Word: land
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This reintroduction of what Gorbachev delicately referred to as "individual property" could cause the most sweeping overhaul in Soviet agriculture since Stalin began to collectivize the farms in 1929, a process that resulted in more than 10 million deaths and wiped out the kulaks, or landed farmers, as a class. Since then the land has been unable to feed its people; the U.S.S.R. spends $105 billion, roughly 15% of its budget, subsidizing food, and it imported 36 million tons of grain last year. One Soviet collective farmer feeds only seven to nine people, in contrast to a Dutch farmer...
Gorbachev's economic reforms, while radical, are nonetheless carefully circumscribed. He is not marching headlong to capitalism but is attempting to reinvent Marxism by creating socialist markets, socialist competition and cooperative ventures. Private ownership of the means of production (land, factories) is still prohibited. Individuals cannot hire workers with a view to profiting from their labor but rather must form cooperative arrangements. There is a noncompetitive banking system, and no stock market for financing private ventures. Most important of all, there is no rational price system: thousands of prices are still set by state fiat rather than supply and demand...
...HEARD OF THE SOFT SELL, BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS. The Soviets have almost no advertising experience, since there has been little need for promotion in a land of few choices and chronic shortages. The basic sales philosophy can be summed up in the words of a Soviet citizen who was asked what he would do if he wanted to attract more customers to stay at his hotel. "Well," he said, "I would hope that all the other hotels were full...
...issue is how many years you can rent land. We need a law guaranteeing that no one will interfere...
...horn of plenty. Cooperatives and private farmers here had more varieties of meats to offer than you could usually find in Moscow. The bountiful scene seemed to deny reports filtering into the Soviet capital about food shortages in the provinces. Certainly, no one was starving in this land of the good black earth...