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 Economic planning is a resource allocation mechanism based on a computational procedure for solving a constrained maximization problem with an iterative process for obtaining its solution. Planning is a mechanism for the allocation of resources b ...

and distribution of goods, based on the

state ownership State ownership, also called government ownership and public ownership, is the ownership of an industry, asset, or enterprise by the state or a public body representing a community, as opposed to an individual or private party. Public ownershi ...

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. A ...

bureaucracies ("

nomenklatura The ''nomenklatura'' ( rus, номенклату́ра, p=nəmʲɪnklɐˈturə, a=ru-номенклатура.ogg; from la, nomenclatura) were a category of people within the Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries who held various key admi ...

") in the absence of a

market economy A market economy is an economic system in which the decisions regarding investment, production and distribution to the consumers are guided by the price signals created by the forces of supply and demand, where all suppliers and consumers ...

. 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 The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

which closely followed the Soviet model. In his 2004 book ''The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives'',

Paul Roderick Gregory Paul Roderick Gregory (born 10 February 1941 in San Angelo, Texas) is a professor of economics at the University of Houston, Texas, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a research fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research. He ...

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 ...

planned economy A planned economy is a type of economic system where investment, production and the allocation of capital goods takes place according to economy-wide economic plans and production plans. A planned economy may use centralized, decentralized, part ...

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 Gavriil Kharitonovich Popov (russian: Гаврии́л Харито́нович Попо́в; born 31 October 1936) is a Russian politician and economist. He served as the mayor of Moscow from 1991 until he resigned in 1992. Biograph ...

during the ''

perestroika ''Perestroika'' (; russian: links=no, перестройка, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg) was a political movement for reform within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s widely associated wit ...

'' 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 Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet politician who served as the 8th and final leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

, 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