Soviet industrial sector, including petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, heavy industries, electronics, food processing, lumber, mining and defense.
 * It would benefit from better sourcing and a more precise time reference (later – when). Not sure in particular about motor vehicles, telecommunications, electronics, food processing.
 * Sourcing is enough for a simple list of industries. "Later" means after the time when Soviet economy recovered after World War II, as is implied by previous sentence. In the 1950s, Soviet Union produced the first modern electronic computer in continental Europe (MESM), pioneered certain technologies in mobile telephony, greatly expanded its own television industry. Soviet automobiles were good enough in the era of vintage cars, and subsequently the industry was at least rather large, though not as large in some Western countries. Can't comment much on the food processing, but it definitely existed.
 * 8) produced more steel, oil, pig-iron, cement and tractors than any other country
 * Same here. Not sure if the 1991 CIA factbook is good enough as a source.
 * There is a different source, as you may have noticed.
 * 9) Science and technology in the Soviet Union played an important role in the economic development
 * Did they? What does it mean, important?
 * One of your own sentences talks about the "scientific central planning". And in many other ways they did. It must be in the source already, but I may give you further information on specific cases.
 * 10) By the early 1940s, the Soviet economy had become relatively autarkic
 * Not sure. The early 1940s are WWII. What about Lend-Lease and the fairly extensive Soviet trade with Germany?
 * Many sources agree on that. Then, the world relatively is the key one - firstly, thanks to industrialization, the Soviet economy became relatively independent from imports of many goods compared to 1920s and the Russian Empire, secondly it was certainly more autarkic than the leading western economies. Lend-Lease and Soviet trade with Germany are rather exceptional cases, motivated mostly by political and military needs.
 * 11) However, both enterprises and households were protected from the influence of world economy by fixed domestic prices and state monopoly on the foreign trade
 * This is an extremely POV and condescending wording.
 * Propose a better one. And I assure you that I haven't intended any POV here.
 * 12) Bauxite, phosphate rock, grain and certain types of consumer manufactures eventually became other important import articles.
 * I may be wrong here, but to my knowledge consumer manufactures were not particularly important imports.
 * You are very wrong here. Certain manufactures, mostly from the Eastern bloc, were very important for the Soviet citizens - furniture, clothing and other such stuff. The Eastern bloc countries were integrated into the Soviet system in a way they were buying mostly energy and material resources from the USSR while selling manufactured goods and agricultural products.
 * 13) Petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a wide variety of manufactured goods were exported from the country
 * i) it is absolutely necessary to point out when this was the case ii) petroleum, natural gas, metals, wood are ok, regarding the export of petroleum _products_, agricultural products and manufactured goods I am not so sure.
 * i)Mostly it is true for the most of the period after World War II, so no need to specify it once more. Also, the name of the source convey the information when the specific estimate was made. ii)Remember that much things were exported to the Eastern bloc, including aircrafts, cars, caviar etc. Soviet Union had very strong aviation industry, by the way. And be sure that Soviet Union was able to produce such simple petroleum products as Fuel oil, mazut, gasoline, diesel.
 * 14) The economy was directed by scientific central planning, carried out by Gosplan and organized into five-year plans.
 * No, this is a misrepresentation of the sources I used and Greyhood now reuses. Of course it was officially claimed that it was directed by scientific central planning, but in practice largely it wasn't. To take Soviet propaganda at its face value here is not on.
 * De jure it was, and in many ways de facto. Further sentences show some of the effects in practice. And I've added the words formally and in practice to make the position of the sources clear.
 * 15) For most of the later part of its history, the Soviet economy enjoyed very low inflation and unemployement rates
 * Well, regarding inflation, to me this sounds rather outrageous and this is not what I recall from sources. Very low unemployment is controversial as well, there was no unemployment statistics in the Soviet Union, and then it is a must to mention the fact that "social parasitism" was criminalized in the first place.
 * OK, I've removed that completely.
 * 16) A number of basic services were free, such as education and medicine.
 * In a sense there is no such thing as a free service. Replace it with state-funded to make it less POV and more precise, and I am ok with that. Perhaps. Lousy quality of Soviet healthcare is inextricably linked to that, quite possibly it is worth mentioning here, if we are to discuss healthcare at all.
 * OK, replaced to state-funded. The quality of services is a very controversial topic, no place to discuss here.
 * 17) "Golden Age of Communism"
 * C'mon. WTF is this? A ridiculous POV that would make a disservice to this article's credibility.
 * Why ridiculous? If there was such thing as communism in USSR for 70 years, than naturally there was a period when it was relatively in the good shape. I've removed this term just to appease you, but it is sourced and it is quite credible.
 * 18) Sourcing. I don't think sources written in the early 1990s or earlier are appropriate here, let alone Lenin. Neither do I think that writings by political scientists and historians are good sources for this section.
