Trade in Bashkiria in the first five-year plan for the development of the national economy

The given article analyses modeling the development of trade in Bashkiria in the first five-year plan of the development of the national economy. On the basis of archive materials, it analyses the dynamics of the trade turnover, the growth of the trading network and the redistribution of trade sectors; it discloses the role of planning in maintaining the balance of demand and supply in the market in Bashkiria. Trade was part of the socialist industrial economy and was based upon the domination of the state-controlled and cooperative sectors. In accordance with the five-year plan, trade in Bashkiria was to evolve significantly, but in the first version of the plan there remained a combination of market-economy regulating mechanisms and prescriptive methods, and the control figures were calculated by the People’s Committee for Trade on the basis of analyzing the market conditions. The variety of documents issued by different institutions which this article considers allows the conclusion that in the original version of the plan it was trade itself, not the centralized distribution and standardized supply that remained the core of the system of the trade turnover. In the first five-year plan cooperative trade was considered by the People’s Committee for Trade regardless of all the rest of the cooperative sector. Consumers’ cooperation handled the most part of retail trade in the republic. The author argues that trade in Bashkiria was slated to be the main form of economic relationship between the industry and consumers.