Theadministrative-command system (Russian:Административно-командная система,romanized: Administrativno-komandnaya sistema), also known as thecommand-administrative system, is the system of management of aneconomy of astate characterized by the rigidcentralization ofeconomic planning and distribution of goods, based on thestate ownership of themeans of production and carried out by the governmental andcommunist party bureaucracies ("nomenklatura") in the absence of amarket economy.
The term is used to describe theeconomy of the Soviet Union and theeconomies of the Soviet Bloc which closely followed theSoviet model.[1][2] In his 2004 bookThe Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives,Paul Roderick Gregory argues that thecollapse of the Soviet Union was due to the inherent drawbacks of the system, namely poor planning, low expertise of planners, unreliable supply lines, conflict between planners and producers and the dictatorial chain of command. Gregory writes that "the system was managed by thousands of 'Stalins' in a nested dictatorship".
HistorianRobert Vincent Daniels regarded theStalinist period to represent an abrupt break with Lenin's government in terms of economic planning in which a deliberated,scientific system of planning that featured formerMenshevikeconomists atGosplan had been replaced with a hasty version of planning with unrealistic targets, bureaucratic waste,bottlenecks andshortages. Stalin's formulations of national plans in terms of physical quantity of output was also attributed by Daniels as a source for the stagnant levels of efficiency and quality.[3]
Already in 1985, John Howard's article "The Soviet Union has an administered, not a planned, economy" argued that the common description of theSoviet-type economic planning asplanned economy is misleading. While central planning did play an important role, the Soviet economy wasde facto characterized by the priority of highly centralized management over planning. Therefore, he writes the correct term would be "centrally managed" rather than "centrally planned" economy.[1]
The termadministrative system was introduced by Russian economistGavriil Kharitonovich Popov during theperestroika period in the Soviet Union as the title of a section in his 1987 article "From the Point of View of an Economist"[4][5] which analyzed the novel ofAlexander Bek,New Assignment [ru] banned in the Soviet Union. It was published in Russian in 1986 with the beginning ofperestroika and was widely discussed in the society.[6] The term was picked up byMikhail Gorbachev, who used the expression "administrative-command system" in his November 2, 1987 speech.[4] The concept was further expounded in Popov's 1990 collection of his essaysБлеск и нищета административной системы [The Splendors and Miseries of the Administrative System].[7]
Realization of these facts led in the 1970s and 1980s to the development of new terms to describe what had previously been (and still were in United Nations publications) referred to as the 'centrally planned economies'. In the USA in the late 1980s the system was normally referred to as the 'administrative-command' economy. What was fundamental to this system was not the plan but the role of administrative hierarchies at all levels of decision making; the absence of control over decision making by the population [...].
