by James Millar
Some of the revenues mentioned above are retained by local or republican governments for their own expenditures. This was particularly high in the less developed regions of Central Asia, as part of the regional subsidy characteristic of Soviet welfare colonialism, as it has been called. See also: ALCOHOL MONOPOLY; BEARD TAX; TAX, TURNOVER
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gregory, Paul, and Stuart, Robert. (1998). Russian and Soviet Economic Performance and Structure, 6th ed. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
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TCHAIKOVSKY, PETER ILYICH
Holzman, Franklyn D. (1955). Soviet Ta.xa.tion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kahan, Arcadius. (1985). The Plow, the Hammer, and the Knout. An Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Russia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
MARTIN C. SPECHLER
TAX, TURNOVER
Turnover tax (nalog s oborota) was a tax on enterprise gross output, the main source of government revenue during the first several decades of Soviet planned economy, officially considered part of the surplus product in Marxist terms. It was introduced in 1930 for the purpose of unifying previously diverse taxes.
The difference between the final retail price for consumer goods (and most fuels) and the industry’s wholesale price, as set by the Soviet pricing authorities, less any handling charges, is the turnover tax. (Before 1949 this tax was also applied to producer goods for reasons of fiscal control.) Sometimes this levy was imposed as a unit tax, as a percentage of the sale price, or in other ways. Regardless of the method of collection, the turnover tax rate is thus the difference divided by the wholesale (or retail) selling price. These rates differed widely. In the case of agricultural products, the turnover tax comes from the difference between the procurement price and that at which the produce is resold by state organs. On salt and vodka, the turnover tax resembled an excise tax. In 1975 about one-third of the entire revenue from turnover taxes came from wines and spirits, hence any effort to reduce drinking, to the extent they were successful, posed a fiscal dilemma, as the Mikhail Gorbachev campaign discovered.
The turnover tax was administratively simple. Collecting the tax was easier from the relatively small number of industrial enterprises and wholesale organizations, most of which had decent accounts. Income taxes would have had to be collected from millions of citizens, many of whom were still illiterate or at least innumerate. The variable markup allowed retail prices to be changed when inventories warranted, without altering the industry wholesale price on which planning indices depended. For example, turnover taxes on food were lowered several times during the 1950s to allow the state to pay higher procurement prices without affecting politically sensitive retail prices. A
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
similar situation applied to fuels for household consumption. From 1954 until the late 1960s, official retail prices were held approximately constant, quite probably to save administrative effort. It also permitted certain prices to be disproportionately low, such as those on children’s clothing and approved reading material.
As compared to other sources of revenue, the turnover tax was quite large in the 1930s, but fell in relation to taxes on profits and incomes during the 1950s. See also: TAXES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bergson, Abram. (1964). The Economics of Soviet Planning. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Holzman, Franklyn. (1974). “Financing Soviet Economic Development.” In William L. Blackwell, ed., Russian Economic Development from Peter the Great to Stalin. New York: New Viewpoints. Nove, Alec. (1986). The Soviet Economic System, 3rd ed. Boston: Allen amp; Unwin.
MARTIN C. SPECHLER TBILISI See TIFLIS.
TCHAIKOVSKY, PETER ILYICH
(1840-1893), Russian composer.
Arguably the most famous Russian composer, Tchaikovsky was the first to achieve renown beyond Russia’s borders and establish a place for Russian music in the repertories of Western concert halls and musical theaters. The first professional Russian composer to receive a thorough musical education, the import of Tchaikovsky’s achievement owes much to his mastery of the dominant nineteenth-century musical genre: the symphony. Yet Tchaikovsky’s enormous range, versatility, and output-he composed in all the major genres, including symphonies, operas, ballets, chamber works, songs, as well as compositions for solo instruments-assure the composer’s place among the most popular and prolific European composers of his day.
Tchaikovsky’s virtual dominance of the Russian musical scene by the end of his life aroused
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the envy of the nationalist composers known as the Mighty Handful, yet Tchaikovsky’s ability to adapt native folk material to established Western compositional structures proved more successful than their more earnest attempts to craft from those materials a unique native musical language. Four Tchaikovsky masterworks, representing three genres in which Tchaikovsky particularly excelled, were the fruits of an unprecedented final creative flourish: the opera Queen of Spades (1891), the ballets Sleeping Beauty (1889), The Nutcracker (1892), and the Sixth Symphony (1893).
