The tolkachs (Russian: толкачи, IPA: [təlkɐˈt͡ɕi], lit. pushers) emerged in the Soviet Union as employees of enterprises whose role was to use informal connections to enable production managers to meet or manipulate targeted outputs imposed by the central economic plan.[1] They evolved in the context of the various Five Year Plans helping them to work by violating their core principles: i.e. as success was determined by meeting the targets, using persuasion to have targets reduced was a means of achieving success.[2]
The tolkachs were premier practitioners of blat, a contemporaneous Russian term to describe the procurement of favours.[citation needed] By 1937 the tolkachs had come to occupy a key position mediating between the enterprises and the commissariat.[3]
References
edit- ^ Ledeneva, Alena V. (2013). How Russia Really Works: The Informal Practices That Shaped Post-Soviet Politics and Business. Cornell University Press.
- ^ Alena V. Ledeneva (1998), Russia's Economy of Favours (Russia's economy of favours ed.), Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521621747, OCLC 833245747, OL 683211M, 0521621747
- ^ Beissinger, Mark R. (1988). Scientific management, socialist discipline, and Soviet power. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674794907.
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