ABSTRACT
Although the theoretical concept of a centralised model was late in emerging (it is in fact as recent as the notion that there is more than one possible model of a socialist economy), the high degree of centralisation has been one of the most striking characteristics of the Soviet economy ever since the 1917 Revolution. Despite the interlude of the NEP, the identification of a socialist economy with a centralised economy became so complete that in 1940 Schumpeter was able to write in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. The type that can be called “centralised socialism” seems to me to prevail so clearly that it would be a waste of time to analyse other formulae’ (Schumpeter, 1950, p. 272).
