An example of vulgar impressionism

I recently read two articles by the Stalinist historian Candan Badem, published about a year ago on the website of the newspaper Yurtsever. The second article is a continuation of the first. In these articles, Badem reviews Sovyet Deneyi ve Yarının Sosyalizmi (The Soviet Experiment and the Socialism of Tomorrow) [1], a two-volume work by another Stalinist author, Sinan Dervişoğlu. Badem discusses the first volume in his first article (in Turkish) [2] and the second in a follow-uparticle published about two weeks later (in Turkish) [3].

In his review of the second volume, Badem accuses Dervişoğlu of making a grossly unfair assertion about the quality and competitiveness of Soviet products, and explains his objection as follows:

[Dervişoğlu] says that the Soviets and socialist economies never had a commercially viable and competitive brand (apart from Kalashnikov)! Unfortunately, in making this claim, Dervişoğlu has come to resemble Putin: Putin, too, said that the USSR had nothing to export but galoshes! Has Dervişoğlu really never seen a Soviet Serkisov watch or a Zenit camera? Soviet Lada cars were very successful in their respective segments. During my childhood in Kars and Ardahan in the 1970s, Soviet-made scythes were the best available. Soviet tractors and combine harvesters, however, could not enter Turkey because of US and NATO influence. During perestroika, some cooperatives granted export rights by the traitor Gorbachev bought up cheap, high-quality Soviet butter on the domestic market and sold it to Europe. In my view, Gorbachev’s betrayal lay not in allowing cooperatives, but in allowing them to plunder state property and extract rents from subsidised state products.

I have not yet read Dervişoğlu’s book, so I cannot assess his arguments on this subject in this article. Here, I simply want to comment briefly on the impressionistic method Badem employs when discussing the quality and competitiveness of Soviet products and criticising Dervişoğlu.

In such a debate, our starting point should be concrete data on the structure of Soviet exports rather than impressions. The fact is that, particularly in the late Soviet period, energy products and raw materials accounted for a large share of Soviet exports to markets that generated convertible currency earnings. The data presented in A Study of the Soviet Economy, published in 1991 and prepared by experts from the IMF, the World Bank, the OECD and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, make this abundantly clear: in 1989, fuel and electricity accounted for 55.1 per cent of Soviet exports to advanced capitalist countries; ores, mineral concentrates, metals and metal products for 15.3 per cent; and timber and paper for 7 per cent. Together, these three categories accounted for 77.4 per cent of Soviet exports to those countries. By contrast, machinery, equipment and transport equipment accounted for only 3.2 per cent, and manufactured consumer goods for just 2.8 per cent. [4]

Without discussing the structure of Soviet exports at all, Badem cites Serkisof watches, Zenit cameras and Lada cars as examples of successful Soviet products to defend the competitiveness of Soviet industrial goods against Dervişoğlu’s criticism. He then recalls that, in Kars and Ardahan, where he spent his childhood, Soviet scythes were the best available locally. Yet he says nothing about which Soviet-made products were successful, in which periods, against which competitors or by which criteria. A few remembered brand names and childhood memories -in other words, a set of subjective impressions- take the place of economic and historical analysis.

There is no doubt that the Soviet Union produced industrial goods that were useful, durable or found buyers in certain markets. It would be pointless to argue otherwise. Yet these qualities in particular products do not negate the serious and widespread problems of quality and productivity in Soviet industry. Soviet-made goods lagged behind competing products in durability, reliability and technical performance, and this was one of the main factors limiting their international competitiveness. Moreover, being able to sell a product abroad does not, in itself, imply technological superiority or high labour productivity.

Indeed, a 1989study by Béla Balassa, a professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University and a consultant to the World Bank, emphasised the predominance of fuel and raw materials in Soviet foreign trade and identified quality problems as one of the main obstacles to expanding manufactured exports. [5] In the terminology of Marxist value theory, the problem manifested itself in the concrete properties of these products as use-values - that is, in shortcomings in their capacity to meet needs. Of course, I do not endorse the market reforms Balassa proposed; but we cannot dismiss this concrete reality by citing a watch brand and a Soviet-made scythe.

Furthermore, Badem’s choice of Zenit as an example is highly questionable. For instance, an internalfactory assessment from 1969, published in the Zenitcamera archive, states that 40 per cent of the Zenit-7 cameras produced in August were returned following complaints. [6] This figure indicates a serious quality problem at the factory, though it would, of course, be wrong to generalise it to all Zenit models and all years. Yet simply mentioning the Zenit brand, familiar to some people above a certain age in Turkey, is not enough to establish how these cameras compared with their rivals in terms of quality and competitiveness.

