ABSTRACT
The Bolshevist regime, through the commanding positions it occupies in the economic system, has embarked upon the experiment which is to crown its work of economic reorganization. The budget decrees what prices are to be fixed for the products and where they are to be marketed. This comprehensive attempt at budgeting would be a gigantic experiment if the whole of the economy were actually nationalized and socialized. It is the more hazardous at the present stage, when this goal is still a long way off, when the most important part of Russian economy, namely agriculture, is almost carried on under forms of private enterprise, and when broad patches of industrial production and of trade are in a similar position. Most instructive materials for comparing the plan with realities are furnished by the information for the year 1927-28. The fulfillment of the five-year plan will enable the Soviet Union to overtake and outstrip the technically and economically most advanced capitalist countries.
