Vladimir Popov Why did the growth rate of the Soviet economy decline during the Brezhnev period? Why was labor productivity so low in the USSR? "Dorval - steal!".

The economy of the USSR showed amazing rates of growth in labor productivity, but in the 1990s we experienced such a decline in production that we still cannot restore the previous indicators. Pravda tells about what is being done now to develop the labor market. Ru Alexander Shcherbakov, Professor of the Department of Labor and Social Policy, RANEPA under the President of the Russian Federation.

How to increase labor productivity in Russia?

- Alexander Ivanovich, we have practically forgotten this good old term "labor productivity" until the President reminded us of it in May Russian Federation Vladimir Putin. Tell me, please, how it was, in connection with what?

- It seems to me that labor productivity is extremely important indicator economy, its importance is simply difficult to overestimate, no matter how we try to describe it, to show how important it is, and so on, it may turn out to be even more important. I think that life itself made me remember it, because without this integral synthesizing indicator it is simply incompetent to assess the course of economic development and this is very illiterate. In the end, this does not give an adequate picture.

— I know about labor productivity that Russia lags behind developed countries, in particular from the USA, by this indicator by 4-5 times. Is there a formula for calculating labor productivity?

There may be different approaches different systems. You can count as we used to think before. You know how much output is produced in general, and you correlate this volume of output with the cost of working time. The cost of working time in ancient times was determined by the payroll of workers, the so-called average payroll of workers, or even the average annual. Such an indicator, of course, has the right to exist, but from the point of view of an economist, and even more so in conditions market economy, says little.

- Not very efficient.

Yes. Since such an indicator, first of all, does not reflect what the effectiveness of this production was. You have produced a large amount of products, and the main thing is not how much you have produced, but how much you have sold. That is, the commercial component is needed.

But, nevertheless, everything is taken into account in this indicator - both what the population has acquired, and, as it happened before, what it has not acquired. Such an indicator takes into account labor productivity in our time, but this is not the most convenient indicator. There may be a sufficient number of such indicators of others, more acceptable.

- Is it true that the better the automated workplace, the lower the share of human labor?

- This is a common point of view, but I would not agree with this for the reason that the better the automated workplace, the more complex human labor is required. Of course, maybe not so much time is needed, but even then this is not absolutely accurate. In any case, better, more complex labor is needed.

- Highly qualified.

— Yes, and most importantly, expensive. Automation of workplaces is what is needed both from the point of view of the economy and from the point of view of social development. The more expensive the labor, the higher wage. And therefore, the higher wages, the greater the demand, and the flywheel of the economy turns faster.

- And such a factor as shadow economy, salaries in envelopes, that's all, probably, it distorts the statistics a lot ?.

- Recently, one of the leaders of the government, Olga Golodets, reported that about 30, and even more, millions of people, we supposedly do not know where they are. These people are certainly busy, they receive some income, but the government does not know anything about these incomes, because they do not pay taxes. They don't pay social contributions. And this, of course, affects the economy, but I would not say that it is in a negative direction. It is not yet known what is the productivity of labor in the shadow economy.

Yes, maybe higher.

- Maybe higher. Or maybe not higher, since unskilled labor is often used there, the labor of migrants, as a rule, is low-skilled. Therefore, our indicator of labor efficiency may be even worse. It's impossible to judge here because we don't have the data.

Was labor productivity higher or lower in the USSR than it is now?

- If at the beginning of the historical path of the USSR lagged significantly behind the same economically developed countries, which even then were economically more developed, but somewhere, if my memory serves me right, already in the 50s the distance began to shrink.

And then, closer to the 80s, this distance began to increase again. But what is remarkable, in my opinion, the history of labor productivity in the USSR, is the unprecedented rate of growth. And here it is not even necessary to write off the result for some purely financial tricks or some kind of financial turns, since very often in the USSR the results of labor were measured in kind. So it was in the formative years of the USSR, in the first five-year plans, when everything was measured almost in the number of cities, factories, tractors, but such a comparison made it possible to conclude that indeed the growth rates, that is, the increase in the level of labor productivity in the USSR, were unprecedented, which neither after nor to this day have any of the countries been repeated. That is, it was a unique growth rate.

- In the "zero" our growth rates were quite high, but productivity, nevertheless, was low, so it turns out that the indicator is not so synthetic?

— You know, in the 90s we received a very strong blow in the economic sense and we fell unprecedentedly low both in terms of labor productivity and in terms of wages. Moreover, in terms of wages, we fell even lower than in terms of labor efficiency. In terms of labor efficiency, in 1995 we achieved approximately 47 to 50 percent of the 1990 level in terms of labor efficiency, and even less in terms of wages. And then, starting from 1999 and until 2000, we began to increase labor productivity and increased it quite rapidly, this continued until 2007.

And then we have in 2008-2009 financial crisis, the consequences, then we again have a small increase, up to 4 percent in 2012. 2013 is a little less, in 2014 we generally went into tenths of growth, according to our calculations, this is about 0.3 shares of the increase in labor efficiency in 2014. And we are now barely getting to the level that was reached in 1990. That is, we are growing, but growing very slowly.

- It's no secret that we have disproportions in the level of salaries. I was surprised to learn that a neurosurgeon, for example, earns an order of magnitude less than a marketing director. And professional benefit and erudition cannot be compared. Is this phenomenon normal, does it manifest itself with the same force in the West, and do we need to do something about it?

- I think it hinders in terms of social development, in terms of general cultural, universal development and, in the end, in economic development interferes too. In the West or in the East, say, in Japan, this is not the case. Skilled labor is very expensive. Much more expensive than not qualified.

- Experts single out industries where labor is clearly overvalued and undervalued. Tell us about these industries.

- First of all, this is everything that is connected with purely financial institutions. Secondly, this is what is connected with such areas of activity as the service sector, and especially what is connected with all kinds of shows, with all kinds of sports activities, and the like. What the spectacle offers is always valued highly enough.

- But if there is a demand for "bread and circuses", then there is a high demand for circuses. If there is a high demand, then it is fair that salaries in this industry will be quite high. On what basis, then, is it concluded that the industry is overvalued?

Yes, there is a demand. Considering that, especially in the field of art, in the field of all kinds of spectacles, personal talent, personal abilities of a person are of great importance, then it is probably difficult to speak here. These are quite unique abilities that are generally not common. Therefore, if the consumer is willing to pay, then this is probably fair.

But when we say that it is overvalued, we mean the average level of income in the country and even the importance that activities have in other areas, say, producing some kind of material values about the values ​​that workers in the field of spectacles produce.

- That is, the problem of adjusting labor productivity, wages, automatically pulls the problem of social stratification there. And now, in connection with the May decrees, it is necessary to translate these conversations into a practical plane. Do scientists, experts have an idea of ​​how to do this or how at least in what order?

— Last year, in June, a special plan was adopted. It is noteworthy, in my opinion, not so much for its content, but for the very fact that for the first time in recent decades, a plan has been adopted in Russia to assist the state in increasing labor productivity.

In real life, measures to improve the skills of workers turned out to be the most effective. That is, now, finally, our leadership has begun to accept certain standards related to this very qualification. Then, in the form of intentions, there is an idea to create some structures that would train employees in order to improve their skills.

There are other interesting areas as well. For example, such a phenomenon as a special assessment of the workplace. Starting, I think, next year absolutely all workplaces are supposed to be checked for a special assessment of the workplace. That is, to find out how adequate they are to current needs and, in general, to the modern technological level, since it is no secret that we are also experiencing a failure in terms of technology. And it is assumed that after such an assessment of the workplace, some kind of tax pressure will be exerted on enterprises in order for them to replace obsolete workplaces with more modern ones.

But I think, unfortunately, much of what was supposed, including for this year, remained on paper because of this situation with the jumping exchange rate.

