How the Understanding of the Stalinist Economic Model as Reformist Has Evolved

The study examines how a set of ideas for eliminating the “bottlenecks” in the Stalinist economic model came about. The goal is to find out the factors responsible for the “maturation” of recognition by the political elite, public opinion and the scientific community that a market transformation of the economy was necessary. The authors chose to avoid analyzing the features of the Kosygin reform itself and instead focus on the logic behind the ways in which contemporaries addressed the need to improve the national economy’s efficiency. The research methodology is chronological and tracks the changes in positions on issues that determined the underpinnings of the Soviet economy. A comparative method was also used to distinguish the positions of reformers on the main issues: a planned or market economy, forms of ownership, the role of money, price and wage policy, structural policy, social aspects of the economy, etc. The authors employed an interdisciplinary approach that incorporated research from economic, historical, sociological and other social studies along with a concentration on research that probed the basic institutions of the Soviet economy. The study provides a fresh consideration of the issues raised among the political and economic elites and also connects them with extensive material on Soviet economic theory and prevailing public awareness and psychology. The study concludes that improving economic efficiency was a central concern of reformers throughout the Soviet period. The empirical material clearly demonstrates a growing demand for strengthening the role of “economic levers” in the planned economy. The sources examined, including both published and unpublished archival materials from the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History and the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, support the conclusion that the same Soviet society that had defended the country’s sovereignty in World War II gradually abandoned the messianic ideal of a new, unprecedented global victory for “social justice” and turned towards the consumer society that characterized the West. Although it had already become clear that the growing economic problems could not be solved without a radical change in the very foundations of the economy, an analysis of the late Soviet stage of reform reveals a number of factors that prevented all agents in the process from taking their rethinking of the socialist economy to its logical conclusion. In many ways, this paralysis predetermined the collapse of the economy and the difficult initial conditions under which post-Soviet states were forced to adopt market economic principles.