Increasing of labour productivity as an interdisciplinary problem: historical retrospective

The article is dedicated to the study of the complex of reasons leading to a chronic backlog of Russia from the developed countries for the past hundred years in terms of labour productivity. The authors pose the problem of increasing labour productivity as an interdisciplinary having not only a purely economic but also cultural, sociological, psychological aspects. It is shown that living labour is the key factor of production and hence productivity. History of the application of the principles of scientific organization of labour in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia is analyzed. The constrained character of the administrative command system as well as of the «free market» in terms of solving the problem of increasing labour productivity is shown. In the conclusion of the article the authors state the necessity of the governments' systematic efforts towards the solution to the problem of increasing labour productivity in contemporary Russia by negotiation of «cultural blindness» during the course of development of the effective management system.