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A quarter of a century ago, the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan ended over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was inhabited by ethnic Armenians, but in Soviet times belonged to the Azerbaijan SSR. The conflict goes back to the 1920s and has not been without the Turkish factor. What about the 1920s! The first blood, as in the movie about Rambo, was shed in these places back in 1905. Then the Armenians and Azerbaijanis, subjects Russian Empire, with knives in their hands, they found out whose land it was - Nagorno-Karabakh. Russian intelligence recorded that the "warmonger" was Turkey, which then and now considers Muslim Azerbaijan a sphere of its influence and interest.

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Today we will tell you about how time was “stuck” in Russia, as well as about hours, units of time and a strange March 1st Friday.

Americans treat Gerald Celente, the permanent head of the Trend Research Institute, very ambiguously. Some curse him for gloomy predictions, others simply admire him. Thus, the influential New York Post states: “If Nostradamus were alive now, he would hardly have kept up with Gerald Celente.”

In April 1969, amid student unrest that escalated into major strikes, President de Gaulle was forced to resign. The situation looks more than strange, since these "popular indignations" began during the period economic growth France. Who and what prevented the creator of the Fifth Republic?

About this special service - the military counterintelligence SMERSH ("Death to spies"), which terrified the enemies of the USSR from the moment of its creation in 1943, they still talk. Only after almost 70 years, the stamp "Top Secret" was removed from dozens of successful operations carried out by counterintelligence officers.

At the beginning of the 70s of the last century, I read several books about our Soviet planned economy and the American free market. I remember the book of the designer O. Antonov "For everyone and for myself." I remember the article "The Road" in "Komsomolskaya Pravda", where the correspondents talked about their journey through the States. "We do not pee in your ashtrays, do not throw cigarette butts into our toilets," the special correspondents told us, then young Soviet people, the inscription in the American toilet. Also, the articles of the publicist Vasily Selyunin about the problems of the Soviet economic social path remained in my memory. "Labor productivity in the USA is 2.5 times higher than in the USSR," wrote the Soviet press at the time.

In 1984, in a conversation with friends, for the first time I wanted to see life in the United States of America with my own eyes. After 18 years, the dream came true...

In 1999, the daughter, at that time a 4th year student of the Minsk Institute of Yaz, won the GC the first time and left for permanent residence after graduation.

In 2002, my wife, returning from a visit to her daughter, pushed me out of the house: "Go and see how it is in New York my daughter lives!” Honestly, I didn’t want to go (I didn’t want to interfere with my daughter’s life on her own), but I went. And so, 18 years later, on November 1, 2002, my dream came true and I first arrived in the USA.

I stayed "on a visit" for two months - washed dishes in a restaurant where I was fed and paid $ 400 a week for six working 10-11-hour days. Of course, after my $120 a month S.N.S. BPI was a shock - in two months in Brooklyn, I earned almost two annual Minsk salaries, while recouping my wife and I's expenses for tickets to America. I returned to Belarus via Chicago (I was there for almost three days), having traveled in this way through the north of the States. A month later, he took another vacation (and at the end of his dismissal) and, having received a visa, on January 31, 2003, he again arrived in New York.

Six months later, my wife arrived. Since then, all my "American" family in America. My daughter got married and in 2008 I became the grandfather of my grandson. I work in the States, my wife does not.

I live in Bensonhurst - this is a district of Brooklyn, the same as, for example, Uruchcha in Minsk. I rent a 1-room apartment in a 4-storey building (here everything above 3-4 floors is called a building), leaving the privatized 3-storey building to gather dust in Minsk room apartment in a 9-story Belarusian skyscraper, having sold a car, a garage and a dacha. He also left the Soviet part of his life there.