 * Lenin sources are removed. Otherwise I think you place unnecessarily strong requirements. Some of your own sources are not very much recent, and sorry, but certain obvious lacks in your knowledge of the Soviet economy suppose that these recent sources, that you've read, just don't cover the topic completely. So, I think we simply have to address the earlier sources in some cases, at least until we've found the better and more recent sources to cover certain aspects of the topic. Greyhood (talk) 04:22, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I am not sure to remove Lenin is correct. Recently I found the article "Lenin as a statistician" that was published in some Western peer-reviewed scientific journal (I didn't save it but I can find it again if someone needs). The major article's conclusion was that Lenin in actuality was a good statistician, so we have some ground to speak about this source as a reliable source for statistics.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:31, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * PS. Here it is . Of course, taking into account the "(c)" this source can be probably used with some reservations, however it would be incorrect to call it "unreliable".--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:37, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Well, that Lenin source was unrelated to statistics, it was on causes of military communism policy. Thanks for the information, anyway.Greyhood (talk) 04:40, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * But, by the way, the phrase first Soviet experiment in planned economy is not quite right, since there wasn't much planning during civil war. It was a heavily directed, not planned economy.
 * It is quite right, and this is almost literally taken from the source. War communism is definitely not market economy, and heavily directed = planned by definition (see planned economy). It doesn't take Gosplan to try to impose a planned economy (well, in a sense it can't be achieved at all even with Gosplan, and neither was the Soviet economy of the 1930s-1980s fully planned, but this is of no concern right here).
 * "Later" means after the time when Soviet economy recovered after World War II, as is implied by previous sentence
 * Well, petroleum export wasn't of much note in the 1950s (at least as compared to the 1970s and 1980s). The data are about 1989 or 1991, not about the period upon recovery, and they were placed in your text between WWII and the 1970s somewhat misleadingly. Please fix this. See also my comments below.
 * One of your own sentences talks about the "scientific central planning".
 * It says that this was officially stressed, not that it was the case in reality.
 * RE "And you are very wrong" here and there, then it is surely not difficult to provide quality sources, ok? Colchicum (talk) 13:02, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * And this: Many sources agree on that. Then, the world relatively is the key one - firstly, thanks to industrialization...
 * Which sources? If there are sources, by all means provide them. The word relatively is what I called evasive wording above. Relatively to what? Colchicum (talk) 13:25, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Ok then, can we take all this into account and insert that paragraph back? The entire paragraph was sourced, btw, not only the last sentence, I just don't put a reference after every sentence. Later I'll take care that the sources I used initially don't end up misrepresented in these revisions. And we have to make sure that the text Greyhood borrowed from the Economy of the Soviet Union indeed corresponds to the declared sources, because you know how it happens, someone writes a referenced text and then over the course of months with further revisions it gets eroded and is not really what the sources meant anymore.
 * Greyhood, concerning your first paragraph, why do you need to change my second paragraph into something like this, at the expense of brevity carefully downplaying the non-controversial point that war communism (its common English name is war communism, not military communism, btw) was a disaster? Please explain this and ideally the reasons behind other changes of my text (additions aside for the moment). There should be reasons, sure? Seriously, then it would be much easier to come to agreement.
 * A wide range of developed industries later constituted the Soviet industrial sector, including petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, heavy industries, electronics, food processing, lumber, mining and defense and Petroleum and petroleum products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a wide variety of manufactured goods were exported from the country are about 1991 or 1989 at best and thus have to be moved to the end (they are now between WWII and the 1970s, which is utterly misleading). As these years are not particularly characteristic, I am not sure if it is needed here at all, but as long as we have nothing better, so be it. I'd still prefer recent sources on economy and not some history writings (Service 2009) or outdated CIA estimates of the economy in 1991 as references for the lists of goods, with a clear indication of the year(s) this is true of.
 * Science and technology in the Soviet Union played an important role in the economic development
 * Please take into account Radeksz' comments. And what is this sourced from?
 * however the most remarkable Soviet successes in technology, such as Sputnik in 1957 and the first man in space in 1961, typically were the military responsibility
 * What was the role of Sputnik and Gagarin in the economy? It should certainly be in the history section, and AFAIK it is already there, but I doubt that we should duplicate it (or anything that belongs in other sections) in the economy section.
 * However, the influence of the world economy on the USSR was limited by fixed domestic prices and state monopoly on the foreign trade still not ok. 1) Avoid however as much as possible. Unless it was in the source, and it wasn't, it is often a sign of POV and OR problems. An it does not really improve anything here at the expense of 9 characters. 2) It is still a one-sided POV unduly (and not entirely accurately) stressing a single effect of this. It should be simple value-neutral "Foreign trade in the Soviet Union was a state monopoly."
 * A number of basic services were state-funded, such as education and medicine.
 * Replace medicine with healthcare, which is what your sentence is about.
 * In the manufacturing sector, heavy industry and defense were assigned higher priority than consumer goods production, which led to a number of problems.
 * "which led to a number of problems" doesn't sound good. Weasel words and all. What was wrong with my version of this, which was incidentally two lines shorter?


