The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy

The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy
Author: Chris Miller
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2016-10-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1469630184

For half a century the Soviet economy was inefficient but stable. In the late 1980s, to the surprise of nearly everyone, it suddenly collapsed. Why did this happen? And what role did Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's economic reforms play in the country's dissolution? In this groundbreaking study, Chris Miller shows that Gorbachev and his allies tried to learn from the great success story of transitions from socialism to capitalism, Deng Xiaoping's China. Why, then, were efforts to revitalize Soviet socialism so much less successful than in China? Making use of never-before-studied documents from the Soviet politburo and other archives, Miller argues that the difference between the Soviet Union and China--and the ultimate cause of the Soviet collapse--was not economics but politics. The Soviet government was divided by bitter conflict, and Gorbachev, the ostensible Soviet autocrat, was unable to outmaneuver the interest groups that were threatened by his economic reforms. Miller's analysis settles long-standing debates about the politics and economics of perestroika, transforming our understanding of the causes of the Soviet Union's rapid demise.

U.S.S.R. in Crisis

U.S.S.R. in Crisis
Author: Marshall I. Goldman
Publisher: W W Norton & Company Incorporated
Total Pages: 210
Release: 1983
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780393953367

The Soviet Union in the post-Brezhnev era confronts an economic disaster on a vast scale.

Soviet Economic Growth

Soviet Economic Growth
Author: Gur Ofer
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 1988
Genre:
ISBN:

This survey of modern Soviet economic growth is based almost exclusively on Western works and does not include direct references to Soviet scholarly work. It is directed to the general public of economists, and therefore contains a section on sources of economic information about the Soviet Union and several subsections, such as the one describing the basics of the operation of the Soviet system, that are only indirectly related to the main issue. Contents: Introduction; Availability and Reliability of Information; The Growth Record; Structural Changes; The Socialist System and its Growth Strategy; R & D and Technological Change; The R & D Sector; Why did Growth Rates Decline?; Production Function Estimates; Evaluation and Conclusion-or, can The Trend be Reversed? (KR).

The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union

The Politics of Economic Stagnation in the Soviet Union
Author: Peter Rutland
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 323
Release: 1993
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0521392411

Peter Rutland analyzes the role played by regional and local organs of the Soviet Communist Party in economic management from 1970 to 1989. Using a range of Soviet political and economic journals, newspapers and academic publications, he examines Communist Party economic interventions in construction, energy, transport, consumer goods, and agriculture. He convincingly argues that party interventions hindered rather than assisted the search for efficiency in the Soviet economy and represent a major obstacle to the current economic reform movement.

The Economy of the USSR

The Economy of the USSR
Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: Washington, D.C. : World Bank
Total Pages: 66
Release: 1990
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The transformation of the Soviet economy is bound to be extraordinarily complex and will take many years to complete. Three closely related areas require action at the outset of the process: macroeconomic stabilization, including fiscal, monetary, trade and payments, and incomes policies; price reform in an environment of increased domestic and external competition; and ownership reform, involving the rapid privatization of retail trade and small enterprises, along with the commercialization of large, state-owned enterprises. Many measures are needed to support policy actions in these three areas. A social safety net will be needed to protect the most vulnerable from the short-term adverse consequences of the reform process. Other measures include completion of the legal framework for a market economy, the creation of a market system for banking and finance, the demonopolization and restructuring of many enterprises, the reconstruction of the transport and communications infrastructure, the development of a system of labor relations, the process of privatization of state enterprises and collective farms, and the addressing of serious environmental problems. These and other issues, and the close relationships between them, are discussed in this study.

Collapse

Collapse
Author: Vladislav M. Zubok
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2021-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300262442

A major study of the collapse of the Soviet Union—showing how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms led to its demise “A deeply informed account of how the Soviet Union fell apart.”—Rodric Braithwaite, Financial Times “[A] masterly analysis.”—Joshua Rubenstein, Wall Street Journal In 1945 the Soviet Union controlled half of Europe and was a founding member of the United Nations. By 1991, it had an army four million strong with five thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and was the second biggest producer of oil in the world. But soon afterward the union sank into an economic crisis and was torn apart by nationalist separatism. Its collapse was one of the seismic shifts of the twentieth century. Thirty years on, Vladislav Zubok offers a major reinterpretation of the final years of the USSR, refuting the notion that the breakup of the Soviet order was inevitable. Instead, Zubok reveals how Gorbachev’s misguided reforms, intended to modernize and democratize the Soviet Union, deprived the government of resources and empowered separatism. Collapse sheds new light on Russian democratic populism, the Baltic struggle for independence, the crisis of Soviet finances—and the fragility of authoritarian state power.

Soviet Economy

Soviet Economy
Author: United States. General Accounting Office
Publisher:
Total Pages: 56
Release: 1991
Genre: Gross national product
ISBN:

Income, Inequality, and Poverty During the Transition from Planned to Market Economy

Income, Inequality, and Poverty During the Transition from Planned to Market Economy
Author: Branko Milanovi?
Publisher: World Bank Publications
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1998
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780821339947

World Bank Technical Paper No. 394. Joint Forest Management (JFM) has emerged as an important intervention in the management of Indias forest resources. This report sets out an analytical method for examining the costs and benefits of JFM arrangements. Two pilot case studies in which the method was used demonstrate interesting outcomes regarding incentives for various groups to participate. The main objective of this study is to develop a better understanding of the incentives for communities to participate in JFM.

Red Plenty

Red Plenty
Author: Francis Spufford
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Total Pages: 437
Release: 2012-02-14
Genre: History
ISBN: 1555970419

"Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . . Freewheeling and fabulous." —The Times (London) Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending. Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

Farm to Factory

Farm to Factory
Author: Robert C. Allen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2009-07-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0691144311

To say that history's greatest economic experiment--Soviet communism--was also its greatest economic failure is to say what many consider obvious. Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the "what if" questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation. Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth. While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, Farm to Factory also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments.