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A Postwar Perestroika? Toward a History of Private Enterprise in the USSR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Julie Hessler
Julie Hessler*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Oregon
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Extract

One of the firmest popular conceptions of the Soviet Union in the United States is of a system diat categorically banned private enterprise. Embraced by specialists and the general public alike, this conception reflects the official Soviet stance diat the private sector was eradicated during losif Stalin's “great break” of 1929-30. Indeed, over the course of diose two years, individual peasants were compelled to collectivize, private stores forcibly shut, private manufactures socialized, and even doctors and dentists pressured to cooperate or to close shop. The concept of an interdiction against all private economic activity found support in the words of the dictator–Stalin's assertions that the Soviet Union was a society “without capitalists, small or big,” that socialist, not capitalist, property was the “foundation of revolutionary legality,” and many other statements of a similar ilk. Stalin proved his commitment to this model by his readiness to resort to coercion against its violators: at his instigation, repressive laws threatened entrepreneurs with five to ten years in prison camp for profitable private business. Such developments appeared as unequivocal as they proved lasting; when commentators discussed perestroika in the late 1980s, the only historical precedent they could identify was Lenin's New Economic Policy six decades before.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , Fall 1998 , pp. 516 - 542
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1998

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References

This paper has benefited from the criticisms and encouragement of friends and colleagues. I owe a special debt to Gennadii Bordiugov, who pointed me to the Mekhlis documents that sparked my interest in postwar privateers. That was in 1993, when I was in Russia under the auspices of a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship; unfortunately, those documents have been reclassified in the intervening years. More recently, Alex Dracobly, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Wendy Z. Goldman, Andrea Graziosi, Bill Husband, and Terry Martin deserve my thanks for their thought-provoking comments on the paper in various stages of its development. Finally, I must acknowledge the support of the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, which gave me a welcome respite from teaching to write this paper.

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3. See, especially, the series Berkeley–Duke Papers on the Second Economy in the USSR, edited by Gregory Grossman and Vladimir Treml. Number 21 of that series is an excellent bibliography, compiled by Gregory Grossman, of literature on the private sector in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe (1990). Particularly good discussions include Grossman's “The ‘Second Economy’ of the USSR,” Problems of Communism 26, no. 5 (September–October 1977): 25–40, and Katsenelinboigen, Aron, “Colored Markets in the Soviet Union,” Soviet Studies 29, no. 1 (January 1977): 62–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Elena Iu. Zubkova has a particularly intriguing discussion of what she calls the “spirit of freedom” in the early postwar years. See her “Obshchestvennaia atmosfera posle voiny,” Svobodnaia mysl’ 2, no. 6 (1992): 4–14, and Obshchestuo i reformy, 1945–1964, “First monograph” series (Moscow, 1993), 16–44. Political histories of the late Stalin period—probably the most understudied period in Soviet history—include Hahn, Werner G., Postwar Soviet Politics: The Fall of Zhdanov and the Defeat of Moderation, 1946–53 (Ithaca, 1982)Google Scholar; McCagg, William O., Stalin Embattled, 1943–1948 (Detroit, 1978)Google Scholar; Dunmore, Timothy, Soviet Politics, 1945–53 (New York, 1984).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Rossiiskii tsentr khraneniia i izucheniia dokumentov noveishei istorii (RTsKhIDNI), f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 11. 63, 64, 68 (1947 report from Ministry of State Control).

6. See especially Ball, Alan M., Russia's Last Capitalists: TheNepmen, 1921–1929 (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar; Carr, E. H. and Davies, R. W., Foundations of a Planned Economy 1926–1929 (London, 1969), 1: 663–74Google Scholar; Davies, R. W., The Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 1929–1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 283–304 Google Scholar; Arkhipov, V. A. and Morozov, L. F., Bor'ba protiv kapitalisticheskikh elementov v promyshlennosti i torgovle, 20–e–nachalo 30–kh gpdov (Moscow, 1978).Google Scholar

7. Sheila Fitzpatrick, “After NEP: The Fate of NEP Entrepreneurs, Small Traders, and Artisans in the ‘Socialist Russia’ of the 1930s,” Russian History/Histoire Russe 13, nos. 2–3 (Summer–Fall 1986): 187–234. Its tide notwithstanding, this article deals primarily widi the harassment of these groups at the end of NEP.

