The Supply Crisis in the USSR in the Early 1970s: Mass Consciousness and Government Reaction

Abstract

The research subject of this study is the reciprocal influence of the problems of food supply and the social stability of the Soviet state with an analysis aiming to establish the relationship between the onset of the provision crisis and the massive politicization of economic processes in the USSR on the part of society during the examined period.The article is directed at studying the degree of impact the unfulfilled consumer expectations had on the social perception of power by the population of the Soviet Union during the agrarian crisis of the early 1970s.Particular attention is paid to the interaction between the government and society on questions of food supply, as well as the alleviation of the provision crisis through imports.The methodological basis of this work is founded on the basic principles of scientific knowledge - objectivity and historicism, which allowed the authors to study the evolution of the population's mass consciousness in a dialectical relationship with the era's phenomena. Upon implementing the above-mentioned principles, a number of both general scientific and specific historical research methods were applied (historical-situational, historical-comparative, historical-systemic, and statistical methods). The scientific novelty of this work is its attempt to reflect on the course of the socio-political development of the USSR under the influence of changing internal and external factors caused by the consumer crisis.The authors note that under difficult conditions, the authorities of the USSR and the CPSU Central Committee were forced to meet the social needs of the population in order to maintain a certain level of food provisions, as well as to support welfare. Evidence supports that increased social payments and higher wages in the early 1970s temporarily reduced the population's discontent with the Soviet political regime. The authors conclude that the concentration of the population’s attention on the low level of meeting their urgent needs was the basis of social inversion and the revision of the Soviet government approval index.