 * Radeksz, how do you think, are the 1918 debt default, Gulag forced labor, Lend-Lease and war reparations significant enough for the Soviet economy to be mentioned here? Colchicum (talk) 13:02, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Reply to Colchicum: >War communism is definitely not market economy, and heavily directed = planned by definition.
 * Just better to use the term command economy here, as a special marginal case of the planned economy, OK?

>Well, petroleum export wasn't of much note in the 1950s (at least as compared to the 1970s and 1980s). The data are about 1989 or 1991, not about the period upon recovery, and they were placed in your text between WWII and the 1970s somewhat misleadingly. Please fix this.
 * Petroleum export from Baku was of notice even in 1920s and 1930s (though in 1930s Western companies prevented the Soviet Union from selling too much oil). Really no need to further fixing anything.

>"And you are very wrong" here and there
 * Radek agreed with me on the points where I wrote "you are very wrong" to you. In fact, it strikes me that you don't no that there were very much important imports of manufactures to the Soviet Union, which often were considered deficit by the population and much valued. I've thought that you are more acquainted with the situation. And consumer manufactures are in the CIA source already.

>Which sources?
 * One source on autarkic economy is already given.

>Ok then, can we take all this into account and insert that paragraph back?
 * No we can't, see my responses below.

>are about 1991 or 1989 at best and thus have to be moved to the end (they are now between WWII and the 1970s, which is utterly misleading).
 * The sector structure of the Soviet industry didn't change very much from 1950s, so nothing is misleading here.

>''Science and technology in the Soviet Union played an important role in the economic development. > Please take into account Radeksz' comments. And what is this sourced from?''
 * The source is given, so I've may found a better one. Mention of Science and technology absolutely has to stay. Even if you consider it not very effective, they tried to make it effective and invested huge resources in it, so this way or that it has played a major role in the economy.

>What was the role of Sputnik and Gagarin in the economy?
 * Sputnik was the first satellite, and satellites were extensively used for telecommunications, science, weather forcasting etc. Then there is such thing as space industry, which is a part of industry, which is a part of economy. Sputnik and Gagarin absolutely has to stay in this context, since they were two major points i the development of space industry. Greyhood (talk) 17:28, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * ''Radek agreed with me on the points where I wrote "you are very wrong" to you.
 * I've got quite another impression from Radek's comments, well, it is better to ask him directly.
 * In fact, it strikes me that you don't no that there were very much important imports of manufactures to the Soviet Union, which often were considered deficit by the population and much valued.
 * What are you talking about? The foreign trade was a state monopoly, the population didn't wield any influence on its composition. Under Stalin there were almost no imports of consumer goods at all.
 * Even if you consider it not very effective, they tried to make it effective and invested huge resources in it, so this way or that it has played a major role in the economy.
 * That would be interesting indeed if you had sources. Colchicum (talk) 22:44, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
 * >No problems with current wording in re to #12 and #13.
 * That's what radek wrote.
 * >What are you talking about? The foreign trade was a state monopoly, the population didn't wield any influence on its composition. Under Stalin there were almost no imports of consumer goods at all.
 * Once again, we are talking here about the time after restoration after the war, that is after Stalin. In Comecon trade the Soviet Union was buying consumer manufactures from the Eastern Europe, and also there was some limited trade with the West. These manufacture imports were often of better quality than domestically produced, so the people were quick to buy them and they were in deficit.
 * On other points below I'll answer you tomorrow if I have time, or the day after tomorrow. Greyhood (talk) 23:08, 23 June 2010 (UTC)