Although Tchaikovsky’s music was deemed bourgeois in the relatively radical period following the 1917 Revolution, these criticisms faded in the Josef Stalin era, when the monumental art of the previous century once again found favor, and Tchaikovsky was hailed as a symphonist par excellence-the composer’s homosexuality, the perceived melancholy of his music, and his conservative politics notwithstanding. Tchaikovsky died of cholera in St. Petersburg in 1893, though a very active party of mostly Russian researchers allege the composer’s death was the result of a suicide brought about by a crisis over his homosexuality. See also: MUSIC
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, David. (1978-1992). Tchaikovsky: A Biographical and Critical Study. London: Gollancz. Orlova, A., ed. (1990). Tchaikovsky: A Self-Portrait. New York: Oxford University Press. Poznansky, Alexander. (1991). Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man. New York: Simon and Schuster Macmillan. Poznansky, Alexander, and Brett Langston. (2002). The Tchaikovsky Handbook: A Guide to the Man and His Music, comp. Alexander Poznansky and Brett Langston. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Taruskin, Richard. (1997). Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
TIM SCHOLL
TECHPROMFINPLAN
In the final stage of the annual central planning process, Soviet enterprises received each year a com1526 prehensive document, the techpromfinplan (technical-industrial-financial plan), which they were required by law to fulfill. Divided into quarterly and monthly subplans, the techpromfinplan governed the operation of the firm by specifying output targets and input allocations, as well as a large number of financial characteristics, delivery schedules, capacity utilization norms, labor staffing instructions, planned increases in labor productivity, and other targets. In total, as many as one hundred targets were specified in the techpromfinplan, the most important of which involved output targets. Fulfilling output targets, measured either in quantity or value, formed the basis for calculating bonus payments for managers and workers.
In a very broad sense, the techpromfinplan was the means by which Soviet planners’ preferences were implemented. Social and economic goals set at the highest level of the political bureaucracy and conveyed to Gosplan, the State Planning Committee, were disaggregated by sector, region, and industry, and sent to individual firms. More narrowly, the techpromfinplan specified the scope of the firm’s operations for the year.
The production component of the annual enterprise plan identified the quantity, ruble value (valovaia produktsia), and commodity assortment of output to be produced. Input allocations, supply schedules, capacity and resource utilization norms, as well as other technical indicators, were devised to support the firm’s ability to fulfill the production targets. Current production targets were typically based on a percentage increase in the firm’s past performance, adjusted for qualit
y-improvement targets. The process of planning from the achieved level meant that Soviet enterprises were subject to a “ratchet effect” in terms of quantity targets.
The financial component of the enterprise plan consisted of profitability norms, planned cost reductions, credit plans for purchasing inputs, a wage bill, and other financial indicators. The comprehensive nature of the financial plan paralleled the production plan, allowing planners to monitor the firm’s monthly and quarterly output performance. Moreover, through the financial plan, ministerial officials exercised ruble control (kontrol’ rublem) over the enterprise by restricting access to financial resources, as well as by redistributing profits. Unlike managers of firms in market economies, however, whose performance is measured in terms of financial indicators, Soviet manENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
TELEOLOGICAL PLANNING
agers placed highest priority on fulfilling the production plan targets.
In addition to production, financial, and distribution components, the techpromfinplan also specified a variety of labor staffing targets, including the distribution of labor force by wage classifications, the total amount of wages that the firm could pay, average wages by occupational category, and planned increases in labor productivity, but left the manager with some discretion over staffing issues within these constraints.
Legally obligated to fulfill the techpromfinplan and motivated by large monetary bonuses paid for fulfilling output targets, Soviet enterprise managers nonetheless exhibited a significant degree of flexibility in both the production and distribution activities of the firm. See also: CENTRAL PLANNING; PLANNERS PREFERENCES
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dyker, David. (1984). The Future of the Soviet Economic Planning System. Beckenham-Kent: Croom Helm. Kushnirsky, Fyodor. (1982). Soviet Economic Planning, 1965-1980. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Zaleski, Eugene. (1980). Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
SUSAN J. LINZ
of relief for the Red Army was a major victory. Considerable discussion of the question of Poland’s postwar boundaries produced no definitive solution, though there was a consensus that Poland’s eastern boundary would be the Curzon line and that Poland would be compensated in the West with territories to be taken from Germany. Stalin successfully pressed for confirmation of Soviet gains as a result of the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of 1939. In turn Stalin agreed to engage Japanese forces in the Pacific theater after the defeat of Germany. There was also agreement to cooperate in a postwar United Nations organization to maintain peace. In a separate protocol the Big Three agreed to maintain the independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Iran. See also: NAZI-SOVIET PACT OF 1939; POTSDAM CONFERENCE; WORLD WAR II; YALTA CONFERENCE
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Mayle, Paul D. (1987). Eureka Summit: Agreement in Principle and the Big Three at Teheran, 1943. Newark: University of Delaware Press. Sainsbury, Keith. (1985). The Turning Point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and Chiang-Kai-Shek: the Moscow, Cairo and Teheran Conferences. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
JOSEPH L. NOGEE
TEHERAN CONFERENCE
The Teheran Conference was the first summit meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin. It met from November 28 through December l, 1943, in Teheran, Iran. The general purpose of the conference was to strengthen the cooperation between the Big Three allies in the conduct of the Second World War and to determine the outlines of a postwar global order. Though the Western allies-particularly Roosevelt-sought to conciliate the Soviet dictator, the conference was marked by underlying tension over differences among the allied leaders. The major agreement reached was the decision to launch the long-awaited invasion of Europe (Operation Overlord) as a cross-channel invasion of France in May 1944 (later changed to June). For Stalin, this promise
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
TELEOLOGICAL PLANNING
The concept of teleological planning refers to national economic planning that is directive in character (planners determine plan directives), as opposed to genetical planning, indicative in character, in which plan targets are influenced by market (demand) forces.
