S.A.Afanasyev - Heavy and Transport Engineering - Mintyazhmash
If the man makes the style then the minister's style defines the operation of his bureaucracy. In the case of ministry workers, the understandable desire of a leader to go on to the larger set of concerns which make up the life of the branch was often converted into dealing with a morass of everyday details.
From 1983 to 1987, S.A.Afanasyev worked as a minister of heavy and transport engineering in the USSR. According to Sergey Alexandrovich, this was a complex industry, which included about 1500 enterprises and provided the creation and production of all metallurgical equipment, diesel engine construction, diesel locomotion and car building, mining and lifting and transport engineering.
In May 1983, the long period of Afanasyev's tenure as minister of general engineering was completed. Prior to becoming General Secretary in 1984, Leonid Brezhnev, had been the chief representative for the defense industry in the Politburo. After Brezhnev died in November 1982, the Soviet leaders faced the question of curtailing major Brezhnev programs, as a means of freeing resources at a time when priority sectors, such as civilian heavy industry, had been experiencing severe shortages. Resources taken from Brezhnev's favorite programs, however, would not go far to narrow the widening gap between a virtually stagnant economy and the rapidly increasing expenditures required for the Soviet welfare state and for the maintenance and extension of the troubled Soviet Empire.
Soon after assuming power in November 1982, Andropov launched an anticorruption drive that reached high into the government and party ranks. Andropov's campaign against corruption soon subsided. Its main result was the renewal of the leading elite. This process was, however, limited, and with honor the retired ministers gave way to their first deputies. The general secretary's health declined rapidly during the tense summer and fall of 1983, and he died in February 1984.
Sergey Aleksandrovich Afanasyev headed Mintyazhmash for many years. He was an experienced manager, was schooled in the defense industry, was a two-time winner of the Hero of Socialist Labor Award and was a Lenin Prize Laureate. This said a lot about him. At Number 19 Kalinin Prospekt, there were various opinions on the minister's style in meetings which he led with an iron hand. The minister would approach a speaker and pose questions. Often it was clear that he knew more than the speaker did about one or another specific situation.
A course had been set toward strengthening the economic means of control rather than administratively distributed tools, and the principles of management independence were being increasing introduced into practice. Detailed monitoring of enterprise activity, often descending to trivial levels, was not justified under these conditions.
Since the beginning of 1984, a "large-scale experiment" has begun in the country to restructure the management of industry, enterprises and associations. The main goal was to increase the responsibility and rights of enterprises, which now could solve many issues independently. Another important direction of the experiment was the establishment of a closer connection between the final results of labor, the increase in its effectiveness, the size of the wage fund and other forms of material incentives for workers. At the same time, the task was to increase the mutual responsibility of suppliers, consumers and bodies of material and technical supply for unconditional fulfillment of contractual obligations. Economists had borne many proposals for improving the performance of enterprises and associations. In many respects, this experiment continued the "Kosygin" economic reform begun in 1966, gradually curtailed and forgotten.
By 1986 the talk around the nation was that the ministry was a seat of conservatism and that the branch's personnel had a poor command of the new management technique. Minister S.A.Afanasyev began his speech to the ministry collegium with those unbiased words and a tense silence immediately spread throughout the hall. What followed was not a traditional report but rather reflections expressedout loud. From time to time the minister pressed buttons mounted on therostrum, the room lights dimmed and the rear wall turned into a screen onwhich slides of tables and diagrams were projected. Everyone looked at thenumbers and charts which seemed to cause obvious surprise among theparticipants. Even the minister, having paused to allow the others to studyand adjust to the information, interjected, "Look at what is happening to us!"
Sergey Aleksandrovich Afanasyev knew the situation at each factory, stepped into each question, gave his evaluation to everyone, repeatedly rose from his seat and conducted a dialog with nearly every speaker and pressed many speakers. He gave practically every speaker a warning: "We need a plan!" Meanwhile the agenda contained only one question, but it was a very important one: How to restructure and how to work in new ways. The much-needed conversation nevertheless hid the branch's current concerns. By the way, from time to time there was sporadic discussion of the bureaucratic style of management.
No one else was responsible for the products with which the branch was entrusted (one-of-a-kind rolling mills and presses, drilling rigs, excavators, diesel locomotives and railroad cars). Therefore, the Soviet economy's condition was adversely affected by the fact that in the first six months of 1986, over 68 percent of the ministry's enterprises did not fulfill planned deliveries (the figure was 44 percent in 1984, when the branch was undergoing a broad-reaching economic experiment). The qualitative indicators had also worsened. While 15 percent of the enterprises failed to meet their labor productivity increase assignments in 1984, at least 27 percent have failed to do so in the first half of 1986. The corresponding numbers for lowering production costs were 7 and 33 percent and those for revenue were 10 and 31 percent.
"I must state in no uncertain terms," said Uralmash's general director Igor Ivanovich Stroganov, "that some ministry decisions are impulsive in nature and often reach those responsible for execution only after their deadline has expired! At the same time strategic questions go unresolved. For the five-year plan we were given a production volume growth target of 33 percent and the product line plan was increased by 67 percent. Different offices approved different indicators and there was no link-up of these indicators."
On March 10, 1984, Chernenko died. In less than a day the Plenum of the Central Committee, the CPSU elected the new (and last) General Secretary of the Central Committee Gorbachev. The new leadership came to power without a clear concept and program of change. In those years, the Gorbachev's perestroika began, when industrial enterprises got the right to dispose of funds allocated from the state budget, to regulate their salaries. Such freedom pushed to the removal of public funds, reduced investment in the production sector, and depreciation costs. The consumption of previously accumulated fixed productive capital began. In the industry the hardest conditions developed, discipline and responsibility fell sharply, administrative levers turned off, and the economic ones did not join. Thi destroyed the old and did not form a new one.
In the years 1985-1986 there was a mass replacement and rejuvenation of party-state cadres both at the central and local levels.
On 22 July 1987 the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet issued the Ukase "On Relieving Comrade S.A. Afanasyev of His Duties as Minister of Heavy and Transport Machine Building of the USSR" that decreed that Comrade Sergey Aleksandrovich Afanasyev be relieved of his duties as Minister of Heavy and Transport Machine Building of the USSR due to his retirementwith a pension.
S.A. Afanasyev had a hard time experiencing this period of "reforms". But it was impossible not to use his knowledge and experience in the space and military spheres. He was transferred to the Ministry of Defense for the position of consultant to the group of general inspectors, where he worked until 1992. He finished his labor activity. Afanasyev in the RSC Energia imeni Academician S.P.Korolev. He made a great contribution to the creation of this corporation, its survival in the period of "liberal reforms".
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