ABSTRACT
As the USSR emerged from the destruction and depravities of the civil war and ‘war communism’, many prominent Russian socialists began to formulate industrialization strategies which were intended to minimize the initial economic and human costs of industrialization, and to maximize the immediate pay-off. Beware defamatory tendencies to portray such strategies as ‘betrayals’ of socialism. Socialist revolutions necessarily raise popular expectations and, in the absence of real sustained increases in consumption levels, revolutionary élan easily dissolves into disillusionment and disaffection.
