Plan-Bureaucracy Conflict in the USSR: Soviet Type Firm Organization

Abstract

This study, in which the collapse of the USSR is discussed within the scope of central planning and bureaucracy, focuses on Soviet type firm organization. In the literature, central planning and bureaucracy are generally considered as fields that work together, and the nuances between these two separate structures are mostly neglected. This has led to the erroneous attribution of problems arising from the bureaucratic structure to central planning. The aim of this study is to emphasize the conflict/difference between bureaucratic mechanisms and central planning phenomena in the USSR. The main finding from the theoretical arguments derived from the literature based on primary sources is that central planning is not the cause of inefficiency. The conditions that prepared the collapse emerged from the conflict of bureaucratic aims, mainly political motives, with central plans. Starting from this thesis, the study aims to reveal the contradiction between bureaucracy and central planning by analyzing the management principles of firms, which are the smallest decision units in the central planning hierarchy of the USSR.