ABSTRACT
In 1957, forty years after the Russian revolution, Michael Polanyi summarized the state of Soviet studies by pointing out that despite, or because of the fact that “volume upon volume of excellent scholarship [was] rapidly accumulating on the history of the Russian Revolution… The Revolution [was] about to be quietly enshrined under a pyramid of monographs.”1 This condition continues to persist even after seventy years of reflection upon one of the most fateful events in political-economic history. Despite heroic efforts by Paul Craig Roberts2 and Laszlo Szamuely3 to lift the Revolution from underneath the debris of wood pulp, confusion still permeates historical discussion of the meaning of the Soviet experience with Communism.4 “We have forgotten,” as Polyanyi wrote, “what the Russian Revolution was about: that it set out to establish a money-less industrial system, free from the chaotic and sordid automation of the market and directed instead scientifically by one single comprehensive plan.”5