8. 2 June 1930, Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov (SNK) decree “O kustarnoi promyshlennosti i promyslovoi kooperatsii,” Sobranie zakonov SSSR, 1st otdel, 1930, no. 30: 338; revised in 1931, no. 41: 284, and 1933, no. 42: 248. A note on terminology: kustari, remesUnniki, and kooperirovannye present certain translation problems. I generally translate kustarias “artisans” or “peasant artisans,” remeslenniki as “tradesmen,” and—despite its inaccuracy—I use “incorporated” and “unincorporated” for kooperirovannye and nekooperirovannye.

9. 17 December 1935, SNK decree, “Ob izmenenii poriadka oblozheniia podokhodnym nalogom nekooperirovannykh kustarei i remeslennikov,” Sobranie zakonov SSSR, 1st otdel, 1936, no. 1: 4.

10. 26 March 1936, SNK decree “Pravila registratsii kustarnykh i remeslennykh promyslov,” large sections of which were reprinted in RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 11. 62–64.

11. Pravda, 11 February 1934.

12. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1. 77 (1948 memo from USSR tax chief on dynamics of private sector). Of course, this represented a tiny percentage of the 4, 895, 000 kustari active in 1926. Cf. Pediybridge, Roger, One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward: Soviet Society and Politics in the New Economic Policy (Oxford, 1990), 317–26.Google Scholar

13. A 1939 compendium of existing laws on manufacturing cooperatives indicated that the 1927 “Polozhenie o promyslovoi kooperatsii” was still in effect on this point. Selitskii, I. A., ed., Sbornik postanovlenii o promyslovoi kooperatsii (Moscow–Leningrad, 1939), 23–24.Google Scholar

14. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GA RF), f. 8131, op. 12, d. 99, 11. 1–3, 18–41 (USSR Prokuratura materials on pseudo–cooperatives in Moscow and Kiev). Hired labor was officially permitted as a temporary expedient, or as a trial period (up to one month) for would-be members. Together, nonmembers were never to exceed 20 percent of the total workforce of the cooperative. “Polozhenie o promyslovoi kooperatsii,” 23.

15. GA RF, f. 8131, op. 12, d. 99, 1. 29. On Soviet functionaries’ salaries, see Matthews, Mervyn, Privilege in the Soviet Union: A Study of Elite Life–Styles under Communism (London, 1978), 99–101 Google Scholar. Politicians could accumulate salaries from each of their official positions; they also received various perquisites in kind.

16. At the beginning of the 1930s, cooperatives were taxed at the same rate as state enterprises, a flat 20 percent. Over the course of the decade, tax rates were increasingly differentiated. As of 1938, tax rates on manufacturing and invalids’ cooperatives ranged from 23.5 percent of profits (for cooperatives with profit rates of less than 8 percent) to 90 percent on profits exceeding 32 percent (the first 32 percent being taxed at a 55 percent rate). Larin, F. M., Podokhodnyi nalogs kooperativnykh i obshchestvennykh organizatsii (Moscow, 1945), 3–6.Google Scholar

17. The key decree on the bazaar was the Tsentral'nyi Ispolnitel'nyi Komitet/SNK edict of 20 May 1932, which established once and for all the right of these groups to sell their wares at market prices. Sobranie zakonov, 1932, no. 38: 356–57.

18. On bazaars during the civil war, see Ustinov, V. M., Evoliutsiia vnutrennei torgovli v Rossii, 1913–1924 (Moscow Leningrad, 1925), 37–38 Google Scholar. The harassment of market vendors and local attempts to eradicate market trade in 1929–30 appear in numerous memoirs and secondary works, e.g., Rukeyser, Walter A., Working for the Soviets: An American Mining Engineer in Russia (New York, 1932), 217 Google Scholar; Hoover, Calvin B., “The Fate of the New Economic Policy of the Soviet Union,” Economic Journal 40 (June 1930): 186–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hubbard, Leonard, Soviet Trade and Distribution (London, 1938), 141–42Google Scholar; Ball, Russia's IMSI Capitalists, 78–79; Hoffmann, David L., Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929—1941 (Ithaca, 1994), 146 Google Scholar. The first central statement on bazaars in 1929–30 came as early as February 1930, when the Commissariat of Finance and the RSFSR NKVD issued instructions on renting trading space at the market. Biulleten’ finansovogo i khoziaistvennogo zakonodatel'stva, 1930, no. 8 (March 17): 28–29.

19. Kerblay, Les marchés paysans en U.R.S.S., 122; Davies, Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 304.

20. 22 August 1932, Tsentral'nyi komitet Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo soiuza/SNK decree “O bor'be so spekuliatsiei,” Sobranie zakonov, 1932, no. 65: 628.

