ABSTRACT
The Soviet system came into being as a mobilisation regime with the aim of overcoming the economic and social backwardness of Russia in the shortest possible time. The urgent need for reorganisation and reconstruction of the economy is reflected in the daily and the specialist press, the speeches of leading politicians, party and government resolutions, party work at all levels of organisation, the education system and so on. All these signs taken together indicate that economic policy objectives have a higher priority ranking than in Western countries. The arguments about the priorities of Soviet economic policy and the shifts between them, in particular between more and less consumption-oriented sectors, also play a significant role in the development of Western theories of the political and social system of the USSR. R. Amann has distinguished graphically between Group A theories and Group B theories. In both, economic objectives play an important role.
