Natalia Anatolievna Potapova,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Institute of History of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Unemployment in the Soviet State in the 1920s: Ideological Doctrine and Economic Reality
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2021-6-11
Unemployment arises at the turn of the 20th century in Russia. According to the 1913 population census, carried out only in a number of large cities of the country, about 500 thousand people were recorded who did not have any means of subsistence due to the lack of permanent work. The World War, the subsequent revolutionary events, the first economic transformations of the new government provoked a massive influx of rural residents into the cities. The increase in the urban population occurred against the background of a lack of jobs due to insufficient growth in industrial production. Therefore, the Soviet leadership already in 1921 faced the problem the existence of a massive and growing reserve army of labor. By the spring of 1927, there were about 1.5 million unemployed in the USSR. The real economic picture did not correspond to the ideological doctrine of the Bolsheviks, which admitted the existence of unemployment only in the capitalist social order. On the contrary, in the socialist system, the continuous growth of production is accompanied by a constant increase in the number of workers, which leads to full employment of citizens. Therefore, the Soviet government in the early 1920s embarked on a course of elimination of unemployment. The article analyzes the measures taken in the fight against unemployment of the population, on the basis of which three stages of the state policy of destroying the “heritage of capitalism” can be distinguished. The first stage dates back to the period 1918–1921,when an attempt was made to destroy the free labor market, the existence of which was contrary to socialist ideas. However, the introduction of the NEP not only marked the beginning of the next period, but also suspended the policy of strict regulation in this area. In 1927, the third stage began, marked by a return to the system of planned construction of the national economy, regulation of the labor market, organized supply of industry, etc. The result of these transformations was the closure of labor exchanges in 1930, the termination of preferential payments, and at the beginning of 1931 the USSR declared itself the first country in the world to defeat unemployment, despite the fact that since 1927 labor exchanges had been carrying out the so-called purges, striking off the register thousands thousands of people, depriving them of their right to work. Based on this, the author casts doubt on the conclusion that was fixed in Soviet historiography about the elimination of unemployment in the USSR and makes the assumption that unemployment after 1930 changed the form of its existence.
Publishing: 28/12/2021
The article has been received by the editor on 04/11/2021
How to cite: Potapova N.A. Unemployment in the Soviet State in the 1920s: Ideological Doctrine and Economic Reality // Historical Courier, 2021, No. 6 (20), pp. 134–141. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2021/ISTKURIER-2021-6-11.pdf]
Links: Issue 6 2021
Keywords: NEP; unemployment; labor exchange; unemployed population; government measures; industrialization