21. The newspaper Snabzhenie, kooperatsiia, torgovlia asserted that not a single market in the Soviet Union functioned without the activity of resellers and other speculators (9 July 1932). “Speculator–resellers” were a perennial theme in bureaucratic discussions of the markets in the early 1930s, e.g., Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Odesskoi oblasti, f. R-710, op. 1, d. 263, 11. 4–6 (Rabkrin reports on kolkhoz trade and village trade, 1932); f. 1234, op. 1, d. 1655, 11.2–4 (1932 gorsovet reports on markets).

22. 20 July 1936, Commissariat of Domestic Trade decree “O bor'be so spekuliatsiei promyshlennymi tovarami na rynkakh,” Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 46, op. 1, d. 8, 1. 22.

23. GA RF, f. 8131, op. 12, d. 43, 1. 5 (1935 reports to USSR Prokuratura on speculation).

24. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 46, op. 1, d. 8 (materials on hawking at Moscow markets, 1935—47).

25. GA RF, f. 8131, op. 12, d. 43, 1. 6; Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 46, op. 1, d. 8, 11.5, 60. Rabkrin did make an effort to eliminate petty market trade in Riazan’ and Odessa, two regions that I have studied. See the files in Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoi oblasti, f. R-300, op. 2, and the Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Odesskoi oblasti, f. R-710.

26. Cherniavskii, U. G., Voina i prodovol'stvie: Snabzhenie gorodskogo naseleniia v Velikuiu Otechestvennuiu Voinu (1941–1945) (Moscow, 1964), 108 Google Scholar; Sovetskaia torgovlia: Statisticheskii sbornik(Moscow, 1956), 137.

27. Outside the Baltics, where rationing was centrally organized at the pitiful level of 877 calories a day, occupation authorities regulated only the maximum quantity that local officials could supply. Those maxima ranged from 420 calories a day for children and Jews, to 850 for most adults, to 1, 200 for individuals employed in “useful work” for the Germans. Theo Schulte, J., The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford, 1989), 87–89, 101Google Scholar. See also Moskoff, Bread of Affliction, 50–65; Dallin, Alexander, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945: A Study of Occupation Policies, rev. ed. (Boulder, 1981 [1957]), 310–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Krawchenko, Bohdan, “Soviet Ukraine under Nazi Occupation, 1941–4,” in Boshyk, Yuri, ed., Ukraine during World War II: History and Its Aftermath (Edmonton, 1986), 27.Google Scholar

28. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv ekonomiki (RGAE), f. 7733, op. 30, d. 19, 11. 35–36 (1945 stenograms and reports, Commissariat of Finance). The number of traders with permanent shops is remarkably high; for comparison, of all private traders who were issued licenses in 1922–1926, only 20 to 30 percent each year had any permanent accommodation for their trade. Ball, Russia's Last Capitalists, 91–92.

29. RGAE, f. 7733, op. 30, d. 18, 11. 135, 144, 147.

30. Malafeev, Istoriia tsenoobrazovaniia, 234. Unfortunately, Malafeev does not explain how these percentages were calculated; I assume that they are relative to the ruble value of sales. In general, statistics on Soviet market sales are notoriously unreliable, as American scholars noted over forty years ago. For intelligent discussions of some of these problems, see Whitman, John T., “The Kolkhoz Market,” Soviet Studies 7, no. 4 (April 1956): 385–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jasny, Naum, The Soviet 1956 Statistical Handbook: A Commentary (East Lansing, 1957), 180–81, 188–89Google Scholar. Specifically with regard to the wartime market, William Moskoff has argued that Malafeev's estimates are too low; see Moskoff, Bread of Affliction, 153.

31. RGAE, f. 7733, op. 30, d. 18, 1. 2; d. 21, 1. 17 (stenograms of collegia at the Commissariat of Finance). The Uzbek Finance Ministry was said to be the most egregious offender in this regard.

32. RGAE, f. 7971, op. 5, d. 60, 11. 1–174 (Narkomvnutorg overview of markets by region in 1943–44); interviews widi Eleanora Semenovna, Aleksandr L'vovich, Galina Alekseevna, Galina Petrovna, and Liliana Isaevna (March–September 1993); Moskoff, Bread of Affliction, 161–64.

33. Interviews with Ruben Artemevich, Aleksandr L'vovich, and Eleanora Semenovna (March–September 1993). These assertions find support in the demographic investigations carried out by the Moscow police, which showed that market trading cutacross divisions of ethnicity, gender, and social class. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 46 (market administration), op. 1, d. 8, 11. 110–12 (report on November 1944, police raid).

