ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to describe the economic model bequeathed to the leadership by the past. This model is a kind of "living legacy," many features of which operate to control the behavior of the economy. Growth depended on high rates of capital accumulation to make possible a rapid rate of growth of the capital stock. The Soviet growth model strongly de-emphasized the power of money. Performance model enabled the USSR to overcome at least some aspects of economic underdevelopment, to exploit the "advantages of backwardness," and to make significant progress toward the goal of catching up with the advanced capitalist countries. The Nikita Khrushchev regime appears to have attempted a more vigorous policy of equalizing levels of development and incomes among regions, giving the goal more prominence as a target in the five-year plans, and using various methods for redistributing income.
