Economy And Society In Russia And The Soviet Union 1860 1930

This is a volume of essays exploring important themes in the economic and social history of Russia and the Soviet Union during the critical period between 1860 and 1930. It covers developments in agriculture, industry, trade, economic theory, defence policy and the social impact of revolution. The essays are written by well-established specialists in Russian and Soviet economic and social history and are intended as a tribute to the work of the highly-esteemed economic historian Olga Crisp.

The story of the economic development of the Soviet Union provided the first case in history of the establishment of a socialist economy and was therefore of great interest for economists and economic historians of the twentieth century. At the same time it affords a unique example of the transformation of a country into an industrial nation at an unprecedented pace and under the guidance of a national economic plan. This book examines these changes from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to 1927.

The Soviet Union created a unique form of urban modernity, developing institutions of social provisioning for hundreds of millions of people in small and medium-sized industrial cities spread across a vast territory. After the collapse of socialism these institutions were profoundly shaken--casualties, in the eyes of many observers, of market-oriented reforms associated with neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. In Post-Soviet Social, Stephen Collier examines reform in Russia beyond the Washington Consensus. He turns attention from the noisy battles over stabilization and privatization during the 1990s to subsequent reforms that grapple with the mundane details of pipes, wires, bureaucratic routines, and budgetary formulas that made up the Soviet social state. Drawing on Michel Foucault's lectures from the late 1970s, Post-Soviet Social uses the Russian case to examine neoliberalism as a central form of political rationality in contemporary societies. The book's basic finding--that neoliberal reforms provide a justification for redistribution and social welfare, and may work to preserve the norms and forms of social modernity--lays the groundwork for a critical revision of conventional understandings of these topics.

This book examines the history of reforms and major state interventions affecting Russian agriculture: the abolition of serfdom in 1861, the Stolypin reforms, the NEP, the Collectivization, Khrushchev reforms, and finally farm enterprise privatization in the early 1990s. It shows a pattern emerging from a political imperative in imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet regimes, and it describes how these reforms were justified in the name of the national interest during severe crises - rapid inflation, military defeat, mass strikes, rural unrest, and/or political turmoil. It looks at the consequences of adversity in the economic environment for rural behavior after reform and at long-run trends. It has chapters on property rights, rural organization, and technological change. It provides a new database for measuring agricultural productivity from 1861 to 1913 and updates these estimates to the present. This book is a study of the policies aimed at reorganizing rural production and their effectiveness in transforming institutions.

Motherland tells the dramatic story of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. From Lenin's virtual coup in November 1917 to Boris Yeltsin's ruthless takeover of power in 1991, the book culminates with a new view of the Yeltsin years. David Marples focuses on the evolution of Russia during the Soviet period, and the attempt to harness Russian nationalism to the avowed Soviet mission of promoting World Communism. Along the way heanalyses some of the more intensive historical debates and uncovers some of the myths perpetuated by state propaganda, especially those associated with the Great Patriotic War.

This book examines the Soviet agricultural crisis of 1931-1933 which culminated in the major famine of 1933. It is the first volume in English to make extensive use of Russian and Ukrainian central and local archives to assess the extent and causes of the famine. It reaches new conclusions on how far the famine was 'organized' or 'artificial', and compares it with other Russian and Soviet famines and with major twentieth century famines elsewhere. Against this background, it discusses the emergence of collective farming as an economic and social system.