Studies of a living wage. S. G. Strumilin. Scientific substantiation of the need and opportunity of the economy of planned development

Stanislav Gustavovich Strumilin

Strumilin (Strumillo-Petrashkevich), Stanislav Gustavovich (p. 17 (29) .I.1877) - Soviet scientist and economist. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (since 1931). Hero of Socialist Labor (1967). He graduated from the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute (1912). Since 1897, he actively participated in the revolutionary movement, a member of the RSDLP in 1899-1906. Arrested three times (1901, 1903 and 1905), fled from exile (1902 and 1905). The delegate of the IV (Stockholm) and V (London) congresses of the RSDLP. In the years 1906-1920 menshevik   , member of the Communist Party since 1923. In the 1900s, he began to act as a publicist (brochures "Wealth and Labor", "The Word to the Peasant Poor", etc.). In the years 1910-1917 he worked in the field of statistics. After the October Revolution of 1917, he was engaged in the organization of accounting and planning in the country. He headed the statistical departments of the Petrograd Regional Commissariat of Labor (1918-1919) and the People’s Commissariat of Labor and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (1919-1923). In 1921-1937 he worked in senior positions in the State Planning Committee of the USSR (deputy chairman, deputy head of the Central Planning Bureau, deputy head of the Central Administration of Economic Accounting, etc.). In 1943-1951, Strumilin was a member of the Council of Scientific and Technical Expertise of the USSR State Planning Commission. Along with great practical activity, Strumilin conducted intensive scientific and pedagogical work (at Moscow State University, G.V. Plekhanov Institute of National Economy, Moscow State Economic Institute, etc.). In the years 1931-1957 - member of the Council for the Study of Productive Forces. In 1942-1946 - Deputy Chairman of the Council of Branches and Bases of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In the years 1948-1952 - head of the sector of the history of national economy of the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Strumilin has published over 200 books and articles. Strumilin's scientific works are devoted to national economic planning, labor economics, statistics, and economic history. Strumilin is one of the founders of the historical and economic direction in Soviet historiography. Author of capital historical and economic research: "The problem of industrial capital in the USSR" (M.-L., 1925), "Tsarist manufactory of the XVII century." (in the book: Peasant manufactory in Russia, part 3, L., 1932), "Industrial crises in Russia. 1847-1867" ("Problems of the economy", 1939, No. 5), "Industrial crises in Russia. 1873- 1907 "(" Problems of Economics ", 1940, No. 2)," Industrial Revolution in Russia "(Moscow, 1944)," The Economic Nature of the First Russian Manufactories "(VI, 1948, No. 6)," On the History of Agricultural Labor in Russia "(" Economic Issues ", 1949, No. 2)," History of Ferrous Metallurgy in the USSR "(M., 1954)," Essays on the Economic History of Russia and the USSR "(M., 1966). Strumilin awarded the Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR. In 1957, Strumilin's memoirs "From the Past. 1897-1917" were published, in 1963-1965 - "Selected Works" in 5 volumes.

Soviet historical encyclopedia. In 16 volumes. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia. 1973-1982. Volume 13. SLAVANOVIE - XEN CHEN. 1971.

Strumilin   (Strumillo-Petrashkevich) Stanislav Gustavovich (1877-1974) - prominent Soviet economist, statistician, historian, sociologist; under his leadership, the world's first system of material balances was developed; the author of one of the methods for constructing a labor productivity index Strumilin index; one of the authors of the plans for industrialization of the USSR.

The author of more than 700 works in the field of economics, statistics, national economic management, planning, demographic forecasting, political economy of socialism, economic history, scientific communism, sociology, philosophy. Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1931). Laureate of the State Prize (1942), Lenin Prize (1958). Cavalier of the four orders of Lenin (1945, 1953, 1957, 1967), Order of the October Revolution (1971), Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1936). Hero of Socialist Labor (1967).

Since 1897, he actively participated in the revolutionary labor movement, was subjected to repression, and twice fled from imperial exile. The delegate of the 4th (Stockholm) (1906) and 5th (London) (1907) congresses of the RSDLP. Subsequently, he joined the Mensheviks. Strumilin began his scientific and journalistic activities in 1897. After the October Revolution, he became the head of the statistics department of the Petrograd Regional Commissariat of Labor, then the head of the statistics department of the People’s Commissariat of Labor and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. In 1921-1937 and 1943-1951. worked in the State Planning Committee of the USSR (deputy chairman, member of the Presidium, deputy head of TsUNHU, member of the Council of scientific and technical expertise, etc.). At the same time he conducted scientific and pedagogical work at Moscow State University (1921-1923), the Institute of National Economy named after G.V. Plekhanov (1929-1930), Moscow State Economic Institute (1931-1950). Deputy Chairman of the Council of Branches and Bases of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1942-1946). In the years 1948-1952. head of the sector of the history of national economy of the Institute of Economics of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In the years 1948-1974. on scientific and pedagogical work at the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU. Under the leadership of S.G. Strumilin, the world's first system of material balances was developed.

The main topics of scientific work are statistics, the development of planning methods, the study of the problems of labor economics, labor resources, education, science.

Strumilin is one of the founders of the study of time budgets in Soviet sociology. He came to the conclusion that during the reproduction of the population, "the primacy of economics over biology is undeniable." The most important law of population was considered an increase in the quality of the population. He proposed an original system of redistributing incomes employed in social production for investing in a system of societies and raising children, which he preferred over family education.

In the field of population studies, for the first time he gave a forecast of the number and age-sex composition of the population of Russia, which was justified with great accuracy. He carried out the first demographic and sociological survey of the time budget of workers and peasants. In the work “Labor Losses of Russia in the War” (1922), he calculated the losses associated with a decrease in the birth rate and a decrease in the number of the able-bodied population. From an economic and demographic perspective, he studied the problems of overpopulation, migration, criticized the term “natural population movement”.

In the 1920s, Strumilin took an active part in the study of the most pressing problems of sociology - labor, education and upbringing, the social structure of Soviet society, the composition of the working class, etc. He was the first to conduct sociological studies of working life using questionnaires. Under his leadership, problems of time budget began to be actively studied. In particular, on the materials of the Penza budgets S.G. Strumilin showed that the percentage of expenditure on food is more closely related not to the level of well-being, but to the size of the family and the age of its members.

By the mid-1920s, he had collected significant material about the life of workers as an essential component of their lifestyle. As a result of the studies, rich empirical material was obtained that allowed Strumilin to identify a number of nontrivial patterns. For example, it was revealed that in the families of textile workers, the wife working in the factory added less to the family budget with her extra income than in those families where she devoted all her time to housekeeping.

Studying the problems of the economic efficiency of education, he formulated the law of diminishing productivity of schooling, according to which, with an increase in the number of levels of education, its economic profitability for the state decreases, and the qualifications of workers increase more slowly than the number of years spent on its education.

He investigated the relationship between the degree of qualification of workers and the duration of their training. He established methods for determining the optimal period of schooling and the amount of expenses for the education of each worker, taking into account the growth of the national income of the state - the introduction of universal primary education gave the USSR an economic effect 43 times higher than the cost of organizing it; the profitability of primary education for people with physical labor was 28 times higher than the cost of training, and the capital costs paid for it after 1.5 years.

Strumilin’s conclusions about the high cost-effectiveness of studying at universities of mostly poor workers and peasants confirmed the payback of free higher education and student upkeep at state expense, and also made it possible to justify the obligatory 3-year work of university graduates in distribution, setting salaries at a level no lower than skilled workers.

According to S. Strumilin, prudence is intrinsically inherent in any human economic activity, which is expressed in the definition of a program of measures leading in this particular situation to the intended goal with the least expenditure of time and energy. Thus, any individual private capitalist economy can be recognized as planned, since it represents a certain teleological unity of goals, in accordance with which this enterprise is created and operates, and the means of their implementation, taking into account the totality of specific, sometimes very variable circumstances.

