Hunter / Szyrmer Faulty Foundations

Soviet Economic Policies, 1928-1940
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-6270-2
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 356 Seiten

Reihe: Princeton Legacy Library

Could the USSR have been prepared for World War II more humanely and efficiently? In this first integrated evaluation of Stalin's economic goals and actions, Holland Hunter and Janusz Szyrmer reconstruct and test Soviet results annually and by sector. Addressing historians, political scientists, and economists, the authors build a new, internally consistent, twelve-sector annual record of output and capital growth (assembling and reconciling Western reconstructions of Soviet data) to assess Soviet policy and test how alternative policies might have worked. They point out lessons from the 1930s that can be applied today. The authors analyze the basic steps marking the prewar Soviet drive: agricultural collectivization, head-long investment in heavy industry, autarkic foreign trade, and rearmament. They conclude that the economy's growth potential was misused, that collectivization was a mistake, and that with a slower drive to build heavy industry, living standards could have been higher throughout the 1930s while the ability to withstand invasion would have been stronger. A related implication for the 1990s is that correct prices, small-scale production, and individual initiative are key requirements for an effective Soviet economy.

Originally published in 1992.

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Autoren/Hrsg.

Hunter, Holland

Szyrmer, Janusz M.

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

Pt. I Introductory Background

Ch. 1 The Nature of Our Work 3

Ch. 2 Soviet Economic Policy Alternatives in the 1920s 13

Ch. 3 Overall ends in Output and Final Use, Capital, Labor, and Population 26

Pt. II The Charge of the New Bolsheviks

Ch. 4 Operational Issues in Administering Rapid Output Expansion 53

Ch. 5 New-Bolshevik Policies outside Agriculture 64

Ch. 6 New-Bolshevik Agricultural Policy and an Alternative 90

Ch. 7 Foreign Trade Developments 124

Ch. 8 Identifying the Role of Defense Outlays 136

Ch. 9 Keeping Track of Capital Growth 144

Ch. 10 An Appraisal of New-Bolshevik Economic Policies 160

Pt. III Testing Alternative Economic Policies

Ch. 11 The KAPROST Model: Logic and Structure 177

Ch. 12 Insights Derived from the KAPROST Model 205

Ch. 13 Tracing the Consequences of Alternative Policies 231

Ch. 14 Lessons from Soviet Economic Experience 255

Appendix A: Statistical Foundations for Our Analysis 273

Appendix B: Dealing with the Index Number Problem 302

Appendix C: Model Equations 309

References 329

Index 337