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Equity of the Livestock Tax of Outer Mongolia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

F. D. Holzman
F. D. Holzman*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Washington
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Extract

Many basic features of Marxist ideology have an idealistic and equalitarian content. The Soviet Union, while certainly influenced by Marxist ideology, has steered a fairly pragmatic course in its economic policies. True, when faced with alternative methods of achieving an objective, the planners are more likely to choose, all other things being equal, that method which conforms more closely to accepted ideology. Should the alternatives differ substantially in potential effectiveness in achieving the given ends, however, the more effective is likely to be chosen even if it happens to be less acceptable in terms of ideology.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 1956 , pp. 506 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1956

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Footnotes

*

The generous assistance of the Human Relations Area Files, Inc. in making this study possible is gratefully acknowledged. Materials were collected under the project on Outer Mongolia, operating under contract with the Human Relations Area Files Inc. (HRAF Subcontract HRAF-10 Washington-1). Reproduction in whole or in part permitted for any purpose of the United States Government.

References

1 This process has sometimes been obscured by the fact that the Soviets have chosen at first in ignorance of the effectiveness of available alternatives, less effective but ideologically acceptable alternatives only to reverse themselves later when the facts have been in.

2 See this writer's Soviet Taxation: The Fiscal and Monetary Problems of a Planned Economy (Harvard University Press, 1955), Chap. 3.

3 Abram Bergson The Structure of Soviet Wages (Cambridge, 1946), passim.

4 For a discussion of the above, see Holzman, pp. 146-147.

5 For the past twenty-five years, virtually the only information which has been available on Outer Mongolia, has come from Soviet sources. Mongolia became a “People's Republic” in 1924, the first and only still-independent nation to achieve this dubious distinction in the prewar period.

6 N. Capkin, “Gosudarstvennyj bjudzhet Mongol'skoj narodnoj respubliki na sluzhbe ekonomicheskogo i kul'turnogo stroitelstva” Finansy i kredit SSSR, 1953, 7, p. 68.

7 Tugrik is the basic unit of Mongolian currency and is valued at par with the ruble. Source: I. la. Zlatkin, Mongol1'skaja narodnaja respublika—strana novoj demokratii (Moscow, Leningrad, 1950), p. 255.

8 Source: Capkin, p. 68.

9 Cf., for example, H. H. Vreeland, Mongol Community and Kinship Structure, (New Haven, 1954), pp. 31-32.

10 I. F. Shulzhenko, Zhivotnovodstvo MNR (Moscow, 1948), p. 43.

11 Computed by taking the ratio of an average of the 1950 tax-rate equivalents to the pre-1930 equivalent, (Table 2), letting the goat ratio be unity.

12 These exemption schedules clearly reflect Soviet and Mongolian planner preferences rather than nomad preferences. The sheep and cattle are highly valued for their meat by the Soviets because of their own well-known meat shortages. Horses are strongly desired by the nomads, not only for transportation, but because social status depends very largely on the number of horses one owns. For this reason too much effort and pasture, from the point of view of the government, has gone into raising horses. The nomads also find goats very useful for meat, milk, skin, etc. Goats are probably not discouraged as much as horses because they can be raised on marginal lands which would not support sheep, (i.e. are not completely competitive with sheep for pasture) but on the other hand are close consumption substitutes for sheep, freeing sheep for export. These schedules are a good example of the manner in which the Soviets attempt by indirect measures to impose on a satellite nation a production pattern favorable to Soviet needs.