However, a similar conclusion, valid at the micro-level (in relation to an individual enterprise), cannot be extended to the macroeconomic level of society, which is based on the principles of competition and market struggle. Strumilin considered the main fatal flaw of such a society not only the natural absence of a centralized economic plan, but also the fundamental impossibility of its development and implementation. Consequently, the national economy was doomed, in his opinion, to constant chaos and periodic crises. All these difficulties and problems can be overcome only through the implementation of the planned economic system.

According to Strumilin, the socio-economic prerequisites for establishing a “complete planned economy” include the complete elimination of the “market element”. In this connection, the further preservation of the "individual farms of the petty individualistic bourgeoisie" is intolerable. It is also necessary to get rid of the “legacy of bourgeois culture,” which, according to Strumilin, is “to blame” for the fact that “it so often turns public figures into soulless bureaucrats, honored engineers into malicious pests, trusted cooperators into thieves and embezzlers.” Commodity-money relations, according to Strumilin, are non-socialist elements of the economy, they are a legacy of the past and therefore evil. True, at this stage of building socialism it is impossible to do without them, but they will be resolutely, energetically overcome.

Reflecting on the essence of the national economic plan and planned work, trying to understand whether the latter is a science or art, Strumilin tried to formulate a comprehensive approach to the analysis of this issue, defining a planned business both as a science and as an art. Meanwhile, all the sympathies of the scientist were given to the interpretation of the plan as art (planned art). S. Strumilin explained this bias by two circumstances: firstly, the need for a class, party approach to planning (the scientist did not set himself the task of constructing an abstract universal plan suitable for any economic system. In his article “On the theory of planning” he stated that the nature of the national economic plan is always determined by the "social architect" who builds it, its class style and its social aspirations.

Without completely rejecting scientific research in planned work, Strumilin does not accept the approach, according to which the latter comes down almost entirely to scientific prediction of future business processes, and any specification of the plan into a specific action program, clothed in digital indicators, seems to be “completely illegal going beyond accessible to knowledge. " Thus, the strict condition for planning is the primacy of the goals and the importance of scientific research of reality subordinate to them.

The development of the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy was carried out from the standpoint of a teleological approach. Describing the main task of constructing a long-term plan for the development of the USSR economy, S. Strumilin formulated it as the task of “such a redistribution of the available productive forces of society, including labor and material resources of the country, which would optimally ensure the crisis-free expanded reproduction of these productive forces as quickly as possible pace in order to maximize the satisfaction of the current needs of the working masses and their speedy approximation to the complete reorganization of society at the beginning socialism and communism. " S. Strumilin made it clear that he considers the most appropriate such a redistribution of productive forces that will ensure the industrialization of the country in the near future "possibly at a fast pace" and strengthen the position of the socialist sector in the city and the village.

In the process of endless revisions of the projects of the first five-year plan, digital indicators changed, proportions were clarified, but two main goals remained unchanged in the designers' field of vision: the maximum development of the production of means of production as the basis of industrialization, the decisive strengthening of the socialist sector in the city and the village. The third attitude towards the “maximum” satisfaction of people's needs was purely declarative.

Strumilin’s concept of a planned economy is dominated by a clearly expressed centralized, directive principle, which was pointed out and criticized by his constant opponent N. Kondratiev. Kondratiev wrote that the formulation of the plans of various tasks needs much more caution and validity, especially those that cannot be resolved at a given level of knowledge. He advocated the constant accounting of fluctuations in the market, credit rates, market prices, the balance of exchange rates, and a dynamic plan. If Kondratiev sees in the market mechanism a sufficiently effective production regulator that maintains proportionality, a balanced economy, and the economic balance of its various parts, then Strumilin sees in him a constant source of all ills.

S. Strumilin's significant contribution to the development of a specific planning methodology. He was convinced that the development of plans should be based on ensuring the proportionality of the development of the most important sectors of the national economy, balance, and coordination of resources with needs. S. Strumilin was one of the pioneers of the balance method. For the first time he applied it back in 1913 in the work “Tasks and a plan for organizing current flax statistics”. In the very first days of the work of the State Planning Commission he formulated the problem of preparing annual projects for the general perspective balance of the national economy for the planned use and distribution of labor within the republic for the coming year. Strumilin’s ideas were embodied in the food plan for 1921/1922 in the form of grain balance. The balance method was further developed in the draft of the first scheme of the reporting national economic balance, developed at the State Planning Commission on his initiative. In February 1923, S. Strumilin made a report on the balance sheet of the national economy, in which three large groups were identified: a) all types of private economy; b) state economy; c) health care, public education, armed forces. At the same time, N. Kondratyev from the danger of the absolutism of the balance method of planning: it allows you to approximately establish the actual balance of the national economy at one point or another in the past, but does not increase the forecasting potential for an individual enterprise or for the entire national economy. For such a forecast, it is necessary to know the laws of change in time of each individual element of the national economy, as well as the laws of relations and their changes between all elements. However, we do not possess sufficient knowledge of such laws. Kondratyev attached much greater importance to the methods of extrapolation and expert assessments, to which S. Strumilin was already very skeptical, considering them secondary in comparison with balance sheet planning.

S.G. Strumilin, like A. Gastev, examined in detail the sociological factors of the labor behavior of workers, but the former focused more on macro-sociology (national economic level), and the latter on micro-sociology (the level of an individual employee and labor collective). S. Strumilin’s book “Wealth and Labor”, written before the revolution, by 1918 has survived four editions. In the 1920s He is actively involved in the study of the most pressing problems of the sociology of labor: stimulation and motivation of labor, the optimal ratio between work and rest (rational length of the working day), training, living conditions and rest of workers. Under the leadership of S. Strumilin, in the early years of Soviet power, studies were conducted to study the budget of workers and peasants. The work “Qualification and giftedness”, published in 1924, is of theoretical and methodological interest. It contains the results of a survey of scientists from Moscow using a point-based self-assessment of abilities. S. Strumilin made a certain contribution to the theory of distributive relations under socialism, although a number of questions have not yet found a satisfactory solution, for example, the reduction of complex labor to simple and its payment. The rich empirical material allowed the author to identify a number of non-trivial patterns. In particular, it was found: in those families of textile workers where the wife worked in the factory, she added less to the family budget with her extra income than in those families where she devoted all her time to homework.

Significant place in the works of S.G. Strumilina was occupied with criticism of the views of T. Maltus, a study of demographic processes in foreign countries. The scientist considered the problems of marriage and family, public education of children, caring for the elderly, education, etc. In 1936 he wrote the work “On the problem of fertility in the work environment”, later supplemented by the results of a sample survey of women of marriage age of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR (1959).

S. G. Strumilin (Strumillo-Petrashkevich) - prominent Soviet economist, statistician, historian, sociologist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1931). After Oktyabrskaya - head of the statistics department of the Petrograd Regional Commissariat of Labor, then head of the statistics department of the People’s Commissariat of Labor and the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. Since 1951, Strumilin has been working in the State Planning Commission, occupying various responsible posts (deputy chairman, member of the presidium, member of the council of scientific and technical expertise, etc.). At the same time, he is doing a lot of scientific work. He wrote more than 700 works on economics, statistics, production management, political economy, sociology, philosophy, and, of course, economic planning. Countless books, articles, essays, memoirs have been written about S. G. Strumilin. The dissertations devoted to the analysis and evaluation of his views are defended. The name of this scientist and statesman is inseparable from the history of Russian and Soviet economic planning, which he served for seven decades out of 97 years of life measured by his happy fate.

