Materials of the A.A. Nikonov Personal Provenance Fond from the Russian State Archive of Economy as a Source for Studying the Agribusiness Management System in the USSR
| 06 June 2024
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Publication of archival documents
Garkusha E.A., Kolomna, Russian Federation
Materials of the A.A. Nikonov Personal Provenance Fond from the Russian State Archive of Economy as a Source for Studying the Agribusiness Management System in the USSR
Abstract
The article assesses A.A. Nikonov’s opinions and the way they influenced the development and the modernization of agribusiness management system in the USSR. The acuteness of problems involved in modernization of agro sphere and ensuring food security in contemporary Russia is largely due to strategic miscalculations of the party and state leadership of the country over the last decade of the Soviet state. Therefore study of the transformations in the management system of the agro-industrial complex remains of much significance. Furthermore there was a surge of interest of historians and economists to the issue at the turn of 20-21st centuries. Of great importance for researching the topic are materials of academician A.A. Nikonov’s personal provenance fond from the Russian State Archive of Economy, which contains a large corpus of papers dating from 1975 to 1995. The core of the fond is a collection of articles written by the academician, some published in national press, some unpublished drafts, where he describes the situation in the Soviet agribusiness and puts forward proposals for changes necessary to improve the agribusiness management system. The academician has shifted his ground with time. In his earlier works he waived a demand for the reorganization of agribusiness management and supported strengthening of economic ties with related industries. As can be discerned in the analysis of later papers A.A. Nikonov came to see the major problem of agribusiness management system in the USSR in its excessive centralization, overlap of control functions at different levels of management and swollen management personnel. It should be noted, however, that all A.A. Nikonov’ proposals and recommendations were discarded by the Soviet agribusiness leadership.
Keywords
A.A. Nikonov, the Russian State Archive of Economy, agribusiness, Food program.
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About the authors
Garkusha Ekaterina Aleksandrovna, a postgraduate student of the Department of Russian and World History of the Moscow State Regional Institute of Humanities and Social Studies, 8-926-153-76-39, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it