The administrative-command system (russian: Административно-командная система, Administrativno-komandnaya sistema), also known as the command-administrative system, is the system of management of an

economy An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...

of a

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

characterized by the rigid centralization of economic planning and distribution of goods, based on the state ownership of the

means of production The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as an ...

and carried out by the governmental and

communist party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

bureaucracies (" nomenklatura") in the absence of a market economy. The term is used to describe the

economy of the Soviet Union The economy of the Soviet Union was based on state ownership of the means of production, collective farming, and industrial manufacturing. An administrative-command system managed a distinctive form of central planning. The Soviet economy was ...

and the economies of the Soviet Bloc which closely followed the Soviet model. In his 2004 book ''The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives'', Paul Roderick Gregory argues that the

collapse of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

was due to the inherent drawbacks of the system, namely poor planning, low expertise of planners, unreliable supply lines, conflict between planners and producers and the dictatorial chain of command. Gregory writes that "the system was managed by thousands of '

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

s' in a nested dictatorship".

History of the term

Already in 1985, John Howard's article "The Soviet Union has an administered, not a planned, economy" argued that the common description of the

Soviet-type economic planning Soviet-type economic planning (STP) is the specific model of centralized planning employed by Marxist–Leninist socialist states modeled on the economy of the Soviet Union (USSR). The post-''perestroika'' analysis of the system of the Soviet ...

as planned economy is misleading. While central planning did play an important role, the Soviet economy was ''de facto'' characterized by the priority of highly centralized management over planning. Therefore, he writes the correct term would be "centrally managed" rather than "centrally planned" economy. The term ''administrative system'' was introduced by Russian economist Gavriil Kharitonovich Popov during the '' perestroika'' period in the Soviet Union as the title of a section in his 1987 article "From the Point of View of an Economist" which analyzed the novel of

Alexander Bek Alexander Alfredovich Bek (russian: Алекса́ндр Альфре́дович Бек; 2 November 1972), sometimes transliterated from the Russian Cyrillic as Aleksandr Bek or Anglicized to Alexander Beck, was a Soviet novelist and writer. Bi ...

, ' banned in the Soviet Union. It was published in Russian in 1986 with the beginning of ''perestroika'' and was widely discussed in the society. The term was picked up by Mikhail Gorbachev, who used the expression "administrative-command system" in his November 2, 1987 speech.''Словарь современных цитат'' 'Dictionary of Modern Quotations'' 2020,
p. 821
/ref> The concept was further expounded in Popov's 1990 collection of his essays ''Блеск и нищета административной системы'' 'The Splendors and Miseries of the Administrative System''

History of the term

See also

References

Further reading