The contribution of the patriarch of domestic economic thought to the cause of building socialism is great   - such is the leitmotif of the research of essentially all “Strumilinologists”, such is the general, final assessment of his activity, which dominates in the 70-80s. At the same time, without challenging the scientific merits of Strumilin, without even challenging his slightest doubt, his bright, distinctive economist, without encroaching on the authority he deserves due to his scientific discoveries, we note the insufficiency and one-sidedness of the existing ideas about the elder of our economic theory that reflect only half the truth. The other half consists in the fact that it was inextricably linked with the administrative system of planned management that developed in the 1930s and was its most prominent theoretician and practitioner. Belonging, like G. M. Krzyzhanowski, to the teleological direction in economic theory, Strumilnn was distinguished by much greater intransigence to the supporters of the genetic school, occupying diametrically opposite positions. It is possible that the secret of Strumilin’s longevity lies not only in his excellent natural data, but also in his vision of the development of socialism, which was always in full accordance with the views of the country's top leaders. Today, it seems, there is a need to develop a modern approach to assessing the views of the Soviet economist, perhaps the largest drafter of the first five year plans.

In the proposed theoretical article by Strumilin “Toward a theory of planning”   he expresses his thoughts on how to be a plan. Of course, for an intimate acquaintance with the views of Strumilin, one article is clearly not enough, therefore, commenting on his theoretical platform, we will resort to other works of the scientist. At the same time, we emphasize that the article included in the book is quite representative and quite fully reveals the theoretical views of the academician.

So, let's listen to Strumilin. On the question of the objective necessity of planned maintenance, he expresses propositions very similar to the theses of G. M. Krzhizhanovsky. In the article “Toward a Planning Theory,” Strumilin rightly points to such an immanent feature of management as provision. Caring for the future is peculiar even to some animals. Classic examples in this regard are ants, bees. However, the owner's foresight shown by these animals is determined only by genetically inherited skills. But these skills, even the most skilled ones, are generated by innate instincts; they are not conscious efforts to implement some kind of pre-thought out program of action, that is, a plan. And only the management of people is expressed in determining the program of action leading in this particular situation to the intended goal with the least expenditure of time and effort.

An examination of the problem of the plan from this angle makes it possible to recognize as planned the individual economy of a capitalist enterprise. Each businessman builds his farm according to a carefully thought-out plan, taking into account the totality of specific circumstances. However, this conclusion, valid in relation to an individual enterprise, cannot be extended to the economic level of a capitalist society as a whole, based on the principles of competition and market struggle. At this level, the interests of individual entrepreneurs clash with the interests of the rest of society, and any major success of some is at the same time a major defeat of others.   The result is economic chaos, the chronic tragedy of the squandering of productive forces, etc.

The main organic flaw of the capitalist, therefore, Strumilin sees in the absence single business planand, after all, only he, according to the scientist’s deep conviction, meets the objective needs of the further progress of production, which is developing under conditions of a deepening social division of labor. In this regard, Strumilin is much more pessimistic than Krzhizhanovsky who assesses the chances of a capitalist economy, believing that the absence of such a single plan, the very fundamental impossibility of its implementation, deprives this economy of dynamism, and condemns it to a quick defeat in the fight against future socialism.

October created the first, necessary prerequisite, allowing to realize the idea of \u200b\u200ba single national economic plan. But this is only a political premise. Successful implementation of the idea also requires economic and cultural prerequisites. Having overthrown the political dominance of the bourgeoisie, its economic influences and cultural heritage should be further eliminated. Today we understand the historically predetermined “lightness” of this scholarly reasoning. But in them was the theoretical development of the main directions of development of the social and economic life of the country. So, according to Strumilin, the economic prerequisites for establishing a “complete planned economy”, “finished socialism” include the complete elimination of the influence of the “market element” on our economy (so far, this influence, with dull irritation, states Strumilin, is only limited to the planned intervention of the Soviet authorities). In this connection, the further preservation of the "individual farms of the petty individualistic bourgeoisie" is intolerable. It is also necessary to get rid of the “heritage of bourgeois culture”, which, according to Strumilin, is “guilty” of “So often turns public figures into soulless bureaucrats, honored engineers into malicious pests, trusted cooperators into thieves and embezzlers ...”. We already know how a little later this "bourgeois legacy" Stalin and his entourage "outlived". Under the motto of the struggle against “bourgeois culture”, the best representatives of culture, science, art were destroyed, and it is very sad that Strumilin made his “contribution” to this “struggle” by linking the real and far-fetched facts indicated in the quote not with the vices of the growing administrative system, but with the "bourgeois cultural heritage."

However, let us return to Strumilin's arguments about the plan. A plan is a gigantic, “innate” advantage of socialism, but the author correctly emphasized that we do not have any ready-made recipes for developing plans. This is an extremely complex and new business, “there is no such ready-made planned science that we could borrow from somewhere in some department of one of our universities, or even, perhaps, from world practice. We have to create, in essence, completely new methods, new areas of knowledge, and we learn, as they say, from our own mistakes. ”

Indeed, it was necessary to create a planned science in a difficult economic environment, inexorably requiring a priority focus on solving practical problems. Recalling later on this period, Strumilin noted that everyday practical work prevented the planning theory from rising to the proper level. And yet, despite his extreme workload, he worked hard and fruitfully in the field of methodology, realizing well that without a reliable methodological arsenal it would be impossible to successfully solve practical problems. Strumilin is an unchanging and active participant in essentially all the major discussions about the long-term plan held within the walls of the USSR State Planning Commission, the Communist Academy, and the Supreme Economic Council of the USSR.

The central questions of these discussions were, as already noted, questions about the nature and content of the plan, its goals and objectives. Strumilin's position on the entire range of the problems discussed is quite fully represented in his published selected works. Let us turn, for example, to the article “On the Prospective Five-Year Plan of the State Planning Commission for 1926 / 27-1930 / 31”. In it, expounding the Gosplan draft of the first five-year plan, which underwent certain adjustments in the course of wide discussion, Strumilin formulated a number of interesting, but largely controversial, methodological principles. In particular, he substantiates the statement according to which the plans inevitably contain, on the one hand, elements foresight, on the other hand, design elements of tasks or directives. Convinced that the plan is the unity of these two principles, the author compares planned construction (“social engineering”) with building art. Indeed, many tasks of building art are theoretically unsolvable, but in practice they are quite feasible with an approximation sufficient for life. Moreover, as a rule, there is not one, but several solutions. Such multivariance is due to various creative abilities of engineers designing one or another object. Another engineer can always come and give a new project, even more effectively solving the same problem. Something similar is taking place in social engineering, that is, in the planned construction of “new social structures”.

So, planned work is at the same time science, designed to deeply study the objective real situation, the many intermingled forces and influences, the laws of their interaction, and art, the level of which is largely determined by the subjective factor. This methodological approach seems to be correct and should be attributed to Strumilin's asset. Really,   Planning, like management as a whole, is an alloy of science and art, scientific foresight (forecast) and volitional tasks (directives).   But what is the ratio of these two principles? In answering this question, sharp controversy arose between economists. The content of the analyzed article indicates that in the presentation of Strumilin, priority belongs precisely to planned art. As the future patriarch of Soviet economic science emphasized, our plans are not built for more or less baseless fortune-telling and healer predictions about what will happen in five or ten years, but primarily for creating a certain job management systems   in the field of socialist construction.

