Issue ? 47. December 2014

Control Dysfunction as a Factor of Development of the Soviet Timber Industry in the 1950s - 1960s

Ph.D., Associate Professor, Faculty of History, Petrozavodsk State University, Petrozavodsk, Russian Federation.
E-mail: olkulagin@yandex.ru

The article presents an analysis of the role of government control mechanisms in the development of the Soviet timber industry in the 1950s — 1960s. The author utilizes the institutional approach to economic history. The purpose of studying the control institutes is determining the causes of numerous dysfunctions within it during the period in question. A major cause of this dysfunction was the diversity of interests of the main actors of control process on different levels of the government and in interagency cooperation. This was the result of a lack of unified and responsible owner of timber enterprises and resources, interested in rational exploitation of those resources and, consequently, in controlling its development. Different level of access to economic and administrative resources on different levels of departmental hierarchy caused various disputes and temporal departmental coalitions for protection of their interests. Those coalitions gave the allied departments a degree of independence in realizing control, but at the same time formed conditions for the emergence of conspiracies to hide the real situation in the industry within the coalitions itself. Complicated scheme of approvals and management decisions significantly decreased responsiveness of the whole system of control in the industry.

Keywords

Government control, timber industry, 1950s, 1960s.