ABSTRACT

Soviet experience can be interpreted as a model of rapid industrialisation, without private capitalists and landlords, with many of the crudities and errors attributable to backwardness, and/or to the impact of specifically Russian traditions and political culture. It can also be regarded as pointing a way which developing countries could follow, even while it could be argued that the Soviet planning system has ceased to be appropriate to an increasingly sophisticated and complex industrial economy. In this respect the evidence points in a direction contrary to the assertions of some dogmatists, who hold that the need for market-type decentralised decisionmaking arises out of backwardness, with the implication that a more advanced economy could be the subject of efficient comprehensive quantitative planning. The reverse is surely the case. Centrally determined priorities, though over-brutally imposed, can be seen as having played an important role in making possible a speedy industrialisation, under conditions of isolation and military danger. To say this is not to apologise for Stalin’s excesses, some of which were directly counter-productive (the arrest of many engineers, when such skills were highly scarce, to mention just one example).