Here Strumilin makes it very clear that he is a firm supporter of the teleological direction. He does not accept the interpretation of a plan resembling a medieval horoscope predicting future destinies. The scientist also confirms this position in the article “Toward a Planning Theory”. The nature of the plan, in his opinion, always depends on the social status of the “architect”, his class aspirations. “One designer has his planned construction looming, say, in the style of industrialization, and another - in the style of agrarianization. On the same economic base, you can design a plan in the style of Stalin and Bukharin, and in the style of Sokolnikov and Shanin, and even in the style of Kondratiev and Makarov, and the range of “nuances” in constructing these plans would undoubtedly be amazing. ”

The formulated position, according to which the plan is primarily a system of peremptory instructions, varying depending on the class affiliations of the “architects” of this plan, caused clear objections. In particular, ND Kondratyev’s instant response in the form of the article “Critical Notes on the National Economy Development Plan”, which is published in this book, followed the first Strumilinsk article. Analyzing the interpretation of Strumilin, the critic expressed a fairly reasonable fear caused by such a prioritization. From her, as ND Kondratyev notes in his article, there is already only one, and, moreover, small step towards the construction of completely arbitrary planned structures. It is difficult to object to this remark. Indeed, the absolutization of the volitional principle in terms of and the diminution of the role of scientific analysis, revealing the objective possibilities of society, is fraught, as subsequent events have shown, with far from the ephemeral danger of subjectivization of the economy, its degeneration into the administrative-command system of the economy.

If the reader carefully reads the article by Kondratyev, he will undoubtedly pay attention to the author’s well-aimed remarks, his logically difficult refutable arguments presented in a calm, restrained tone, in an extremely correct form. And when today calls are made to study polemical art, the art of conducting scientific disputes, ND Kondratyev involuntarily recalls, including this article of his, may be a reference in this regard.

But if the reader, after reading the article by Kondratyev, decides that Strumilin was “locked up against the wall” by the implacable logic of the critic, he will make a serious mistake. Strumilin's reaction was swift. In two issues of the journal "Planning economy" for 1927, he publishes a huge article with a very expressive title "Industrialization of the USSR and the epigones of populism." Defending his concept, Strumilin showed remarkable ingenuity in repelling seemingly irresistible attacks.

When stating the confrontation between two scientists of approximately equal strength, it is necessary to note at the same time that the response of the illustrious “patriarch” cannot be accepted as an example of correctness with all the desire. Alas, written in a state of “righteous anger” (how did Kondratyev dare to question the design of the State Planning Commission itself?), The article is replete with abusive expressions, political labels. Such ones as the “epigon of populism”, “kondratyevschina” and others soon became a kind of bugbear, often exhibited in a variety of discussions. This sad circumstance should be noted already if only because it itself meant a certain milestone, the beginning of the slide of economic science into a certain “dead zone”, where there is no place for the search for truth, where any disagreement with authoritarian opinion is declared a “betrayal of the revolution”, “ enemy machinations ”,“ betrayal of the lofty ideals of socialism ”with all the now well-known tragic consequences. Honest polemic fights were increasingly supplanted by mass persecution organized on the pages of the press, “discussions”, which were dominated by slanderous libel, ultra-revolutionary phrasing, hysterical spells and bloodthirsty extremism. An example of such a “scientific polemic” is the many articles published in 1930 in the journal Bolshevik.

Unfortunately, such a really talented economist as Strumilin was not at the proper moral level in this creative contest. Mastery of the word, he nevertheless did not like discussions. Thus, arguing over economic problems with G. Ya. Sokolnikov (People's Commissar of Finance), he appeals to the materials of the Fourteenth Party Congress. With a feign of satisfaction, Strumilin exclaims: “This is the decision (the decision of the congress .- Aut.), hopefully, eliminates all discussions. It gives us the foundation to continue to build our economy according to the Gosplan ... And on this we can put an end to. ” Here, perhaps, Strumilin’s “discussion credo” is most fully expressed - not to search for the truth, carefully listening to other opinions, but rather, to eliminate them soon, “to put an end to”. And why listen, if he already knows the installation that they are wrong. For example, the well-known economist V. E. Motylev Strumilina reproached the lack of a qualitative analysis of the five-year study of the State Planning Commission and immediately received a rebuke on the pages of the press. It turns out that “a qualitative economic analysis ... was given to the compilers of the five-year plan, since they studied under Marx and Lenin, already in finished form   (italics ours. - Aut.) - in all those theoretical studies and policy documents that our party has. "Well, what does it mean, in the words of Strumilin himself, an adversary who has shown such a" surprising misunderstanding "of the role of decisions of the supreme party body? He’s a completely finished person. it’s not difficult to argue with an opponent.

Similar “methods of evidence” Strumilin uses quite often. For example, in a discussion with G. Ya. Sokolnikov, who feared for the fate of agriculture, Strumilin did not see any ground for such “pessimism”. He promises an imminent “heyday of our Soviet village,” which will be ensured by industrialization, and as regards Sokolnikov’s “agrarian bias,” he “corresponds to the best possible way ... with a deeply marked characteristic of Comrade Stalin.” This is what authoritative ally Strumilin chose for himself.

Strumilin's volcanic emotionality was often ahead of the calm, thoughtful researcher in him. The true struggle for the adoption of the concept of the primacy of directive expression of will over a scientific beginning is quite convincing evidence of this. Especially revealing in this regard is his speech at the Communist Academy. With granite conviction, Strumilin announced the target, which is given to us “by our class position on an international scale and domestically ... as an organizing, dominant principle in relation to which science, despite the high rank of this person, and all other auxiliary means are only handmaids   (italics ours. - Aut.) ”. Thus, starting from the correct, formulated methodological premise of the plan as a synthesis of science and art, Strumilin then goes to extremes and agrees to a statement that is rare in frankness and determines the essence of the administrative-command system.

It cannot be said that Strumilin’s thesis about science as a “servant” of party attitudes was met by a friendly rebuff from the participants in the discussion. But one of the participants nevertheless subjected this thesis to deep critical analysis. It turned out to be V. A. Bazarov, a major Russian and Soviet economist, philosopher, and publicist. His presentation at the discussions at the Communist Academy is the word of an honest and courageous person. Anxiously noting the emerging tendencies towards a gradual oblivion of the teachings of K. Marx and F. Engels, pointing out that the great classics proudly applied the “scientific” characteristic to their teaching, Bazarov reasonably asks: “Could this be if they considered science as a “servant” of socialist directives ... The thesis that science is a servant of some of the highest indisputable directives does not originate from the founders of scientific socialism. It has a much more ancient origin. It originated in the Middle Ages and was the cornerstone of the Church-Christian theory of knowledge in the era of feudalism. All the "teleology" of that time had its source in religious dogma-theology. Science was a servant of theology. ” Under socialism, Bazarov continues, science should be free and independent, while at the same time in complete harmony with the strong-willed attitudes and directives of governing bodies. The attempt to “glue” “church-Christian epistemology” into Marxism is, in the right opinion of Bazarov, reactionary, not only theoretically, but also practically, because “nothing worthwhile can be created in science, consciously guided by the proposition that science is someone else’s then a maid. We can say with full confidence that a scientist who has set himself such an epistemological maxim will not invent gunpowder and will not bring much benefit to those directives that he cares about. "

You can, of course, see that, angrily rejecting Strumilin’s unsuccessful thesis, Bazarov runs the risk of going to the opposite extreme, freeing science from the class principle in general, and advocating a kind of pure science. But no less, if not more, is the dangerous concept of a “handmaid”. Fully responding to the spiritual world of Stalin and his associates, this concept ultimately doomed social science to sterility, turned it into a simple commentator on party-government decisions, and created the necessary breeding ground for the emergence of numerous volunteers in the field of science who are rushing over the edge well-intentioned rush to take on the responsibility of protecting the dominant doctrine whenever, in their opinion, something threatens him.

More than others, the upcoming “dominant doctrine”, that is, the teleological concept of the plan of Strumilin and his associates, was threatened by the scientific views of ND Kondratiev. But he, as Strumilin wrote, will not be able to “castrate the planned will of the proletariat in our country”, a will that, according to the author’s ardent conviction, is able to overcome any objective obstacles. A different approach, based on “passive” scientific foresight rather than “active” world-transforming foresight, is, according to Strumilin, “criminal capitulation”.

