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As one born in the USSR and economist, I can give some brief description. The economy was like 20-40 ministries, formed like Korean chaebols -- with many in-house services to compensate for their poor public counterparts. Like kindergartens. Or own housing -- to get an apartment (for rent) from the municipal authorities, you'd be in a long queue with some people more equal than others, and corruption, and normally you'd get one by retirement. So enterprises built it for their workers, in some exchange with the construction enterprises (idk which ministry they'd belong, probably dispersed among many entities). You probably can imagine a huge Google -- where departments can't trade on a free market with each other -- but with a lot looser control and more corruption, which created some black market. For example, I suppose, restaurants must have belonged to the retail ministry. Under the minister himself, there was the republican department with its manager, the regional, and the municipal one, and only down there was a "Restaurant #5 <<Sunflower>>" (#5 in the retail department of city X), and its director. This made him like CEO, but in reality it was like small group manager in a big hierarchy. Just as in any big capitalist corporation, such a manager is risk averse, because failures lead to being fired, but sudden big profits go in the corporation pockets, not manager's. But if you add some corruption, you could be an entrepreneur in a way: make good services (expensive) => be popular among the elites => have some high-profile friends to protect in case of turf wars (e.g. city's Communist party 1st secretary (president) is your friend => city's retail department can't fire you) => exchange some services/goods/commodities beyond the counter (as it was said "from the back door of the shop"). (Black market prices were high, so you could easily sell something elsewhere and put the nominal amount of cash in the box.) Regarding the shortages issue, they existed for the buyers at the front door of public retail. Retail & restaurants managers exchanged the stuff (they were supposed to sell to the public) between them to fill the gaps. |