"Work-home-work-home," the wheels of the local subway rumble, measuring out a 10-hour working day and a six-day week for those of us who, knowing Russian, but not knowing English, are forced to work for a minimum wage for " pioneers". "Work-home-work-home," - wheels are tapped out in barely understandable English later, and hope-translator stubbornly repeats his own: "In the future everything will be OK." When? Probably when I really see that "productivity in the United States is 2.5 times higher than in the USSR."

Eh!, now I would like to find the one who first said this in the 70s. He would take off his pants and whip him for disinformation in the presence of the Soviet people.

// 06/02/2009, Anatol Starkou, Brooklyn, NY, USA
Upd.: eyelet

In the journal he edited in 1940, an article appeared by an employee of the Institute of Economics Kubanin (a Jew by nationality). In this article, Kubanin, following in the fresh footsteps of Stalin's speech at the 18th Party Congress, showed that in terms of labor productivity in the region Agriculture The USSR lags behind the USA. Let me remind the reader that in his speech Stalin spoke of the main economic task USSR, linking it with the excess of "production of iron and steel per capita in the country" in comparison with the leading capitalist countries. But Stalin did not speak about the lag in the production of agricultural products per capita. Moreover, as was soon explained by an article in Pravda, productivity should not be confused with labor intensity; if in the West a worker sometimes produces more output, then this is achieved due to the greater intensity, and not the productivity of his labor. // http://zarubezhom.com/Kazenelinbogen.htm

The planned economy that operated in the Soviet Union did much to help the country move closer to world leaders in terms of productivity, but it also contributed to the economic collapse in the late USSR.

Breaking with capitalism

High labor productivity at the dawn of the USSR was one of the decisive factors in building a society of universal welfare and prosperity. It is no coincidence that back in 1919, Lenin put forward the thesis: "Labor productivity is, in the last analysis, the most important thing, the most important thing for the victory of the new social system."

The task before the young Soviet state was extremely difficult: to restore the dilapidated industry inherited from tsarist Russia, where the productivity of the economy was noticeably inferior to the developed countries of the West. Thus, according to the power-to-weight ratio of labor in 1916, there were only 123 hp per 100 workers in large-scale industry in Russia. With. installed capacity, while in the USA already in 1914 this figure was 319 hp. With. - 2.6 times more.

The October Revolution, which drew a line under the capitalist foundations of economic management, according to the Bolsheviks, opened up completely unprecedented prospects for economic growth. “Capitalism can be finally defeated and will be finally defeated by the fact that socialism creates a new, much higher labor productivity,” noted the leader of the world proletariat.

The fruits of electrification

In December 1920, at the initiative of Lenin, a plan for the phased electrification of the USSR (GOELRO) was adopted. According to this plan, the authorities intended to build up to 30 regional power plants with a capacity of one and a half million kilowatts, thanks to which, in 10-15 years, the country had to increase industrial production by 80–100%. However, the first results came much earlier.

Electrification, coupled with the harsh methods of war communism and unprecedented enthusiasm, has borne fruit. From 1920 to 1927, the funds of Soviet industry grew from 8,090 million to 9,015 million rubles - by 11.4%. The volumes of output for this period increased by 9 times, and the norms for the production of workers - by 4 times.

If we compare labor productivity with pre-war times, then in 1927, despite the reduction of the working day from 10 to 7.8 hours, it increased by 21% compared to 1913, and the hourly work of the Soviet worker became about 50% more efficient. For many, this was clear evidence of the advantages of the planned economic system.

Shock five-year plans

Thanks to the implementation of the GOELRO program, a basis was created for future success in the industrialization of the country. During the years of the first (1928-1932) and second (1933-1937) five-year plans, a powerful industry was built and a large-scale technical re-equipment industry. The number of workers involved in heavy industry enterprises over 20 years (from 1917 to 1937) increased 3 times, while the power of engines installed in the factories over the same period increased from 2970 thousand to 16750 thousand liters. With. - 5.64 times.