Thus a belief was formed in the miraculous power of the plan, instructions, directives, in the magical possibilities of an administrative system that could “make a fairy tale come true,” realizing any desire — all you had to do was want. And this medieval religious belief in the limitless potentials of the administrative system turned out to be very tenacious. Didn’t she already fed the ideas of river turning and many other “projects of the century” in our time?

The myth of the infinite power of the directive methods of centralized planning leadership today is more and more resolutely dispelled, but this process is painfully difficult because it encounters numerous administrative obstacles, all kinds of pitfalls and reefs. All the more important is familiarization with the discussion materials of economists of the distant 1920s. It was during these years that most of them piled brick by brick the building of the administrative planning system of the economy, with a firm hand rejecting the non-standard opinions of others.

It would be wrong to think that the teleological approach, the element of foreknowledge, expression of will should not have a place in planning. We repeat, Strumilin was mistaken not when he proclaimed the need for target installations, and not even when he argued for their extreme importance. The error occurred when the teleological approach overshadowed, or, rather, pushed aside the scientific principle, the need to foresee the objective course of development of the national economy, that is, when goal-setting and directiveness were elevated to absolute. It is clear that there can be no plan without a goal. An aimless plan is nonsense. Therefore, ignoring the teleological principle is generally fraught with a kind of economic determinism, according to which there is only one way of economic development, predetermined by objective trends and patterns, and the task is to “discover” it. This is an unjustified simplification that Strumilin rightly ridiculed. Such an understanding, by the way, makes planning itself an irrational task, and in any case deprives it of transformative, creative power. But in an ardent refutation of such ideas, Strumilin went too far and “went too far” in the opposite direction. Now it turned out that you need to deal not with weather forecasting, but with directive predictions of what it should be like.

Nevertheless, Academician Strumilin made a great contribution to the development of methods for constructing plans. He was convinced that this construction should be based on ensuring the proportionality of the development of the most important sectors of the national economy, balance, and coordination of resources with needs. It Strumilin was one of the pioneers of the balance method. In the very first days of the work of the State Planning Commission, he was tasked with preparing annual projects for the general perspective balance of the national economy for the planned use and distribution of labor within the republic for the coming year. Strumilin's ideas were embodied in the food plan for 1921/22. in the form of grain balance. The balance method was further developed in the draft of the first scheme of the reporting national economic balance, developed at the State Planning Commission on his initiative. In February 1923, Strumilin made a report on the balance sheet of the national economy, in which three large groups were identified: a) all types of private economy; b) state economy; c) health care, public education, the armed forces, etc.

The accumulated experience of balance planning was widely used in the development of annual control figures. It was also used in the preparation of the first five-year plan to link its sections and indicators. In the process of developing the five-year plan, a system of national economy balance tables was developed, covering calculations on the starting and optimal versions of the plan: the volume and structure of national income; the ratio of consumption and accumulation funds; balance of production and distribution of national income by social sectors and classes; plan for financing the national economy of the USSR (financial, balance sheet); the estimated balance of relations between the state and the village; calculations of the national wealth of the USSR. This system of tables has retained its importance in the development of subsequent five-year plans.

Around the balance-sheet method of planning, a tense polemic between teleologists and genetic economists has also unfolded, which upheld the priority of extrapolation methods and expert estimates in planned work. Strumilin was very skeptical of these methods, considering them secondary in comparison with balance sheet planning. He sharply opposed automatic extrapolation of coefficients that did not take into account the specifics of new conditions. As for expert evaluations, this method, according to Strumilin, could be used with great caution, because “in the field of planned work,“ expert ”evaluations, unfortunately, still too often have no scientific foundation”.

Strumilin also attached great importance to the method of successive variant approximations, considering it central to a number of other methodological ideas of planning. However, from the modern point of view, Strumilin’s thesis about the need for a systematic approach to the use of all planning methods taking into account their strengths and weaknesses is the most valuable. In his opinion, the leading link method must be applied in organic unity with the balance method and the method of variant approximations, otherwise imbalances in economic development are inevitable. The allocation of, for example, large-scale industry as the leading link in the state plan should be combined with a balance sheet verification of direct and feedback links between industry and agriculture and transport in order to prevent interruptions in their mutual exchange of products and services.

Such a check will require the introduction of appropriate adjustments to the draft plans and, therefore, should be carried out repeatedly by the method of successive variant approximations. Following in the design of the plan from the leading link - industry - along the entire chain of planned elements, it is necessary, as Strumilin noted, to achieve the optimal correspondence between production, consumption and accumulation in all sectors of the economy. This path is inevitable when in the process of drawing up the national economic plan one has to go from the particular to the general and from the general to the particular. Thus, Strumilin was one of the first to justify the provision on a comprehensive, synthetic approach to national economic planning.

At the same time, in our opinion, Strumilin was unable to avoid, in our opinion, mistakes that organically stemmed from his ideas about the primacy of teleology over genetics. In particular, interpreting the plan as a system of economic tasks, he understood them first of all as quantitative, digital parameters, detailing each economic movement. So, when discussing the draft of the first five-year plan at a discussion at the Communist Academy, Strumilin showed a clear hypnotic commitment to specific numerical characteristics, to numbers. At his insistence, in the long-term plan, there was a place for calculating the number of telegrams to be sent in 1931, the average number of words in them, and the amount of allocations for repairing mail bags, etc. Bazarov explained this affection of Strumilin with hypertrophied professional skills: “ Stanislav Gustavovich is one of our most prominent and productive scientists in the field of specific economics and statistics ... And statistics, every thing seems “unconscious”, foggy and indistinct, since it has not received a digital expression. And just as in the eyes of a shoemaker shoe production is the occupation most worthy of a person, so in the eyes of statistics - the essence of the world is a figure. ” It should be noted that such “digital worship” was handed down from generation to generation of planned workers, for more than six decades now, driven by a single friendly desire to put the economy in a Procrustean bed of quantitative indicators. The ever-increasing digital escalation, which regulated the country's economic life beyond all imaginable limits, inexorably led to the emergence of many ugly phenomena, including corruption. “What does the numbers have to do with it?” The reader asks. Meanwhile, the connection is the most direct.

Numerous positions of plans launched by enterprises became the subject of “bargaining”, speculative transactions. Representatives of the lower tiers of a huge administrative and managerial hierarchy often have to be asked to “adjust” the plan, while the higher authorities often “as an exception” agree to do so. Naturally, for a certain fee. In other words, the “classical” administrative-planning system, under the pressure of digital expansion, sooner or later had to develop into a corrupt-bureaucratic system, which functions more often on exceptions than on business norms and rules.

To characterize Strumilin’s views, it is extremely important to analyze his attitude to the market, commodity-money forms and economic management methods based on them. I must say that Strumilin's ideas on this issue are in clear logical accordance with the provisions of the teleological concept, with the interpretation of the plan-directive and science, the “maid”.

Commodity-money relations, according to Strumilin, are non-socialist elements of the economy, they are a legacy of the past and therefore evil. True, one cannot do without them at this stage of the construction of socialism, but they will be resolutely, energetically overcome, for complete, “finished" socialism is incompatible with similar rudiments. Alas, in this understanding of the issue, Strumilin was not alone. The “funeral” interpretation of value categories was shared by the overwhelming majority of Soviet economists (of course, without exception, all teleologists and even some geneticists). These anti-commodity moods progressed especially rapidly after the death of V.I. Lenin. Already since the mid-20s. Stalin and his entourage launched an attack on the new economic policy, on the Leninist democratic economic system. And this was seen as a movement towards “finished" socialism! “With the construction of socialism completed,” Strumilin explained, “we will no longer have a market distribution of social production. And therefore, the question of “prices” generally loses all meaning and relevance. ” How simple. But it is by no means harmless to our economy. The total centralization of the leadership, based on the dictate of the state form of ownership of the means of production, the announcement of the market as “persona non grata” provoked the temptation for the administrative system to organize the entire economic life of a vast country according to a single planned schedule, in the manner of a railway schedule.

