Enterprises in the Soviet Union
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For most of its existence, the vast majority of enterprises in the Soviet Union were state-owned, with a minority being small, cooperatively owned ones (such as artels and production cooperatives). The Russian term for "enterprise" is "предприятие", "predpriyatiye" and it is usually translated as "company".
For the majority of the history of the Soviet Union, except for the periods of NEP and perestroika, the ownership of the means of production and hence the enterprises belonged to the Soviet people as a whole. This right of ownership for the vast majority of them (i.e., excluding the cooperative enterprises) was exercised by the Soviet state via its ministries and other agencies at various levels of management. Mikhail Gorbachev and his team believed that a key reason for the poor performance of the Soviet economy lies in the issue of ownership, and the main task of economic reforms during perestroika was, as the Soviet leadership put it, "denationalization and demonopolization of the economy and the development of enterprise and competition".[1]
In addition to state enterprises, "промысловая кооперация", i.e., production cooperatives, which comprised small producers, artisans and craftsmen, existed until the mid-1960s. These were liquidated and their enterprises, if any, were transferred to state ownership by the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of April 14, 1956 "On the Reorganization of Production Cooperation" (О реорганизации промысловой кооперации).[2] The 24th Congress of the CPSU partially reversed this policy, recognizing the necessity to significantly expand the production of consumer goods using local resources, envisioning the development of crafts' enterprises and subsidiary industrial production.[3]
New Economic Policy
After the October Revolution, all means of production were nationalized, including foreign businesses. The New Economic Policy (NEP) reintroduced private enterprises for small and medium-sized businesses,[4] while the state continued to control large industries, banks and foreign trade.[5] The 1923 Law on Concessions allowed for foreign concessions in the USSR. However, in 1928 Joseph Stalin terminated NEP, re-nationalized most of the economy,[citation needed] and banned foreign businesses: following the December 27, 1930 decree of Sovnarkom on concessions,[6] by mid-30s the vast majority of concessions were discontinued and even unilaterally terminated by the Soviet Union, being replaced with concessional contracts.[7][8][9]
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