Soviet Union Study_7.pdf

Soviet Union: A Country Study
manufacturer, were rejected by quality control inspection. The television
industry received special attention, and a strong drive for
quality control was a response to published figures of very high
rates of breakdown and repair. To improve the industry, a major
cooperative color television venture was planned for the Warsaw
Television Plant in 1989.
The Logic and Goals of Consumer Production
Increased availability of consumer goods was an important part
of perestroika. A premise of that program was that workers would
raise their productivity in response to incentive wages only if their
money could buy a greater variety ofconsumer products. This idea
arose when the early use of incentive wages did not have the anticipated
effect on labor productivity because purchasing power had
not improved. According to the theory, all Soviet industry would
benefit from diversification from Group A into Group B because
incentives would have real meaning. Therefore, the Twelfth Five­
Year Plan called for a 5.4 percent rise in nonfood consumer goods
and a 5.4 to 7 percent rise in consumer services. Both figures were
well above rates in the overall economic plan.
Consumer goods targeted included radios, televisions, sewing
machines, washing machines, refrigerators, printed matter, and
knitwear. The highest quotas were set for the first three categories.
Although in 1987 refrigerators, washing machines, televisions, tape
recorders, and furniture were the consumer"categories making the
greatest production gains compared with the previous year, only
furniture met its yearly quota. Furthermore, industrial planners
have tried to use light industries to raise the industrial contributions
of such economic regions as the Transcaucasus and Central
Asia, which have large populations but lack the raw materials for
heavy manufacturing.
Textiles and Wood Pulp
The textile and wood pulp industries are traditional branches
oflight industry that remain essential to the Soviet economy. The
major textile center is northeast of Moscow. Because the industry
receives most ofits raw material from the cotton fields ofthe Transcaucasus
and Central Asia economic regions, transport is expensive.
Although large-scale cotton cultivation began in the Soviet
Union only in the early 1900s, textile plant locations were established
in the nineteenth century, when the country still imported
most of its raw cotton. Soviet planners have tried to shift the textile
industry into the Transcaucasus and Central Asia economic
regions, nearer the domestic cotton fields. But textiles have been
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