The Political Economy of Stalinism: Evidence from the Soviet Secret Archives

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Cambridge University Press, 2004 - 308 pages
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This book uses the formerly secret Soviet state and Communist Party archives to describe the creation and operations of the Soviet administrative command system. It concludes that the system failed not because of the "jockey"(i.e, Stalin and later leaders) but because of the "horse" (the economic system). This study pinpoints the reasons for the failure of the system--poor planning, unreliable supplies, the preferential treatment of indigenous enterprises, the lack of knowledge of planners, but also focuses on the basic principal-agent conflict between planners and producers, which created a sixty-year reform stalemate. The Soviet administrative command system was th most significant human experiment of the twentieth century. If repeated today, its basic contradictions and inherent flaws would remain, and its economic results would again prove inferior.
 

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Table des matières

The Jockey or the Horse?
1
Collectivization Accumulation and Power
22
The Principles of Governance
49
Investment Wages and Fairness
76
Visions and Control Figures
110
Planners Versus Producers
126
Creating Soviet Industry
153
Operational Planning
183
Ruble Control Money Prices and Budgets
213
The Destruction of the Soviet AdministrativeCommand Economy
243
Conclusions
268
Archival Sources
273
The Structure of the State
275
Bibliography
289
Index
301
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Page 16 - Our point, however, is not that dictatorship must inevitably extirpate freedom but rather that planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and the enforcement of ideals and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible.
Page 63 - It is the price of democracy that the possibilities of conscious control are restricted to the fields where true agreement exists and that in some fields things must be left to chance. But in a society which for its functioning depends on central planning this control cannot be made dependent on a majority's being able to agree; it will often be necessary that the will of a small minority be imposed upon the people, because this minority will be the largest group able to agree among themselves on...
Page 190 - Comparisons of the United States and Soviet Economies (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1959), pp.
Page 128 - The objectionable feature is that delegation is so often resorted to because the matter in hand cannot be regulated by general rules but only by the exercise of discretion in the decision of particular cases. In these instances delegation means that some authority is given power to make with the force of law what to all intents and purposes are arbitrary decisions (usually described as "judging the case on its merits").
Page 40 - was careful not to add that neither did Stalin at the time when the industrialization debate was in full swing. And he was wise not to point out that the decision to collectivize hinged not on superior intellectual perspicacity but on the incomparably higher degree of resolve to crush the opponent with utter disregard of the staggering human costs of the operation.
Page 23 - We have gone over from a policy of limiting the exploiting tendencies of the kulak to a policy of liquidating the kulak as a class'.
Page 17 - It is even more the outcome of the fact that in order to achieve their end collectivists must create power — power over men wielded by other men — of a magnitude never before known, and that their success will depend on the extent to which they achieve such power.
Page 3 - one of the major ironies of our time is that Marxist thought becomes even more relevant after the collapse of Communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe than it was before.
Page 25 - Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), p.
Page 2 - The Use of Knowledge in Society, "American Economic Review 35 (1945): 519-30...

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