The same distinctions must be drawn in the case of Lada. Badem’s claim that these cars were successful in their respective segments remains unsubstantiated unless he specifies which market, period and measure of success he means. The labour-time comparison I discussed in myearlier article on AvtoVAZ showed that finding a certain number of buyers in foreign markets did not negate serious problems of productivity and efficiency in car production. The ability to sell on international markets, product quality and labour productivity are distinct issues, but they need to be examined together.

Contemporary accounts should also be considered when assessing the technological level of the Soviet car industry. In his1972 diary, Chernyaev quotes a senior Renault executive as saying that Moskvich cars and those produced in Izhevsk were on a par with the vehicles Renault had produced fifteen years earlier. In the article in which I referred to Chernyaev’s diary, I also discussed car production based on cooperation with Fiat, noting that similarities in outward appearance did not imply an equivalent technological level.

The example of butter raises even more questions. Badem writes that, during perestroika, some cooperatives bought up cheap, high-quality Soviet butter on the domestic market and sold it to Europe. Yet, according to figurespresented to the British Parliament, the European Community exported 118,000 tonnes of butter and butteroil to the USSR in January–August 1989 alone. [7] This figure does not prove that the sales Badem mentions did not take place, but it does show the broader economic context in which they occurred.

Moreover, by Badem’s own account, the cooperatives were taking advantage of the gap between domestic and export prices for state-subsidised products. Being able to buy a product cheaply at home and sell it abroad at a higher price does not show that it was produced efficiently by international standards. A profit opportunity created by state subsidies should not be confused with the competitiveness of production.

To assess the performance of Soviet industry, we need to examine labour productivity, costs, the technical characteristics of its products and the structure of its exports. Yet Badem addresses none of these and considers it enough to list a few Soviet-made products he has selected and recount a childhood memory.

It would not be unfair to say that, in defending the quality and competitiveness of Soviet products, Badem displays an extremely vulgar form of impressionism.

[1] Sinan Dervişoğlu, Sovyet Deneyi ve Yarının Sosyalizmi, 2 vols., Istanbul: Canut Yayınları, 2025.

[2] Candan Badem, “Sinan Dervişoğlu’nun Sovyet Deneyi ve Yarının Sosyalizmi kitabı üzerine”, Yurtsever, 22 October 2025. Available at: https://yurtsever.org.tr/2025/sinan-dervisoglunun-sovyet-deneyi-ve-yarinin-sosyalizmi-kitabi-uzerine-553635/

[3] Candan Badem, “Sinan Dervişoğlu’nun Kitabı, cilt 2: Bugünün ve Yarının Sosyalizmi”, Yurtsever, 3 November 2025. The quotation is taken from this article. Available at: https://yurtsever.org.tr/2025/sinan-dervisoglunun-kitabi-cilt-2-bugunun-ve-yarinin-sosyalizmi-553979/

[4] IMF, World Bank, OECD and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, A Study of the Soviet Economy, vol. 2, 1991, section “External Trade Reform”, Table IV.3.2: “USSR: Commodity Structure of Exports, 1980–89”. The source for the table is the Soviet statistical publication SSSR v tsifrakh 1989 (1990). The percentages cited in the text refer to the category “non-socialist advanced countries”; the figure of 77.4 per cent is the sum of the shares of the three specified product groups. Available at: https://www.elibrary.imf.org/display/book/9789264134683/ch011.xml

[5] Béla Balassa, Reflections on Perestroyka and the Foreign Economic Ties of the USSR, PPR Working Paper Series, WPS 149, Washington, DC: World Bank, January 1989, especially pp. 6 and 18–19. Available at: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/716411468769321534/pdf/multi0page.pdf

[6] “Еще раз о качестве фотоаппаратов” [Once Again on the Quality of Cameras], Sovetskiy Patriot, 7 October 1969; a factory newspaper article republished in the Zenitcamera archive. Available at: https://www.zenitcamera.com/archive/history/once-again-about-quality.html

[7] “EC Food Exports”, Hansard, House of Commons, 5 March 1990, vol. 168, col. 496W. In the table covering January–August 1989, the quantity exported to the USSR under the heading “Butter (incl. butter oil)” is given as 118,000 tonnes. Available at: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1990/mar/05/ec-food-exports