Of course, the assumptions and blueprints of Strumilin did not go so far. Thus, defending the control figures of the State Planning Commission for 1925/26, he cautioned against the danger of going to extremes of planned centralization: “It is easy to imagine what an archibureaucratic work would have happened if the USSR Planning Committee, sitting in Moscow, on Vozdvizhenka, took "the role of an all-Union nanny or some kind of trusteeship in relation to every provincial trust, which you can't cry for three years." Golden words, however, the teleological concept of the plan and the “funeral” interpretation of the market were loosely linked to wise warnings. Calling for caution in the practical planned coverage of the national economy, Strumilin objectively approximated the time when the planned genie would be released from the bottle with its theoretical position. Indeed, how to overcome the non-socialist elements, that is, commodity-money relations, is so far an inevitable evil? The only instrument of deliverance, according to Strumilin, is a directive plan. Clearly enough this idea was formulated by him in a discussion with G. Ya. Sokolnikov, who proposed "to adapt the plan to the market situation." Sokolnikov allowed himself to “desecrate” the holy of holies — the national economic plan itself. Is it not blasphemous, is it not “blasphemy"? And Strumilin breast protects his brainchild. “No,” he says, “not adjust   to her, but consciously adjust   "it’s the most to our planned aspirations - this is the only reliable way to the most painless and crisis-free deployment of our socialist economy." Well, today we already know well what came of the instruction “to consciously adapt the market environment”, what efforts require the restructuring of the “only reliable path” that Strumilin intended.

But Strumilin defends his conception of the dictatorship of the plan in a polemic with Kondratiev. The “Patriarch” is simply amused by the arguments of Kondratyev, who advocates the constant consideration of market fluctuations, credit rates, market prices, the balance of exchange rates, a dynamic plan that presumes the predominant use of the very economic methods that are “historically doomed”. For Strumilin, there is no such question at all - about the relationship between the plan and the market. He does not question the slightest doubt that it is indisputable for him that the planning and administrative methods of influencing the economy will have to supplant economic levers and incentives, all the market regulation tools. Therefore, there can be no talk not only about the predominant use of economic methods, but even about their parity with planning and administrative methods. In fact, one cannot be likened to a person who painfully reflects on what is sewn to what, a button to a coat or a coat to a button, and who finally came to the conclusion about them ... equal rights.

Strumilin in these matters least of all resembles a person torn by doubts. If Kondratiev sees in the market mechanism a sufficiently effective production regulator that maintains proportionality, a balanced economy, and the economic balance of its various parts, then Strumilin sees in him a constant source of all ills. Such diametrical differences in the views of scientists are clearly visible in their explanation of the reasons for economic successes and difficulties for the previous years of NEP. The rapid leap of our economy in the early years of NEP Kondratyev linked with the introduction of economic management methods, with the intensification of commodity-money relations, and Strumilin explained this rise by the creation of the State Planning Commission and the planned regulation of the economy. As for economic difficulties, they, according to Kondratyev, are the result of excessive centrally-planned regulation of the activities of enterprises, trusts, associations; according to Strumilin, they are associated with insufficient planned intervention, with insufficient development of the system of planned regulation of the national economy and the lack of planned discipline in the country.

Thus, Strumilin’s concept determined the official “only right way” of further socialist construction - the way of permanently building up a centralized planned beginning. Such an understanding of the promising trends of socialist management for many decades has become dominant, defining the purely administrative nature of economic management. Negative economic phenomena generated by the administrative system in large numbers, a chronic shortage of one or the other products, mismanagement have always been interpreted by supporters of the Strumilin concept as a result of “incomplete planning”, “insufficient planned coverage”, etc. Therefore, plans, like a snowball, have grown new additional positions. It seemed a little more - and the firebird of managing the entire national economy as one enterprise would be caught. But the number of indicators increased, and the number of economic difficulties and shortcomings did not decrease at all, moreover, they multiplied.

Fortunately, an understanding of the impasse of such a path has nevertheless come to us. Maybe a bit late, but it's better late than never. Today we are getting rid of many stereotypes and cliches that arose in the second half of the 1920s, but we admit that this is not easy. The concept of continuous strengthening of a centralized planned beginning and a purely symbolic recognition of the importance of economic methods based on market relations, this teleological concept has become, as it were, a genetic element of economic thinking of all subsequent generations. Radical economic reform involves a decisive shift in our theoretical concepts, a revolutionary restructuring of not only economic life, but also economic consciousness.

All of the above suggests that the prevailing enthusiastic assessment of the views of S. G. Strumilin needs well-known adjustments. We emphasize once again that Strumilin is the largest Soviet economist who made a great contribution to the development of promising national economic plans and enriched economic science with a number of conclusions. At the same time, one cannot close his eyes to the fact that he was a prominent theoretician of the administrative-planning system of management and a faithful knight of this system, who defended its honor from the encroachments of various “defeatists” and “deviators”.

Both G. M. Krzhizhanovsky and S. G. Strumilin are political winners. Until recently, the course and results of the discussions of the 1920s. we touched their eyes, defeated by their opponents evaluated their ratings. Their vision of the socialist plan was preserved and reproduced, considering it the only, truly socialist vision and rejecting any views that were different from it. But perestroika required a critical rethinking of our theoretical, largely inherited traditions. This aroused interest in the concepts of other economists of the 1920s, through whom a heavy chariot of history rode. How did they see the plan?

Economist, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1931). He graduated from the St. Petersburg Polytechnic Institute (1914). Since 1897, he actively participated in the revolutionary movement. In the years 1921-1937. and 1943-1951 was in leadership work in the State Planning Commission of the USSR. At the same time he taught at universities, in 1948-1974. conducted scientific and pedagogical activities in the GA.

He worked out the problems of economic efficiency of public education. He investigated the relationship between the degree of qualification of workers and the duration of their training. He established scientific methods for determining the optimal period of schooling and the amount of expenses for the education of each worker, taking into account the growth of the national income of the state. According to Strumilin, the introduction of universal primary education in the USSR gave an economic effect 43 times higher than the costs of organizing it, the cost-effectiveness of primary education for physical workers was 28 times higher than the cost of training, and the capital costs paid for it after 1.5 years.

Strumilin showed the comparative economic benefits of education for mental workers - a 7-year-old school provided the employee with advanced training 2.5 times more than the worker. For a worker, studying at a second-level school only 14% paid back public expenditures, and a higher school from the third year became unprofitable. He formulated the law of “diminishing productivity of schooling”, according to which, with an increase in the number of levels of education, its economic profitability for the state decreases, and the qualifications of workers increase more slowly than the number of years spent on its education.

Strumilin’s conclusions about the high cost-effectiveness of studying at universities of mostly poor workers and peasants confirmed the payback of free higher education and student upkeep at state expense, and also made it possible to justify the obligatory 3-year work of university graduates in distribution, setting salaries at a level no lower than skilled workers. According to Strumilin’s calculations, such an approach guaranteed the state profit from the work of each specialist during his working life period of at least 40 thousand rubles. (price scale of 1929).

Since the 60s some of Strumilin’s approaches to the economics of education have been criticized in specialist literature.

Literature:   S. G. Strumilin, M. 1968; Problems econ. science and practice. Sat articles by eating. The 95th anniversary of S. G. Strumilin, M., 1972; Martsinkevich V.I., Education in the USA: econ. value and efficiency, M., 1967.

