To the Editors

Dr. Miller is to be applauded for his close reading of perestroika-era politics in his recent article for Kritika, as well as for his use of underused sources, most notably the Politburo notes collected by Mikhail Gorbachev’s advisers and published in the last decade.¹ His assertion that Gorbachev did have a clear and consistent agenda for Soviet agriculture, moreover, is on its face and in light of the evidence he presents incontestable: much of the same marketizing push very much appears to have been leveled at agriculture over the years of perestroika as had also been directed at Soviet industry. The depiction of Gorbachev’s approach to agricultural reform in Dr. Miller’s article, as well as and his constant belaboring of the “opposition” and “obstruction” that he faced, moreover, provides a very believable and consistent image of a politician dedicated to reform.

What Dr. Miller manages to overlook, however, is the glaring mismatch between Gorbachev’s political discourse and the actual fate of Soviet agriculture during perestroika. Part of this oversight is a sourcing issue: Dr. Miller relies almost exclusively on materials collated and selected by Gorbachev and his advisers, which have an unsurprising tendency to emphasize the political struggle in which they were engaged in Moscow over the realities faced by farmers on the ground in the USSR’s agricultural regions. Thus the sources are erroneous, claiming that link farming was rare before 1989 (when in fact it was quite common in many agricultural republics and oblasts), that individual farmers’ production was being pushed off of the local markets (when it in fact made up 25–40 percent of some products sold in the USSR, such as milk and dairy, even before perestroika), that kolkhoz chairmen earned up to 1,200 rubles a month (a salary that would have outstripped even federal-level ministers in Moscow), or that “food subsidies” were somehow provided directly to agricultural producers, rather than to consumers in the form of lowered prices on basic goods. Dr. Miller, unfortunately, has allowed numerous similar confusions to filter from the sources into his article.

There is also, however, an issue of focus. By essentially accepting the (very politicized) narrative promoted by Gorbachev and his advisers, Dr. Miller appears almost uninterested in the fact that Moscow’s description of events increasingly bore less and less resemblance to reality on the ground. Rather than a sector held back by bureaucratic intransigence, Soviet agriculture was throughout perestroika befuddled by the same new problems faced by the entire economy: radical drops in production, the siphoning off of funds to cooperatives, and broken connections between producers and processors as the links previously enforced by Gosplan and Gossnab were severed. Gorbachev’s promotion of the “link” system was part and parcel of these same reforms, and it speaks to the reforms’ implementation, rather than the lack thereof, that Soviet agriculture spluttered just as much as it did in the USSR’s final years. A more complete analysis of agricultural reform under Gorbachev would be well served to consider not only the government’s stated agenda but its actual effect on the economy as well.

Dept. of International History
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE, UK
i.scarborough@lse.ac.uk

Chris Miller responds:

I appreciate Isaac Scarborough’s kind words and am glad to see an article on agriculture spark some interest. Scarborough is absolutely right to note the vast gap between perestroika-era policies as they were formulated in Moscow and as they were implemented on the ground. Indeed, the differences between policy and practice underscore my argument about the relative weakness of Gorbachev’s government. Scarborough is also right that there is still much to be learned about the various drivers of agricultural change. Fertile ground, in other words, for new research.

Program in Grand Strategy
Yale University
31 Hillhouse Ave.
New Haven, CT 06511 USA
cr.miller@yale.edu