Home – Home – Jornals – Humanitarian sciences in Siberia 2016 number

The article analyzes problems of agrarian and economic history of the USSR in the second half of the 1960s - the first half of the 1980s that have been insufficiently addressed by prior research. These issues are related to the government’s attempts to increase the productivity of farms by limiting policy diktat in planning production and procurement as well as by increasing investments in agricultural sector. Based on the materials of Western Siberia, the author proves the thesis that mechanisms of economic incentives and improving welfare of the state and collective farms in the second half of the 1960s contributed to the recovery of agricultural production; while strengthening of administrative and tax diktat against the farms in the early 1970s led to the subsequent decline in the industry’s development and to a crisis in the agricultural sector in the early 1980s. The crisis of 1980-1982 accompanied by a decrease in production and in volume of public procurement was considerably complicated by the unfavorable weather conditions, however, its main cause lay in imbalance of economic mechanism and actual bankruptcy of the majority of agricultural enterprises. The Food Program adopted at the Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the CPSCU in May, 1982 was aimed at solving the aggravated food problem. It provided the implementation of complex measures to improve the farmers’ well-being, to expand residential and community construction, to improve health and consumer services in rural areas. The government restructured debts of agricultural enterprises and raised the purchasing prices. Since the beginning of implementation of the Food Program, the situation in the agricultural sector stabilized. Agriculture in Western Siberia in the second half of the eleventh five-year plan was increasingly dynamic.