The discussion of alternative approaches to national economic planning was an important component of the early development of planning in the Soviet Union. The teleological school was represented by major economists such as S. Strumilin, G. L. Pytatakov, V. V. Kuibyshev, and P. A. Fel’d-man, while the geneticists were represented by N. D. Kondratiev, V. A. Bazarov, and V. G. Groman, all well-known economists. The debate ended with Stalin’s adoption of the teleological approach.
The distinction between the two different approaches remains important. The teleological concept
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implies that planners’ preferences prevail; that is, planners determine the objective function of the economy (e.g., the mix of output by sector or product) with consumer preferences being passive. The genetical approach, on the other hand, has important implications for planning in a pluralistic political setting, in that consumer preferences can prevail and serve as the basis for plan directives. The geneticist view is effectively the foundation for the contemporary development of indicative planning. See also: CENTRAL PLANNING; ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carr, Edward Hallett, and Davies, R. W. (1969). Foundations of a Planned Economy, 1926-1929, vols. 1-2. London: Macmillan. Gregory, Paul R., and Stuart, Robert C. (2001). Russian and Soviet Economic Structure and Performance. 7th ed. New York: Addison Wesley Longman. Spulber, Nicolas. (1964). Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
ROBERT C. STUART
TELEVISION AND RADIO
Present-day Russian television and radio have come a long way. Today’s domestic news and entertainment broadcasts can hardly be told from their Western counterparts. The successors of Soviet television and radio are characterized by a state-of-the-art style of presentation, modern advertising, and professional journalism. The Russian mass media have undergone a series of profound transformations, notably since the end of the Soviet era, but they continue to be under the influence of powerful interest groups.
Journalism, especially news coverage, is subject to various restrictions. There is a wide gap between the official policy, its provision for the freedom of the media, and the actual situation. The regulation of television and radio in the Russian Federation has shown indications reminiscent of the centralized media control during the Soviet regime. But economic influences and the opinion-leading value of television both create a competitive environment considered irrevocable and therefore immune to attempts to reinstate a Soviet-like authoritarian rule
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over the media, mainly due to Russia’s matter-of-fact accession to international politics, and liberal values.
In 2002 the Ministry of Press, Broadcasting, and Mass Communications (MPTR) registered 3,267 television channels and 2,378 radio stations, more than half wholly or partly state owned. Almost every Russian household owns at least one television set, whereas a radio can be found in four out of five households. Many listeners still rely on the old wire radio through which state-run Radio Mayak and Radio Rossiya have been broadcasting their programs. The fact that no fees need to be paid for broadcast reception contributes to a high penetration of the population and dominance over the print sector. Less than a quarter of Russians read newspapers on a daily basis, and almost half of those age thirty and younger do not read newsprint at all. State-owned national TV Channel One (ORT) and Television Rossiya (RTR) reach practically all viewers, and together with private channel NTV achieve 60 percent viewer ratings. The radio audience ratings are dominated by Radio Mayak, Radio Rossiya, and private Radio Europe Plus, Russkoye Radio, and Echo Moskvy.
SOVIET EXPLOITATION OF MEDIA POTENTIALS
The media’s assignment life was plotted by mas
s communication experts from the Politburo and pursued with measures like enforced subscriptions to print media and various obstructions to diversity of broadcast programs. From the 1920s on, wire radio receivers were installed in almost every household, whereas small and remote villages received collective loudspeakers. Because they could not be switched off, only muted, these primitive mass information instruments already bore the sign of inescapability, which transcended into the 1980s. Soviet wireless radio started its career with its first transmission in 1924 and quickly developed into a public voice of the party. In the early Soviet days, broadcasting owned its significance to widespread illiteracy. Not only could radio and later television reach large masses of people without them being able to read, broadcasting influenced how information was perceived and accepted by the audience. Television’s potential, though being experimentally tested since the 1930s, was not acknowledged until decades later.
In 1960 the Central Committee commanded broadcasting to actively support the propagation
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