The second half of the 1960s was perhaps the best period in the history of the USSR: peace on external fronts, rising living standards, stability. In many ways, this is the merit of Alexei Kosygin, who called himself the chief engineer of the Soviet Union.
The youngest People's Commissar of Stalin
In 1936, a graduate of the Leningrad Textile Institute gets a job at a factory. Within six months he was a shift supervisor, a year later he was a director; two years later, in 1938, he was the chairman of the executive committee of the Leningrad City Council, in fact, the head of the city. At the age of 34!
Evil tongues slandered that such a fantastic rise was the result of Yezhov's terror, because of which Kosygin allegedly got the opportunity to occupy the vacated positions of repressed bosses. They also said that Kosygin was the son of Nicholas II.
But, I think, the real reason is the outstanding managerial talents and moral qualities that the young Leningrader showed in any field.
“A man of this type could lead a large corporation like Ford or General Motors,” noted Newsweek magazine much later, in 1964.
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In the meantime, the pinnacle of his pre-war career: in January 1939, Alexei Nikolaevich became the people's commissar of the textile industry, almost the youngest Stalinist people's commissar.
The new turn is the Great Patriotic War. In 1941, Kosygin organized the evacuation of thousands of factories to the east, unparalleled in history. Then he is in charge of supplying the besieged Leningrad, paving the Way of Life.
And you, Kosyga, stay
The life of the great economist was full of mysteries. As we already wrote, it was said among the people that Alexei Nikolaevich was a miraculously escaped son of the last tsar (remember the year and place of birth of our hero, as well as the almost complete absence of his photographs in childhood and adolescence).
Or another, more reliable fact. Somehow in 1949, on the eve of the arrests in the "Leningrad case", Kosygin (at that time - the minister of light industry of the USSR) was invited to one of the night Stalinist feasts. In the morning, the tired guests were about to leave, when suddenly the Boss ordered loudly: "And you, Kosyga, stay!". The remark was remembered, they did not dare to repress.
A brilliant manager and observant person, Aleksey Nikolaevich was well aware of the Achilles heel of the Soviet economy: the colossal disproportions between the level of development of heavy and light industries.
Miners and metallurgists, who provided resources for the grandiose construction projects of socialism, sometimes could not buy even the most ordinary household items with their rather large salary, which had a bad effect not only on the economy, but also on social well-being. Yes, total mobilization and strict control helped to establish vital production in the difficult war years, but this model was not suitable for ordinary life.
In October 1964, after Khrushchev was dismissed as chairman of the Council of Ministers, Kosygin began to implement, if not the most ambitious, then the most effective economic reform in the entire history of the USSR - the introduction of cost accounting.
The "red directors" were given some (keyword: some) freedom in the selection of personnel, the size of salaries and the cost of the final product. Different enterprises could also negotiate between themselves on prices and delivery times on their own (of course, remaining under the control of the party leadership).
From above, the State Planning Committee of the USSR gave them only the required quantitative and qualitative indicators. By the end of the sixties, more than 30 thousand factories and factories, which produced three quarters of the national wealth, had switched to self-financing.
Golden Five-Year Plan
During the second half of the sixties, the volume of industrial production increased 1.5 times, trade turnover - 1.8 times. The average salary has increased 2.5 times.
Perhaps, for the first time in the history of Russia, the standard of living of the population did not lag behind the rapid economic growth. About 1900 new enterprises were put into operation, construction of auto giants VAZ and KAMAZ began. The scale of the industrial breakthrough was not inferior to the 1930s - only without the horrors of collectivization, hunger and repression.
It was under Kosygin that televisions, radios, cars ceased to be considered a luxury - in a word, everything that was then called "consumer goods".
For example, only passenger cars in 1965, on the eve of the Kosygin reforms, were produced about 200 thousand. In 1975 - already 1 million 200 thousand. And one workplace at a car plant provides a dozen people employed in factories that supply components, and the same number in the service sector. Mass construction of highways began with accompanying service infrastructure.
The pace of housing construction increased threefold - which is natural, since enterprises that had the opportunity to independently distribute the profits received could use it to build high-quality (in comparison with the barracks of the first five-year periods) apartments for their own workers.
Red negotiator
Speaking about the diplomacy of the Brezhnev period, we usually remember “Mr. No” - the legendary Andrei Gromyko.
But meanwhile, it was Kosygin, who never studied foreign affairs, who for a long time was the face of Soviet foreign policy and was rightfully considered an outstanding negotiator.
As the second person in the state, he met and found a common language with the most prominent foreign politicians - from Gaddafi to Margaret Thatcher. In 1966, Aleksey Nikolayevich organized negotiations between the Pakistani president and the Indian prime minister in Tashkent, having achieved an end to the Second Indo-Pakistani War.
Once again, to the horror of the guards, he invited the President of Finland, Urho Kekkonen, on a hike along the mountain paths of the Caucasus, and after their joint walk "through the Lermontov places" the whole world started talking about the Essentuki resorts.
The great economist also took part in the settlement of the conflict on Damansky Island, having held talks with Chinese Prime Minister Zhou Enlai right at the Beijing airport, where he unexpectedly landed, returning from Vietnam from the funeral of Ho Chi Minh. According to some reports, Kosygin made this intermediate stop without the consent of Brezhnev.
"The imperialists want to solve their problems by playing off the PRC and the USSR," his phrase remained in history. As a result, the threat of war between the two nuclear powers was over.
The final
The Kosygin experiments were very ambiguously perceived by the dogmatic communists, who saw in the elements of the market economy "the return of philistinism" and "a departure from the ideals of socialism."
In addition, the Czechoslovak reformer Dubcek began to introduce a system similar to cost accounting in the spring of 1968, but economic transformations eventually led to the erosion of the entire political system of Czechoslovakia, which eventually ended with the introduction of Warsaw Pact troops and frightened the hawks from Brezhnev's entourage. Leonid Ilyich himself, who appreciated Kosygin's professionalism, nevertheless felt a personal dislike for him, gradually removing him from power.
In 1973, after the defeat of the Arab countries in the Yom Kippur War, the price of oil soared from 3 to 12 more of those full-weight dollars per barrel. The need for cost accounting has disappeared: the country's leadership chose not to stimulate the consumer market, embarking on risky (for a dogmatic Marxist) market experiments, but to buy the necessary consumer goods for petrodollars abroad.
Kosygin's departure from life remained almost invisible: ironically, he died on December 18, 1980, a day before Brezhnev's birthday, and for some time the country was not informed at all about the fate of one of its architects.
Nevertheless, the experience of the Kosygin reforms was carefully studied (and largely embodied) by China, whose great friend Alexei Nikolaevich remained throughout his life.
