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Tax On Trees
Tax on trees was a tax imposed on the owners of fruit trees in the USSR by Joseph Stalin's government in 1944. The tax made it expensive to have trees on a farm, and had the unintended consequence of causing a mass felling of trees by Soviet farmers. This subsequently led to shortage of fruit. The idea was proposed by the Minister Arseny Zverev, and Stalin failed to foresee the problems it would produce. The tax was repealed in 1954 by Georgy Malenkov, when taxes were reduced by 60 percent for farmers. See also * Agriculture in the Soviet Union *Four Pests campaign References Trees Trees Agriculture in the Soviet Union Trees In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are u ... Forestry in Russia Deforestation Environmental issues in Russia Agriculture in Ukraine Agriculture i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph 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 Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1922–1952) and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1941–1953). Initially governing the country as part of a collective leadership, he consolidated power to become a dictator by the 1930s. Ideologically adhering to the Leninist interpretation of Marxism, he formalised these ideas as Marxism–Leninism, while his own policies are called Stalinism. Born to a poor family in Gori in the Russian Empire (now Georgia), Stalin attended the Tbilisi Spiritual Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He edited the party's newspaper, ''Pravda'', and raised funds for Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction via robberies, kidnappings and protection ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Unintended Consequence
In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was popularised in the twentieth century by American sociologist Robert K. Merton and expanded by economist Thomas Sowell and psychologist Stuart Vyse.Robert K. Merton, Versatile Sociologist and Father of the Focus Group, Dies at 92 Michael T. Kaufman, '''' Unintended consequences can be grouped into three types: * ''Unexpected benefit'': ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arseny Zverev
Arseny Grigoryevich Zverev (russian: Арсе́ний Григо́рьевич Зве́рев; 2 March 1900 – 27 July 1969) was a Soviet and Russian politician, economist and statesman whose career spanned the rules of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev, but culminated during the Stalin years. Zverev was born in a little village just outside Moscow. After years in local politics, he rose to prominence as a Deputy Commissar of Finance, but he also held other lesser posts such as a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. As Deputy Commissar of Finance he was able to work up, and eventually get promoted to People's Commissar for Finance (renamed to Ministry in 1946). Later, Zverev gained a seat in both the Central Committee and the Presidium. During the Great Patriotic War he was responsible for providing funds for the Soviet military machine to fight the Germans. After the war he lost his Ministership, but was again made Minister of Finance late in 1948. He was replac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgy Malenkov
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov ( – 14 January 1988) was a Soviet politician who briefly succeeded Joseph Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union. However, at the insistence of the rest of the Presidium, he relinquished control over the party apparatus in exchange for remaining Premier and first among equals within the Soviet collective leadership. He then became embroiled in a power struggle with Nikita Khrushchev that culminated in his removal from the premiership in 1955 as well as the Presidium in 1957. Throughout his political career, Malenkov's personal connections with Vladimir Lenin significantly facilitated his ascent within the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union. By 1925, he was entrusted with overseeing the party's records. This brought him into contact with Stalin who had by then successfully consolidated power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to become the de facto leader of the Soviet Union. As a result of this associatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agriculture In The Soviet Union
Agriculture in the Soviet Union was mostly collectivized, with some limited cultivation of private plots. It is often viewed as one of the more inefficient sectors of the economy of the Soviet Union. A number of food taxes (prodrazverstka, prodnalog, and others) were introduced in the early Soviet period despite the Decree on Land that immediately followed the October Revolution. The forced collectivization and class war against (vaguely defined) "kulaks" under Stalinism greatly disrupted farm output in the 1920s and 1930s, contributing to the Soviet famine of 1932–33 (most especially the Holodomor in Ukraine). A system of state and collective farms, known as sovkhozes and kolkhozes, respectively, placed the rural population in a system intended to be unprecedentedly productive and fair but which turned out to be chronically inefficient and lacking in fairness. Under the administrations of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev, many reforms (such as Khrushch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Four Pests Campaign
