Planning in the Soviet Union

Judith Pallot, Denis J. B. Shaw

• Verlag: Routledge
• Jahr: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000399530
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Architecture
• Thema: Aménagement urbain et paysager

Originally published in 1981 and based on the authors' own research, this book provides a comprehensive review of planning in the Soviet Union up until the early 1980s for both geographers and Soviet specialists. Planning was particularly important in the Soviet Union since not only most spatial change, but all economic planning was the product of a systematic socio-political ideology. Planning was therefore the key to understanding the Soviet economy, society and spatial change. When it was first published, this was the first study in which the focus had been directed specifically at spatial planning in the Soviet Union in any systematic way.

Part One

THE CONTEXT

1

THE IDEOLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT

DOI: 10.4324/9781003181149–3

The great world-historical service of Marx and Engels has been to demonstrate by scientific analysis the inevitability of the failure of capitalism and of the transition to communism, in which no longer will man be exploited by man. The great world-historical service of Marx and Engels has been to demonstrate to the proletariat of all countries their role, their aim, their vocation—to rise up in revolutionary struggle against capital and to unite in this struggle all the workers and exploited peoples. We are living in happy times, when this vision of the great socialists is coming to pass.

V.I. Lenin, 1918

The above quotation is taken from a speech given by Lenin on the occasion of the opening of a memorial to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The date was 7 November 1918, one year precisely after the October Revolution and a few days before the conclusion of the First World War in the West. At the moment when Lenin spoke it appeared that the Russian Revolution might prove to be the signal for a series of proletarian revolutions in the West, that the world war would thus usher in a new epoch for mankind. Lenin and the Bolsheviks believed that in Russia and in other countries, revolution would result in the building of socialism and communism and thus in sweeping changes for the whole of society. The social structure, the economic process, the political system, and the outlook and behaviour of individuals would all be affected. Also important were the radical changes envisaged for the spatial structure of society and for its relationship with nature. Hence the form and distribution of settlement, the location of economic activity, the role of transport, the geography of living standards, and the use made of natural resources would all be transformed. The details of such changes were not always clear, and it was accepted that most could not be effected overnight. But it was a widespread assumption that the abolition of capitalism would make desirable social and spatial changes very much easier to attain.

It is important to understand why Lenin and the Bolsheviks held this view. Marx had taught that a major role in determining the nature of any society was played by its economic structure. That structure consisted of two parts—the productive forces, which referred to the actual implements of production including that of labour skills, and the productive relations, or relations of property. Upon this economic structure, sometimes referred to as the substructure or economic base, there rose, as upon a foundation, a superstructure of laws, political institutions and forms of political consciousness. The actual nature of the relationship between the superstructure and the economic base has been hotly debated by Marxist theorists, but what Marx himself seems to have implied, at the very least, was that the superstructure could not be radically altered without change in the economic base. In a capitalist society, such as that of Germany or Britain in the time of Marx, the prevailing productive relations were those of private ownership of the means of production. What this meant, according to Marx, was that the major productive forces were controlled by a small minority of wealthy capitalists. Their economic dominance over society was furthered, indeed in a sense legitimated, by the system of laws, political institutions and social norms. And this dominance was reflected in all kinds of ways, such as in many kinds of social inequity, and in discrepancies in living standards between regions or between town and country.

The essence of Marx’s message, then, was that fundamental social change could not come about by means of mere reform—by tampering, for example, with laws or political institutions. What had to happen was a basic change in the system of property relations. The system of capitalism, based upon private property, was a system designed to benefit a small minority at the expense of the great majority of workers, or proletariat. In this situation friction and even political struggle were inevitable between these two groups and Marx believed that this would eventually lead to the undermining of the capitalist system itself. Only when the proletarian majority displaced the capitalist class as controllers of the productive forces could a truly just society be constructed, in the spatial sense as well as in others.

To Lenin in 1918, Russia seemed to stand at the threshold of such a transformation. In the previous year the Bolsheviks had seized power in the name of the proletariat and now controlled the Russian economy. It was hoped that this would lead to the final displacement of capitalist ownership and thus to the overthrow of capitalism. Gearly a long, hard road lay ahead before the just, or communist, society could be expected and, as shall be seen, many doubted whether Russia could even embark upon that road without help from abroad. As to the concrete policies which could be pursued in moving towards communism, there was much room for controversy, and this became increasingly apparent in the ensuing years. Nevertheless, it seemed to Lenin in 1918 that the first cornerstone had been laid.

The just or communist society of Marx’s and Lenin’s aspirations has been referred to as the ultimate goal towards which the Marxist revolutionary programme pointed. Since neither Marx nor Lenin said much about what communism would mean in practice, it is difficult to specify exactly what implications the establishment of this communist society would have for spatial relations. Nevertheless, ever since 1917, the Soviet leaders have frequently considered it necessary to refer back to the writing of Marx, Engels and Lenin to justify the general direction of their spatial planning policies. In other words, they have felt it important to set their spatial planning policies, as with other types of policy, within the context of broad, long-term Marxist goals. For this reason alone it is necessary to say what these goals might be. At the same time it will quickly become apparent that the goals have suffered a degree of reinterpretation or reassessment since 1917.

Before looking more closely at some of these goals, however, a cautionary word is in order. The fact that the goals are long-term, their attainment set in an unknown communist future, means that their influence upon day-to-day policy-making may be difficult to detect. Indeed, for this reason, many have claimed that they have no influence at all upon policy-making. A true assessment of their importance is rendered even more difficult by the fact that the goals often seem imprecise. The present chapter, therefore, does not seek to make any evaluative statements about the ultimate significance of these goals. Rather their importance in the present discussion derives from the Soviets’ own stated commitment to Marxist ideology.