34. My principal source for this is a database of 210 criminal cases from Moscow and Riazan’ oblast, plus another 200 cases described in various reports.

35. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1. 65.

36. See esp. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 46, op. 1, d. 8, 1. 112.

37. Foreigners occasionally reported on what Ettore Vanni described as a “disconcerting amorality” and David Dallin called a “dual morality “: Soviet citizens’ willingness to steal from the public or the state for personal profit during and shordy after the war. Cf. David Dallin, “The Black Market in Russia,” The American Mercury 69 (December 1949): 679–80; Ettore Vanni, lo, Comunista in Russia (Bologna, 1949), 53–54. Justifications of participation in the wartime black market on survivalist grounds were offered by all of my interview subjects.

38. A. Tyrkova Williams, Why Soviet Russia Is Starving (London, 1919), 6.

39. GA RF, f. R–9401 s/ch., op. 2, d. 66, 11. 40–53 (Stalin's osobaia papka).The report specifically revived the civil war term “bagmen,” albeit in quotation marks, though as far as I have been able to tell, it fell out of use after the early 1930s.

40. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1. 65.

41. GA RF, f. 8131, op. 23, d. 105, 11. 1–9 (USSR Prokuratura materials on weaving in Riazan’ oblast, 1946).

42. Ibid., 11. 1–2.

43. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1. 64.

44. Ibid., 1. 67.

45. In Kostroma province, two tax collectors had actually encouraged this attitude by returning the money they had already collected for the bond issue to subscribers. RGAE, f. 7733, op. 30, d. 19, 11. 70, 198; d. 20, 1. 258 (transcript of Commissariat of Finance collegia, 1945).

46. On the politics of reparations, see Naimark, Norman M., The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949 (Cambridge, Mass., 1995), 173 Google Scholar. I should note that the financial agencies had a history of promoting state revenues at the expense of socialist ideals. High–priced “commercial” stores were their brainchild in the early 1930s, as were the Torgsin hard–currency stores, which squeezed valuables from the population in exchange for basic foods. Still more notoriously, financial agencies successfully persuaded the government to end its prohibition on alcohol and to prioritize vodka production as an indispensable source of revenues (the vodka monopoly supplied one–fifth of state revenues in early 1930s; potatoes and grain were diverted to vodka production even during the 1933 famine).

47. Zaleski, Eugène, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933–1952, trans. MacAndrew, Marie Christine and Moore, John H. (Chapel Hill, 1980), 579, 603.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1. 66.

49. Ibid., 1. 70.

50. Ibid., 1. 69.

51. Ibid., 11. 70–71.

52. Ibid., 1. 72.

53. Ibid., 11. 73–74.

54. Ibid., 11. 14–15.

55. Ibid., 1. 75.

56. Ibid., 1. 70.

57. Ibid., 1. 72.

58. For long quotations from the interrogation, see ibid., 11. 69–73.

59. Zubkova, Obshchestvo i reformy, 55. Zubkova reports that Mekhlis tried unsuccessfully to obtain jurisdiction for the Ministry of State Control over all economic violations and also to gain the right to send cases directly to court without going through the procuracy.

60. GA RF, f. R-9401 s/ch., op. 2, dd. 168–71 (Stalin's osobaia papka). Whereas in 1944–46, topics relating to the deportation of nationalities, Ukrainian nationalists, and foreign and military policy formed the bulk of Stalin's osobaia papka from the NKVD, the preeminent topic in 1947—48 was violations in trade, speculation, and other economic crimes. It would be interesting to know whedier Beriia or Stalin decided the content of the special files, and on what grounds. Stalin was obviously concerned about the issue, as we know from his sponsorship of the new crime laws of 4 June 1947.

61. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1. 72 (emphasis in the original).

62. Ibid., 11. 67, 69.

63. Ibid., 11. 62–75. A reminder: “People's Commissariats” became “Ministries” in 1946.

64. Mar'iakhin's self–exoneration, sent to the Cadres Administration of the Central Committee, appears on 11. 77–84 of ibid. He included a table of the number of illegal privateers in seven regions before and after the application of taxes, widi the specious claim that all of them had ceased their operations. See ibid., 1. 82.

65. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 46, op. 1, d. 8, 1. 1.

66. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. R-4850, op. 1, d. 253, 11. 1–3 (copy of Sovet Ministrov decree).