The Four Pests campaign (), was one of the first actions taken in the Great Leap Forward in China from 1958 to 1962. The four pests to be eliminated were rats, flies, mosquitoes, and sparrows. The extermination of sparrows is also known as the smash sparrows campaign () or eliminate sparrows campaign (), which resulted in severe ecological imbalance, being one of the causes of the Great Chinese Famine. In 1960, the campaign against sparrows was ended and redirected to bed bugs. Campaign The "Four Pests" campaign was introduced in 1958 as a hygiene campaign aimed to eradicate the pests responsible for the transmission of pestilence and disease: * the mosquitos responsible for malaria * the rodents that spread the plague * the pervasive airborne flies * the sparrows—specifically the Eurasian tree sparrow—which ate grain seed and fruit Sparrows Sparrows were suspected of consuming approximately 2 kg (4 pounds) of grain per sparrow per year. Sparrow nests were destroyed, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tax Policy
Tax policy includes the guidelines developed by a government regarding how taxes are imposed, in what amounts, and on whom. It has both microeconomic and macroeconomic aspects. The macroeconomic aspect concerns the overall quantity of taxes to collect, which can inversely affect the level of economic activity; this is one component of fiscal policy. The microeconomic aspects concern issues of fairness (whom to tax) and allocative efficiency (i.e., which taxes will have how much of a distorting effect on the amounts of various types of economic activity). A country’s tax framework is a key policy instrument that is intended to positively influence the country's economy. Tax policies have significant economic consequences for both a national economy and particular groups within the economy (e.g., households, firms and banks). Tax policies are often designed with the intention of stimulating economic growth—although economists' opinions differ significantly about which polici ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taxation In The Soviet Union
A tax is a compulsory financial charge or some other type of levy imposed on a taxpayer (an individual or legal entity) by a governmental organization in order to fund government spending and various public expenditures (regional, local, or national), and tax compliance refers to policy actions and individual behaviour aimed at ensuring that taxpayers are paying the right amount of tax at the right time and securing the correct tax allowances and tax reliefs. The first known taxation took place in Ancient Egypt around 3000–2800 BC. A failure to pay in a timely manner ( non-compliance), along with evasion of or resistance to taxation, is punishable by law. Taxes consist of direct or indirect taxes and may be paid in money or as its labor equivalent. Most countries have a tax system in place, in order to pay for public, common societal, or agreed national needs and for the functions of government. Some levy a flat percentage rate of taxation on personal annual income, but mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Forestry In Russia
The Russian forestry industry is a set of Russian industries related to wood harvesting and processing. As one of the oldest sectors in the country's economy, Russia's timber industry continues to bring in about $20 billion per year. Russia has more than a fifth of the world's forests, making it the largest forest country in the world. According to data for 2015, the total forest area has exceeded 885 million hectares, representing 45% of the total area of the country. The stock of wood in the area was 82 billion cubic meters. A significant proportion of revenue from the industry is generated by the export of raw materials from sawing logs. For a long time Russia was the main supplier of raw wood material in Europe. However, according to a 2012 study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the Government of the Russian Federation, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated deforestation occurs in tropical rainforests. About 31% of Earth's land surface is covered by forests at present. This is one-third less than the forest cover before the expansion of agriculture, a half of that loss occurring in the last century. Between 15 million to 18 million hectares of forest, an area the size of Bangladesh, are destroyed every year. On average 2,400 trees are cut down each minute. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations defines deforestation as the conversion of forest to other land uses (regardless of whether it is human-induced). "Deforestation" and "forest area net change" are not the same: the latter is the sum of all forest losses (deforestation) and all forest gains (forest expansion) in a gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Environmental Issues In Russia
Many of the issues have been attributed to policies that were made during the early Soviet Union, at a time when many officials felt that pollution control was an unnecessary hindrance to economic development and industrialization, and, even though numerous attempts were made by the Soviet government to alleviate the situation in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the problems were not completely solved. By the 1990s, 40% of Russia's territory began demonstrating symptoms of significant ecological stress, largely due to a diverse number of environmental issues, including deforestation, energy irresponsibility, pollution, and nuclear waste. According to Russia's Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Russia is currently warming 2.5 times faster than the rest of the globe. Wildlife Russia has many protected areas, such as zapovedniks and natural parks, which are made to preserve the natural state of environments. There are currently 101 zapovedniks that cover a total of over 33. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