M.V. Boguslavsky

One of the pioneers of Soviet sociology was Stanislav Gustavovich Strumilin (1877-1974). He was a major revolutionary and scientist, public figure, theorist and practitioner of planned management, an economist and sociologist. Taking an active part in the revolutionary labor movement, he was repeatedly subjected to repression and exile, was a delegate to the I (Stockholm, 1906) and V (London, 1907) congresses of the RSDLP. S.G. From his youth, Strumilin was engaged in socio-economic research. In the years 1921-1937. and 1943-1951 He worked in the USSR State Planning Commission and at the same time conducted scientific and teaching work in a number of universities in the country. Strumilin is almost the only representative of the revolutionary generation of Russian social scientists who survived after the Stalinist repressions of 1937. Strumilin's main scientific works are related to statistics, national economic management, planning, demographic forecasting, political economy of socialism, economic history, sociology and philosophy. He owns one of the methods for constructing a labor productivity index, creating a classification of professions, conducting large-scale budget research, developing the world's first material balance system. Participating in the development of national economic plans, Strumilin was responsible for social issues. The development of the problems of social planning brought him to the idea of \u200b\u200bcreating<цикла плановых дисциплин под общим именем социальной инженерии>. Scientific achievements S.G. Strumilina recognized not only in Russia but also abroad.

One of the deepest and still remaining classic studies of the social status of the working class is its work.<Прожиточный минимум и заработки чернорабочих в Петрограде в 1914-1918 гг.>published in 2nd and 3rd issues<Статистики труда>   for 1918. In the first years of the revolution, economic disruption, military intervention and famine brought to the brink of physical extinction the main productive force of society and the political support of the Bolshevik government - the working class.

The distribution standards of food products during the First World War and the ensuing civil war sharply decreased, while enterprises had to work with the same intensity, fulfilling defense and national economic orders. Scientists were required to accurately analyze the current situation and forecast for the future. Strumilin believed that the cost of living and the corresponding minimum wage should be determined not only in monetary units, but also in the real (material) form of basic necessities that satisfy the primary life needs of workers. The difficulty was that the volume of needs varied depending on the cultural level, habits, tension and working conditions.

Strumilin believed that the amount of food entering the body, supplying it with the energy necessary for work, should correspond to the energy consumption. If a person is missing something, then his body is physically exhausted, which noticeably affects the decrease in labor productivity. From physiological studies, it is known how many adult workers should receive calories per day for light, medium and hard work.

Using these and other statistics, Strumilin built a table in which<подлежащим>   was an indicator<характер работы>, a<сказуемым>   were<нормы питания>, <продуктивность труда>   and<расход энергии на единицу продукта>. The table clearly confirmed the important conclusion: low wages from the economic point of view are the most expensive per unit of product, and high, on the contrary, the cheapest. Reducing the normal ration of laborers (3600 calories) by only 10-20% reduces labor productivity by 28-55% and thereby increases the cost of production per unit by 25-80%.

Strumilin came to the government with a proposal to raise workers' wages at least to the minimum level that would provide sufficient food and increase labor productivity. Subsequently, Strumilin analyzed the dynamics of wages and rising prices for basic necessities for the period from 1914 to 1918. It turned out that in 1918 a worker could receive 1.5 times fewer calories than in 1914 or what this is necessary to minimize life support.

Nevertheless, the workers existed for something. Strumilin wondered: what do the Petrograd workers live on if their earnings do not provide a living wage? Based on the survey of workers' budgets carried out by the Petrograd Regional Commissariat of Labor in May 1918, Strumilin found out that the Petrograd worker from various sources receives additional funds to cover the nutritional deficit: free parcels of food from relatives from the village in exchange for manufactures, receipts from the sale of property, clothing, savings from large shelves when retroactively introducing new tariffs, renting rooms to residents, loans and even collecting alms. These spin-offs amounted to 60 rubles. for every 100 rubles. earnings.

However, there was still not enough money for these additional incomes. It was also necessary to subtract expenses on housing, clothing, etc. from the total income. An analysis of the time series showing the change in the items of the workers' expenditure budget over a ten-year period revealed that average earnings increased by 9 times, while expenses - by 14.

Strumilin continued his analysis in another work -<Питание петроградских рабочих в 1918 г.>published in the 4th and 5th issues of the magazine<Новый путь>   for 1919. Supply of workers with food in the era<военного коммунизма>   had several sources: on cards, meals in public canteens, buying on the city market (<по вольным ценам>) either in the village, etc. At normalized prices (i.e. cards), the worker received 1,000 calories, and at free prices 1,100 calories per day.

Thus, through state distribution bodies, the worker received less than half of the already<архиголодного пайка>. Was it then necessary to introduce a card system? If the monopoly established by the state on distribution does not give the worker — the most privileged consumer — even half of the product he needs, then there is no monopoly.

The market actually supplanted the state from<потребительской корзины>   the main part of the population. The exception was, perhaps, only the party elite, which was intensely fed by the state.

Strumilin formulates a new question: what are the consequences of rationing wages in the presence of high (<мародерских>) prices for<черном рынке>? The increase in wages will mean that workers, buying in this market, will essentially enrich private traders and speculators at the expense of the state.

Allow gain<капиталистических элементов>   the Bolsheviks could not. To introduce a card system, it would be necessary to partially ban free trade. But in this case, market trade will turn into an illegal business for a handful of looters who, in the absence of competition, will only strengthen their monopoly by pushing up prices and robbing the already poor workers.

At first glance, it is government measures that worsen the situation of workers, enriching<кучки капиталистов>   and increasing the indirect exploitation of workers. In reality, the distribution pattern turned out to be much more complicated. Regrouping the data, Strumilin builds a new table where budget groups are subject (the distribution of workers depending on salary), and the predicate is the number of dependents in the family, the average number of calories per consumer at normalized prices, at free prices, in calories and in foods normal soldering.

It turned out that the average ration of 2100 calories is received only by 30% of the examined workers. Highly paid workers, who make up less than 1% of the total workforce, receive up to 3600 calories - the optimal ration, more than enough for an adult male with hard physical work. The minimum norm of starvation rations was then 1850 calories. At the same time, about 50% of workers received less than this level and became the main victim of typhoid fever. The difference in nutrition between high-paid and low-paid workers was 10: 1.

Calculations showed that the diet of the former exceeded 3600 calories, while the latter did not reach 360 calories, i.e. low-paid workers were beyond physical exhaustion. However, they somehow lived. It turned out that the low-paid receive products only on cards 3 times more than what the minimum rate showed. The social significance of the card system was that it provided a minimum of nutrition to the least paid sections of the population. Its role is all the more significant, the higher the differentiation of the population by income.

The card system smoothed out the extremes of the hierarchy of inequality. It contributed to higher prices on the free market, as a result of which the affluent strata, overpaying for food, were somewhat aligned with the lower strata, which the state helped.

Thus, Strumilin evaluated the card system in different ways: at first he talks about its inexpediency, and then he recognizes its necessity. What is the final conclusion? In order to answer the question, Strumilin proposes to do such a mental experiment.

Suppose, he argues, the card system is canceled. How will this affect the position of the poorest working class groups? At first, there will be a reduction in the price of all food prices by about 30%, which means that it will be easier for workers to feed themselves. For speculators, such a measure is tantamount to ending their monopoly and earning them super profits. But free trade is not destroyed. As demand exceeds supply, prices at points of sale (i.e., in the city) continue to rise.

The consequence is obvious - differentiation in the real nutrition of various groups of workers is increasing. Consider another scenario. Suppose the card rationing system is not only not canceled, but even tightened so that each worker receives an additional 500 calories per day. Suppose that market prices rose by 50%, while earnings and food expenses remained the same. The consequence can be only one - the social differentiation of the population is smoothed out. Strumilin supported each scenario with a forecast table.

