ABSTRACT
As teachers of a course on the comparative economic development of Russia and the USA, we read Michael Ellman's article ‘Against convergence’ (1980) with genuine interest. While agreeing that the convergence ‘theory’ (his terminology) has both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ features, we found his argument against the theory so poorly specified, confused and misdirected that we feel it should not go unchallenged.
