Page 81 - Inside the Film Factory New Approaches to Russian and Soviet Cinema

62 THE ORIGINS OF SOVIET CINEMA: A STUDY IN INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT
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economic forces. Paul Babitsky, John Rimberg and Richard Taylor provide fuller
chronicles of the industry’s evolution, but their work concentrates far less on
industry growth patterns than on the official measures taken to bring the cinema
under the Party’s ideological control. 5
A genuine developmental history of the early Soviet film industry must represent
a macro-economic study. It should take into account the large-scale trends of the
entire Soviet economy during the period in question, including the efforts of Soviet
leaders to encourage overall industrial growth. And by extension, such a history
should draw on the discipline of developmental economics, some principles of
which merit review. 6
A developing nation, especially one which hopes to move rapidly from an
agricultural to an industrial economy, as was the case with the Soviet Union, is
likely at some point to undergo a period of so-called capital accumulation. This
entails the rapid accumulation of the resources of production–factories, machines,
tools, and the like–which can serve for future manufacturing. A national economy
might effect such capital accumulation through forced savings by reducing the level
of consumption for a time and investing instead in the machines and materials
necessary for future production; consumer demand might be temporarily held in
check on the promise of more and better consumer goods after capital goods
industries had emerged. In some economies forced savings might be achieved by
encouraging private savings through the manipulation of taxes and credit, and
these funds would be used for investment in new capital. Reliance on forced savings
might prove difficult, however, in a severely underdeveloped nation where a
substantial part of the population lives at the subsistence level and thus generates
no margin for investment; forced savings in such circumstances would represent a
hardship political leaders might not wish to inflict on the population. To avoid the
potential privations of forced savings, a developing nation might look to foreign
investment and foreign credit to accumulate capital. These avenues can prove
politically expedient, although they also involve concessions; revenues would be
extracted from the affected industries by foreign investors and extensive foreign
debts might compromise the developing nation in international affairs. Foreign
trade, however, can provide concession-free capital as long as the developing
nation establishes favourable terms of trade; typically, the developing nation must
export what it can to offset the purchase of industrial machinery from abroad, and
that usually means trading away raw materials and agricultural goods.
A condition to be avoided by any national economy, developing or otherwise, is
an extended period of net capital consumption. This results from using up the
resources of production faster than they can be replenished. Factory equipment
must be replaced, for example, and raw materials secured. If such replacements
are not provided regularly, industries will gradually grind to a halt. In such a crisis,
industry planners must ration resources until such time as the economy can begin
new capital accumulation.
Early Soviet planners confronted decisions on all these matters, and their
choices were complicated by the particular position in which the USSR found