Price formation crisis bail out in Karelia in 1970-1980s

On the basis of previously unpublished archival materials found in Karelian National Archives the work of local Karelian authorities in price formation policy in 1970-1990 is considered. Special attention is paid to the composition of financial authorities, their functions, results of their work, and local innovations in developing pricing practice. Based on the analysis of these authorities, we identified problems of the Soviet pricing system and analyzed the ways to solve them. These data suggest that the Soviet bureaucratic system of price regulation was ineffective and couldn’t cope with responsibilities assigned to it. As a result, in the early 1980s the practice of introducing the system of negotiated prices was implemented. Nevertheless, new pricing measures undertaken by the Soviet government were rather indecisive and, therefore, didn’t bring positive results. Coexistence of free prices with the centralized socialist state system was impossible.