“Communism is completing reconstruction at a gigantic pace. In the competition with us, the Bolsheviks proved to be the winners, ”the French newspaper Tan noted. The English magazine "Round Table" was amazed at the successes of the automotive giants of Kharkov and Stalingrad, admired the grandiose steel plants of Magnitogorsk and Kuznetsk. “All this and other industrial achievements throughout the country testify that, whatever the difficulties, Soviet industry, like a well-irrigated plant, is growing and getting stronger,” the British wrote.

During the first two five-year plans in the USSR, a real economic miracle: the volume of output increased almost 7 times, there was an increase in the output of workers by 156%, an increase of 355% production capacity, and the power-to-labor ratio increased by 150%. Such rates of productivity growth are unparalleled in world history.

Couldn't catch up

In the post-war period, the USSR managed to overcome the consequences of devastation in a short period, and by 1960 to reach the 3rd place in the world in terms of labor productivity, second only to the United States and France in this indicator. However, then the rate of production began to decline. As a result of the unsuccessful reforms of 1965, the growth rate of labor productivity fell from 8-10% per year to negative values.
The following table clearly shows how, in percentage terms, the productivity of the economies of some of the most developed countries of the world, including the USSR, has changed over the years in relation to the United States. In parentheses are the places that the states occupied in different years in this kind of productivity rating.

If from 1951 to 1960 the growth rate of labor productivity in Soviet industry averaged 7.3% per year, then from 1961 to 1970 they dropped to 5.6%. By 1975, although these figures had increased to 6%, this was not enough to keep the 3rd position, and the country successfully dropped first to 5th, and then to 6th place.

The calculations of Soviet economists showed that in order to reach the level of world leaders by the end of the 20th century, the USSR needed to have an average annual growth rate of labor productivity of 7-10%. For our country, these were real numbers, as some industries showed much more impressive results.

For example, at the Tbilisi Aviation Plant. Dimitrov, the increase in labor productivity by the beginning of the 80s was over 20% per year, and some brigades of the Leningrad association "Positron" in 1984 achieved even more impressive figures - 50% per year. Unfortunately, these were isolated cases.

What prevented our country from increasing labor productivity on a larger scale? Economist Gennady Muravyov sees the reason for this in the different energy availability of the workers of the USSR and the leading Western powers, and as the second factor he calls the arrangement of incentives, which was practically absent in the planned Soviet economy.

But there were opportunities to increase the productivity of production. Until the beginning of the 1990s, the USSR had a huge scientific and technical potential. Suffice it to say that in terms of the number of annually registered inventions since 1974, the USSR has firmly taken the place of the world leader. However, as the Pravda newspaper admitted, only a third of the registered technical innovations served the national economy.

There were other problems that hindered labor productivity in the USSR, which were repeatedly identified by the Soviet government. This is drunkenness, theft and parasitism. Five anti-alcohol campaigns were tried to fight drunkenness from 1918 to 1990, but at best they had only temporary success.

With embezzlement was fought over active struggle. Numerous trials in the case of various mafia structures, which often included the leaders of the national republics of the USSR, received a wide response. However, they stole not only in a big way, but also in a small way, and in in large numbers. No wonder there was a saying in the USSR: "Drag even a nail from the factory - you are the master here, not a guest!"

They began to fight parasites even under Lenin. The leader of the proletariat, for example, proposed that those who shied away from work be put in jail, and the most malicious violators of the labor regime should be shot. In the 60s, idlers were actively evicted to places not so remote. Only in 1961 such a fate befell 37,000 people.

As long as growth Soviet economy fell steadily, in many countries, including Southeast Asia, the reverse process was observed. For example, if during the period 1980-87 the total labor productivity in the USSR came to negative indicators (-0.2%), then in Japan, despite its own problems in the economy, its growth averaged 2%.

The efforts made in 1983 by Andropov made it possible for a short time to overcome the negative trend of declining labor productivity. However, with the beginning of perestroika, the rate of economic growth dropped sharply, leading to a drop in production volumes, and then to the complete collapse of the Soviet economy.