The Strategic Plan for the “Building of Communism” in the USSR: The Ambitions and Ideology of the Khrushchev Era

Abstract

The paper analyzes the strategies of economic development in the context of the government’s declared plan to build communism in the USSR. Set forth in the CPSU program adopted in October 1961, and concretized in the “General Perspective on the Development of the National Economy until 1980,” these goals were intended to ensure global economic leadership of the USSR. The authors explore the conflict in strategic planning: here the problem was not so much in the incorrect extrapolation of current economic trends into the future, but in the fundamental contradiction between ideology and economics. A conclusion is made about the doctrinal continuity of Khrushchev’s and Stalin’s views on the horizons of development, including in terms of building communism in the USSR. The updated program of the Party methodologically was based on an understanding of the dominant industrial vector of development, without taking into account the trends of post-industrialism, which had already become apparent in the 1950s. The leaders’ adherence to political and ideological stereotypes and focus on global leadership blocked the development of the economy and hampered the search for alternative ways to improve its efficiency.