The Destruction of the Soviet Economic System: An Insider's History PDF Download

Author: Michael Ellman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317457498
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
The inside story of the political collpase of the Soviet Union is far better understood than the course of economic and social disintegration. In order to capture the story, the editors compiled a list of questions which they addressed to former top Soviet officials and economic and other policy advisors (both Soviet and foreign) who were privy not only to data on the functioning of the Soviet economy but also to the internal policy debate during the 1980s. This volume assembles the Informants' analyses of key issues and the turning points, and weaves them into a compelling history of systemic collapse. Among the topics investigated are: economic policies in the 1980s; the standard of living: the reliability of Soviet statistics; Gosplan's projections for the economy to the year 2000; was the arms race starving the civilian economy? the role of ideology in supporting the functioning of an economic system; the party's participating in economic management; the influence of foreign advisors; the struggle over a transition program; the functioning and collapse of the supply system, the CMEA, and the foreign trade system.

Author: Gur Ofer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
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).

Author: Abram Bergson
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000881938
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 469

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Book Description
The Soviet Economy (1983) examines the long-term prospective growth of the USSR’s economy. It looks at the Soviet economy’s growth process at an advanced stage of development, and assesses how it would evolve in the period ahead. Various growth plans had made large advances to the state-planned economy, but by the 1980s this growth had slowed.

Author: Branko Milanovi?
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821339947
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
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.

Author: Joseph R. Blasi
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501722220
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The first book to describe Russia's massive economic transformation for an American audience, Kremlin Capitalism provides a wealth of data and analyses not previously available in this country. The authors articulate the political and economic goals of Russian privatization, examine the current ownership of the largest enterprises in Russia, and chart the serious problem of corporate governance in the new private businesses. Kremlin Capitalism is based on the only continuous study of Russian privatization throughout the Russian Federation from 1992 to the present. The authors tracked down the story of the transition in the cities, towns, and villages of fifty of Russia's eighty-nine provinces, updating their findings after the June 1996 election. The result is an up-to-the-minute report of the largest property transfer in history and an analysis of one of this century's most significant economic transformations. The volume also characterizes the position of workers in terms of unemployment, wages, union power, and their changing role as employee shareholders.What really happened when Russia privatized its economy? The Kremlin brokered the initial struggle among different interest groups eager to claim a portion of Russian property: workers, managers, the Mafia, the old Soviet bureaucracy, regular citizens, entrepreneurs, Russian banks, and foreigners. While competing with one another, all struggled to free themselves from seventy years of Communist economic culture. Four years after the process began, have large companies learned to offer goods and services profitably and pay dividends to shareholders? Individual stories come alive as the book explores problems Russians face in structuring a new economic system, defining the ownership and governance of thousands of corporations one by one. Russian economic practices are being forged in the heat of fierce political struggles between resurgent Communists and nationalists and old Soviet managers, on the one hand, and more liberal elements of its infant democratic system on the other. Whether a few big conglomerates and the powerful banks and holding companies from Soviet days will dominate the new Russian economy to the exclusion of most citizens remains to be seen.Many questions persist. How will billions of dollars of capital be raised to retool, restructure, and reorient the heart and soul of Russia's economy? Will open stock markets stimulate a new economic order or will that new order be imposed through strong state supports and subsidies? What role will be played by shadowy conglomerates that are trying to shape a disorganized economy into something resembling the old Soviet system? The authors note the paradox of a capitalism conceived, designed, implemented, and evaluated by the Kremlin when one aim of reform is to allow market forces to play freely. Kremlin Capitalism asks whether rapid privatization has catalyzed or complicated the transition to a more liberal political and economic system, a question that will reverberate for decades.

Author: Stephen Kotkin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199743843
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Featuring extensive revisions to the text as well as a new introduction and epilogue--bringing the book completely up to date on the tumultuous politics of the previous decade and the long-term implications of the Soviet collapse--this compact, original, and engaging book offers the definitive account of one of the great historical events of the last fifty years. Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post Soviet Russia and he reminds us, with chilling immediacy, of what could not have been predicted--that the world's largest police state, with several million troops, a doomsday arsenal, and an appalling record of violence, would liquidate itself with barely a whimper. Throughout the book, Kotkin also paints vivid portraits of key personalities. Using recently released archive materials, for example, he offers a fascinating picture of Gorbachev, describing this virtuoso tactician and resolutely committed reformer as "flabbergasted by the fact that his socialist renewal was leading to the system's liquidation"--and more or less going along with it. At once authoritative and provocative, Armageddon Averted illuminates the collapse of the Soviet Union, revealing how "principled restraint and scheming self-interest brought a deadly system to meek dissolution." Acclaim for the First Edition: "The clearest picture we have to date of the post-Soviet landscape." --The New Yorker "A triumph of the art of contemporary history. In fewer than 200 pagesKotkin elucidates the implosion of the Soviet empire--the most important and startling series of international events of the past fifty years--and clearly spells out why, thanks almost entirely to the 'principal restraint' of the Soviet leadership, that collapse didn't result in a cataclysmic war, as all experts had long forecasted." -The Atlantic Monthly "Concise and persuasive The mystery, for Kotkin, is not so much why the Soviet Union collapsed as why it did so with so little collateral damage." --The New York Review of Books

Author: Philip Hanson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317885384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Why did the Soviet economic system fall apart? Did the economy simply overreach itself through military spending? Was it the centrally-planned character of Soviet socialism that was at fault? Or did a potentially viable mechanism come apart in Gorbachev's clumsy hands? Does its failure mean that true socialism is never economically viable? The economic dimension is at the very heart of the Russian story in the twentieth century. Economic issues were the cornerstone of soviet ideology and the soviet system, and economic issues brought the whole system crashing down in 1989-91. This book is a record of what happened, and it is also an analysis of the failure of Soviet economics as a concept.

Author: Michael Ellman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000881768
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System (1992) examines in detail the collapse of the Soviet economic system, and is set in its political context, both international and domestic. The collapse is looked at from a macroeconomic point of view, both real and financial, as well as from a mesoeconomic viewpoint, with chapters on such important sectors such as agriculture and the railways. Because the USSR is such a large country it is also looked at in a regional perspective, with chapters on Central Asia and the allocation of investment between republics, and attention is also paid to the welfare of the population, their health and the development of their consumption, and the environment and technical progress.

Author: International Monetary Fund
Publisher: Washington, D.C. : World Bank
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 66

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Book Description
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.

Author: Susan J. Linz
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315493209
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
Richly represented in the Russian folktale tradition, the legends in this work are religious tales in a peasant village setting. Among the standard themes is the return of Christ, who wanders through rural Russia with his disciples. Satan appears too, as do a cast of spirits and lesser devils.