ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the differences of agrarian structures and policies among the three countries --USSR, China and Hungary-- are to be explained by differences in their factor endowment and levels of economic development. It shows that the diversity stems mainly from practical economic policy rather than from ideological orientation. The role of a super-power not only puts a heavy burden on the economy, but also makes Soviet economic change more risky, especially with a view to preserving some degree of uniformity of economic structure and political intent within the orbit of Moscow's hegemony. For enforcement and control and for productive use of mass labor, ideological-political, administrative-political and technical-economic cadres were needed. The force of inertia must be particularly great in the Soviet Union with its size and national diversity, with its super power demands on the economy and its social element of a bureaucracy which was established half a generation earlier than in the other countries, including China.