Goals of Soviet Spatial Planning

The point has already been made that neither Marx nor the early Marxist leaders said or wrote much about the future communist society. And the early leaders had very little indeed to say about its spatial structure. Nevertheless, the statements that they did make about communism often had spatial implications and thus, in outlining the broad goals of their policies, the Soviets have expanded upon and developed these spatial implications. Needless to say, they have particularly emphasised the few overt statements about spatial form that are found in the classics of Marxism-Leninism.

A principle central to a description of Soviet long-term goals is the fact that, according to the Soviets, the future communist society (the present transitional phase in Soviet society is known as socialism) will be a society of unparalleled production and wealth, embodying great technical progress. As Marx wrote of this future, ‘in a higher phase of communist society…there will come a stage when ‘the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly …’ (Marx, 1950, vol. II, 22–3). In commenting on this passage from the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Lenin, in his State and Revolution wrote that ‘this expropriation [of the capitalists] will make it possible for the productive forces to develop to a tremendous extent. And when we see how incredibly capitalism is already retarding this development… we are entitled to say with the fullest confidence that the expropriation of the capitalists will inevitably result in an enormous development of the productive forces of human society’ (Lenin, 1968, 333). In the Programme of the Soviet Communist Party first adopted in 1961, this commitment to the expansion of production is reasserted. The Programme states that the present phase of development in the USSR is the establishment of the ‘material and technical basis for communism’ (Programma, 1971, 66), while ‘the aim of communism is the ever fuller satisfaction of the growing material and cultural needs of the people by means of the continuous development and perfection of social production’ (Programma, 1971, 15). It follows that the spatial distribution of production should be so planned as to aid and encourage this development.

A related principle, also adopted by Marx in the Critique of the Gotha Programme, is the notion that communism will be a society operating according to the rule: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. According to Marx, therefore, the communist society will be a society of social equality, in which every member is obligated to work for the common good to the maximum of his ability, and entitled to share in the social product according to his need. The Soviets believe that the possibility of achieving this state of affairs once again derives from the destruction of capitalism. Thus they quote Engels, writing in the preface to the 1883 edition of The Communist Manifesto, who claimed that the class struggle ‘has now reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the bourgeoisie) without at the same time freeing the whole of society from exploitation, oppression and class struggles’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, 57). Lenin later stated that the removal of the dominating, bourgeois class and the abolition of their ownership of the means of production leads, under socialism, to a formal equality among citizens. But real equality, in accordance with Marx’s principle, is achieved only under communism, as Lenin was at pains to emphasise in his State and Revolution (Lenin, 1968, 33-5). This is expressed in the Soviet Communist Party’s Programme as follows: ‘Communism is a classless social formation with a unified, popular ownership of the means of production, [and] full social equality among all members of society’ (Programma, 1971, 62). From Marx onwards thinkers have also been at pains to point out that this additionally means freedom for the ‘all-round development of the individual’. The Soviet view, therefore, is that communism means the equal ability of all to enjoy access to society’s resources according to their needs, to participate in social production according to their various abilities, and to use the freedom to develop themselves as individuals and social beings. Spatial planning should therefore be adapted to these goals, for the fact of location must not be allowed to interfere with any of these rights.

Marx foresaw a number of consequences flowing from the establishment of a society of social equality and welfare. One was the emancipation of working people from ‘the subordination of the individual to the division of labour’—a notion which has understandably provoked much debate in an increasingly industrialised world but which some Marxists have interpreted as meaning a growth in leisure time (McLellan, 1975, 67–8). This emancipation would have important consequences for the function of the family and the status and freedom of women (Marx and Engels, 1967, 100–101). Another consequence was the vanishing of the ‘antithesis between mental and physical labour’ which would likewise ensue from the liberation of people from the division of labour (Marx, 1950, vol. II, 22–3).

In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels highlight two specifically spatial implications of the establishment of a communist society. One is the ‘gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, 105). Marx explained in The German Ideology that ‘the greatest division of material and mental labour is the separation of town and country’ and that, in pre-socialist societies ‘the town already is in actual fact the concentration of the population, of the instruments of production, of capital, of pleasures, of needs, while the country demonstrates just the opposite fact, their isolation and separation. The antagonism of town and country can only exist as a result of private property’ (Marx, 1947, 434). Private property had thus driven a wedge between town and country and created an-antagonism between them. Elsewhere Marx and Engels pointed out that this antagonism was itself an expression of the class struggle. Only communism would resolve this problem.

A wider geographical synthesis was also foreseen in The Communist Manifesto when its authors stated that the distinction between town and country would be abolished ‘by a more equable distribution of the population over the country’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, 105). Whatever this might mean in practice, it seems to presage the notion of the abolition of regional inequalities, and ultimately of inequalities between nations. The Communist Manifesto declared that in the future communist society ‘in proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to’ (Marx and Engels, 1967, 102). The Soviet government from the very beginning expressed a concern with the problem of regional and national inequality. Thus at the tenth Party Congress in 1921, reference was made to the ‘under-developed borderlands’. It was claimed to be ‘...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• List of Tables Page
• List of Figures Page
• Glossary Page
• Preface Page
• Part One: The Context
• Part Two: Aspects of Spatial Planning
• Bibliography
• Index