| Description |
xi, 308 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Series |
ACLS Humanities E-Book (Series)
|
| Contents |
1. The Jockey or the Horse? -- 2. Collectivization, Accumulation, and Power -- 3. The Principles of Governance -- 4. Investment, Wages, and Fairness -- 5. Visions and Control Figures -- 6. Planners Versus Producers -- 7. Creating Soviet Industry -- 8. Operational Planning -- 9. Ruble Control: Money, Prices, and Budgets -- 10. The Destruction of the Soviet Administrative-Command Economy -- 11. Conclusions -- App. A. Archival Sources -- App. B. The Structure of the State |
| Summary |
"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). Although Stalin was the system's prime architect, the system was managed the thousands of "Stalins" in a nested dictatorship. The core values of the Bolshevik Party dictated the choice of the administrative-command system, and the system dictated the political victory of a Stalin-like figure. 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, etc. - but also focuses on the basic principal-agent conflict between planners and producers, which created a sixty-year reform stalemate. Once Gorbachev gave enterprises their freedom, the system had no direction from either a plan or a market, and the system imploded. The Soviet administrative-command system was arguably the 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." "Paul R. Gregory is Cullen Professor of Economics at the University of Houston and currently serves as a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Title from e-book title screen (viewed October 16, 2007) |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 289-300) and index |
| Subject |
Bureaucracy -- Soviet Union -- History -- Sources.
|
| SUBJECT |
USSR -- Economic conditions http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85125722 -- Sources.
http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2002012007
|
|
USSR -- Politics and government http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85125832 -- Sources. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2002012007
|
| Author |
American Council of Learned Societies.
|
| LC no. |
2003043586 |
| ISBN |
0521826284 : |
|
0521533678 paperback |
|