67. The war interpretation of collectivization is now commonplace. Diverse elaborations include Lewin, Moshe, “'Taking Grain': Soviet Policies of Agricultural Procurements before the War,” The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the Social History oflnterwar Russia (New York, 1985), 142–77Google Scholar; Ulam, Adam, Stalin: The Man and His Era (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; and more recently, Graziosi, Andrea, The Great Soviet Peasant War: Bolsheviks and Peasants, 1917–33 (Cambridge, Mass., 1996)Google Scholar; Viola, Lynne, Peasant Rebels under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance (New York, 1996).Google Scholar

68. The revisionists were not, in fact, the first students of Stalinism to make this point. Important works stressing improvisation by provincial officials include Berliner, Joseph S., Factory and Manager in the USSR (Cambridge, Mass., 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fainsod, Merle, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (Cambridge, Mass., 1958)Google Scholar; Sheila Fitzpatrick, “Stalin and the Making of a New Elite,” and “Cultural Revolution as Class War,” both reprinted in The Cultural Front: Power and Culture in Revolutionary Russia (Ithaca, 1992), 115—48 and 149–82, and Fitzpatrick, , Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, 1921–1934 (Cambridge, Eng., 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Manning, Roberta T., “Government in the Soviet Countryside in the Stalinist Thirties: The Case of Belyi Raion in 1937,” Carl Beck Papers, no. 301 (1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. While the opening of the Soviet archives has tended to underline the extraordinary centralization of decision making under Stalin, it has simultaneously reinforced revisionists’ claim that local party leaders were far from mechanical executors of the center's will. See, for example, the active role of provincial party leaders in inflating the number of executions in 1937–38, as discussed in Khlevniuk, O. V., Politbiuro: Mekhanizmy politicheskoi vlasti v 1930e gody(Moscow, 1996).Google Scholar

69. I take the term line officers from George L. Yaney's stimulating discussion of the structure and dynamics of the Bureaucracy, Russian, The Urge to Mobilize: Agrarian Reform in Russia, 1861–1930 (Urbana, 1982), esp. 54–57.Google Scholar

70. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 1889, op. 1, d. 668, 670, 767, and others (Kiev raion people's court cases); f. 46, op. 1, d. 8; RGAE, f. 7971, op. 16 s/ch, d. 472, 11. 126–27, 157–73 (Ministry of Trade, 1948 correspondence with trade inspection); op. 5, d. 65 (whole file reviews Soviet markets in 1948–49). On the 1946–47 famine, see B. F. Zima, “Golod v Rossii 1946–1947 godov,” Otechestvennaia istoriia, 1993, no. 1 (January–February): 35–52.

71. Pravda (or any other newspaper), 15 December 1947.

72. Galina Petrovna (March 1993) and Aleksandr L'vovich (September 1993). Zubkova also has an interesting discussion of popular reactions to the monetary reform inObshchestvo i reformy, 44–48.

73. This can be traced through an archival file on Soviet markets in 1948–49: RGAE, f. 7971 (Ministry of Trade), op. 5, d. 65. See also Zaleski's table on cost of living in Moscow inStalinist Planning, 460.

74. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 1953, op. 2, d. 73, 1. 16 (TsUM managers’ meeting, January 1947).

75. Ibid., 11. 16, 25.

76. Ibid., 1. 45 (12 April 1947 managers’ meeting); op. 2, d. 153, 11. 31–34 (22 August 1953). I was unable to find out more information on the gender composition of TsUM traders, which the specific reference to women's restrooms raises. At Moscow markets, women were slighdy overrepresented among vendors, at least in 1944. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 46, op. 1, d. 8, 11. 110–12.

77. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 1889, op. 1, dd. 2118, 2371, and 1910 (Kiev ward people's court cases).

78. Tsentral'nyi munitsipal'nyi arkhiv Moskvy, f. 1953, op. 2, d. 73, 1. 45.

79. This report, apparently written in February 1948, appears in RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 11.6–16.

80. RGAE, f. 8090 s.ch., op. 2, d. 1, 11. 131–33 (22 March 1950 Tsentropromsovet report on purge to Sovet Ministrov Presidium) lists prikazy of 2 September, 18 September, 4 October, and 15 October 1947 on the fight against privateers.

81. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. R–4850, op. 1, d. 253, 1. 1 (Sovet Ministrov coop administration 17 April 1948 prikaz based on 14 April Sovet Ministrov postanovlenie, file includes legislation relating to the 14 April decree as well as to the investigation of Oblstrompromsoiuz).

82. See especially the report in Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. R–4850, op. 1, d. 7, 11. 207–8. Incidentally, Mar'iakhin also provided data supporting the hypotheses that many independent artisans joined cooperatives in the year or two following the war, when he cited—alongside the statements on the increase in private entrepreneurial behavior—a 39 percent drop in the number of registered independent artisans and tradesmen between 1940 and 1947. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1. 77.

83. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoi oblasti (otdel Kommunisticheskoi Partii [Riazan’ party archive]), f. 3, op. 3, d. 613, 1. 103 (1948 obkom correspondence on cooperatives) .

84. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. R–4850, op. 1, d. 218, 11. 37–49; d. 253, 11. 18–38; d. 263, 11. 38–39; f. 3761, op. 1, d. 7, 11.207–8, 272–74; d. 20, 11. 198–203 (reports on privateer penetration from various local cooperatives); Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoi oblasti (Riazan’ party archive), f. 3, op. 3, d. 613, 11.107–16.

85. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. 3761, op. 1, d. 7, 1. 208; d. 20, 11. 198–203.

86. Ibid.

87. Ibid.; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoi oblasti (Riazan’ party archive), f. 3, op. 3, d. 613, 11.106–16.

88. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoi oblasti (Riazan’ party archive), f. 3, op. 3, d. 613, 11.106–8.

89. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. R–4850, op. 1, d. 253, 11. 33–38.

90. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoi oblasti (Riazan’ party archive), f. 3, op. 3, d. 613, 11. 103–6; also, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. 4850, op. 1, d. 253, 11. 18–38; d. 263, 1. 38; f. 3761, op. 1, d. 7, 11.207–8; d. 20, 11.198–203; f. 4910, op. 1, d. 35, 11.1–5.

91. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1. 11.

92. Ibid., 11–16; V. Navozov, “Ochistit’ potrebitel'skuiu kooperatsiiu ot chastnikov i spekuliantov,” Pravda Vosloka, 4 June 1948. Ice cream was also quite lucrative in Kursk; see Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. 3761, d. 20, 1. 200.

93. RGAE, f. 8090 s.ch., op. 2, d. 1, 11. 129–45 (1950 report from Tsentropromsovet to Sovet Ministrov Presidium on the purge of cooperatives).

94. For example, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoi oblasti (Riazan’ party archive), f. 3, op. 3, d. 613, 11. 106–16; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kurskoi oblasti, f. R–4850, op. 1, d. 263, 1. 1; d. 294, 1. 2; f. 3761, d. 20, 11. 246–60.

95. Zaleski, Stalinist Planning, 449. Of course, retail trade was expanding very rapidly at this time, so that the relative decline does not necessarily mean an absolute decline.

96. RGAE, f. 8090 s.ch., op. 2, d. 1, 11. 131–33. The total number of cooperatives reviewed was 586, 000; approximately 25, 000 were found in violation.

97. RTsKhIDNI, f. 17, op. 121, d. 584, 1.12; Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Riazanskoi oblasti (Riazan’ party archive), f. 3, op. 3, d. 613, 1. 106.

98. Ibid., 1. 15.

99. I base the estimate of 8 billion rubles on data from two tables in Sovetskaia torgovlia: Statisticheskii sbornik, 20, 31. The first gives yearly totals for retail trade; the second gives the totals for Uzbekistan and other regions in 1940 and 1951, 1954, and 1955. Uzbekistan consistendy accounted for 3 percent of total Soviet trade; an extrapolation would give 7.86 billion rubles in 1947.

100. Two students of the cooperative movement under Gorbachev estimate that cooperative goods and services accounted for 0.1 percent of GNP in 1987 and 1 percent in 1988. A major difference widi the 1940s, of course, was that perestroika cooperatives were rapidly expanding; by the end of 1989 they had reached 4.3 percent. Jones, Anthony and Moskoff, William, Ko–ops: The Rebirth of Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union (Bloomington, 1991), 18.Google Scholar

101. GA RF, f. R-9401 s/ch, op. 2, d. 169, 11. 55–56 (Stalin's osobaia papka).

102. Zubkova, Obshchestvo i reformy, 28–29.

103. Izvestiia, 3 October 1987, cited in Jones and Moskoff, Ko–ops, 10.

104. Jones and Moskoff, Ko–ops, 4–5, 20–21. Jones and Moskoff show that such small businesses, involving little start–up capital, declined relative to more heavily capitalized enterprises in the following few years.