Donald James Morard III (USA)
Research Description
Soviet-occupied Estonia gained the reputation as a “Soviet West” where Western ideas blended with State Socialism and living standards were higher than other republics. Estonian administrators utilized this status to experiment with new, more efficient forms of economic management. The resulting Agro-Industrial Complex (APK) united all agricultural and food processing ministries, aiming to improve agricultural coordination. Following initial success in the 1970s, the APK was implemented across the union in 1985. However, the APK failed to scale and was abolished in 1989. By focusing on Estonia and the APK, this research aims to uncover the roots of local initiatives of reform while investigating how informational asymmetries within Soviet institutions led to the failure of a reform that was somewhat successful at a smaller scale.
Bio
Donald Morard III is a Ph.D. candidate at McGill University in the Department of History and Classical Studies. His research is focused on Soviet food production, particularly in the Soviet Northwest during the period of Late Socialism. Donald’s most recent publication is titled “Communist Quality: Dairy Production at the Leningrad Dairy Combine, 1965–1982,” published in the journal Global Food History. His current project focuses on Soviet Estonian agricultural reform in the 1970s and 1980s and how it failed when scaled to an all-union implementation.