Strumilin’s calculations show that highly paid strata of workers benefit from free trade, but at the expense of worsening the position of the low-paid; on the contrary, the card system changes everything. Considering that the three poorest groups make up 83% of the working class, and the three richest only 17% and that lowering the minimum diet for the first means starvation, the introduction of the card system in those conditions was the only way to save the urban proletariat from physical and spiritual degradation .

Relative poverty refers to the inability to maintain a level of acceptable life, or some standard of living adopted in a given society. Relative poverty shows how poor you are in comparison to other people. Typically, relative poverty is less than half the average household income in a given country1.

Relative poverty L.A. Belyaev and L.A. Gordon is defined as the condition in which mass groups of people are,<считающие свой уровень жизни существенно и неоправданно более низким, чем у иных социальных категорий или у себя лично в иное время>   and therefore subjectively abiding<в ситуации бедности, независимо от абсолютной величины их доходов и потребления>. Here we are dealing not with poverty, but with impoverishment - absolute or relative; its first level is expressed in the absolute deterioration of life, the second in that<уровень жизни у части населения снижается, а у остального населения повышается>. And if the poorest of all today<те же, кто и раньше составлял низы общества>then<относительно обеднели больше всех совсем другие люди, в массе своей принадлежащие прежде к средне-высоким общественным группам>2.

A simple way to determine relative poverty is to single out those whose incomes are noticeably lower than those of the largest population. Comparison with how the majority of neighbors live gives rise to a feeling of relative poverty much more often than a difficultly imaginable comparison of one’s own existence with the life of the top rich.

It is a comparative characteristic in two senses. First, it shows that you are poor relative to the abundance or affluence that other members of society who are not considered poor have. The first value of relative poverty is comparing one stratum with other strata or strata. Secondly, it shows that you are poor in relation to some standard of life, for example, a standard of dignified, or befitting, life.

40 years ago, black and white television in the USSR was considered a luxury item, accessible to few. In the 90s, color television appeared in almost every family, and black and white was considered a sign of modest affluence, or relative poverty. Soon, those who cannot afford to buy a computer or a Japanese TV will enter the category of relative poverty.

The notion of relative poverty can be found in Adam Smith, who understood as basic necessities not only goods that are necessary to sustain life, but also something that, according to the country's custom, decent people cannot even remain from the lower strata. A. Makouli believes that<человек или семья считаются бедными, если средства, которыми они располагают, не позволяют им иметь образ и уровень жизни, достигнутые в обществе, в котором они живут>1.

On the whole, absolute poverty is characterized by biological (physiologically) signs, and relative - by social ones. Therefore, groups of relative poverty should also include those groups of the population that, although they live in a certain material abundance, experience problems in the sphere of social or political relations, recreation, etc.

In the concept of relative poverty, a certain ratio between the lowest incomes and the size of the average (median) income is taken as the poverty line. Persons whose incomes in relation to the average (median) level are lower than the established ratio belong to the poor. The poverty line can be determined by identifying families whose equivalent per capita income does not exceed 40% (extreme poverty) or 60% of the average income calculated for all families. For example, in Taganrog in 1989, only 4% of families had an income below 40% of the average equivalent income, i.e. were in extreme poverty, and 13% had an income below 60% 1. Today, this method is the most common in international studies.

In the concept of relative poverty, the poverty line is defined as 60% of the median per capita income2. If this concept of poverty sets the poverty line in a certain relation to average income, then according to the concept of poverty as absolute poverty, the population with the lowest incomes is considered to be poor. A. Makouli makes the following conclusion:<В первом случае масштабы бедности остаются неизменными при любом экономическом росте. Во втором - ни экономический рост, ни уменьшение дифференциации доходов не повлияют на число бедных. При такой концепции можно утверждать: бедные всегда будут существовать>3. P. Townsend suggested that relative poverty means the inability to fully participate in society:<Индивиды, семьи, социальные группы населения можно считать бедными, если они не имеют ресурсов для участия в общественной жизни, поддержания соответствующей диеты, условий жизни, труда и отдыха, которые являются обычными или по крайней мере широко принятыми в обществе, в котором они живут. Их ресурсы значительно ниже того, что имеет средний индивид или средняя семья, вследствие чего они исключены из обычного стиля жизни, общепринятых моделей поведения, привычек и типов деятельности>4.

The boundaries of absolute and relative poverty do not coincide. Absolute poverty can be eliminated in society, but relative will always remain. Inequality is a constant companion to complex societies. Relative poverty persists even when the living standards of all walks of life have risen. Among developed European countries, Sweden has the lowest level of relative poverty.

The richer the country, the more attentive the government and society are to the problem of poverty and more decisively fight it. So the US government is carefully studying populations living in absolute poverty. During the Great Depression, one in three Americans lived in poverty. In the early 60s, despite a twenty-year economic recovery, 30% of the US population remained poor. Poverty level decreased during the period<войны с бедностью>   mid-60s to 17%. In the 80s, the Reagan administration cut social spending, and poverty rose from 10% in 1975 to 15% in 1985. In 1988, more than 32 million people, i.e. more than 13% of the population lived below the official poverty line1. In the future, various programs to help the poor have been and are being adopted in the country. As a result, of the 25.3 million absolutely poor, 11 million were able to be transferred to the category of relatively poor.

The scale of relative poverty in the USSR and Sweden in the 70s was very similar. A. Bergson wrote about this:<Неравенство в распределении доходов в СССР таких же размеров или чуть больше, чем в Швеции>2. More precisely, families living in relative poverty accounted for 7.2% in Sweden and 11% in Taganrog-2. But in Canada and the United States, the level of relative poverty in those years was much higher (see Table 4.6).

It turned out that in Taganrog the poverty index for households headed by women is 4 times higher than for households headed by men. Thus, among those below 40% of the poverty level, almost 80% are headed by women. In Sweden, the poverty line for women-headed families is lower3.

In addition to absolute and relative poverty, foreign researchers distinguish between primary and secondary poverty.

Primary poverty exists among those families which, while making the most rational use of available means and forces, without squandering, organizing a rational lifestyle, still remain below the poverty line. Secondary poverty characterizes such families in which basic necessities of life are not satisfied due to an unreasonable expenditure of funds1.

If we transfer these concepts to Russian soil, we can conclude that primary poverty affects, first of all, the so-called<новых бедных>   - humanitarian and technical intelligentsia, employed in the public sector, which after 1991 did not receive state subsidies, as a result of which the material level of its employees sharply decreased. Secondary poverty should be attributed to families whose members abuse alcohol.

Domestic experts suggest distinguishing between two forms of poverty:<устойчивую>   and<плавающую>. The first is that poverty tends to reproduce poverty. A low level of material security leads to poor health, dequalification, deprofessionalization, and ultimately to degradation. Poor parents have potentially poor children, which is determined by their health, education, and qualifications1. The second, more rare, is due to the fact that the poor, making efforts, leave their circle and, adapting to new conditions, gain a better quality of life.

L.A. Gordon distinguishes two types of poverty - social and economic. The first relates to<слабым>second to<сильным>   to employees.

Poverty<слабых>   - this is the poverty of disabled and disabled people, people with disabilities, patients who are physically and psychologically unstable, as well as workers who are forced to bear exorbitant loads (breadwinners of large families, etc.). It can be called social poverty.

Poverty<сильных> arises in emergency conditions when full-fledged (or even outstanding) workers, usually able to receive income that gives<нормальный>   standard of living, fall into a situation in which they cannot by their own labor ensure the level of well-being accepted at a given time and in a given society. Poverty<сильных>   can be described as economic poverty2.

Thus, social poverty is chronic. If you are disabled, then get out<в люди>   almost impossible. Economic poverty is characteristic of able-bodied workers in crisis situations.

A characteristic feature of modern Russia is that poverty<слабых>   connected with poverty in our country<сильных>3.