From Tsarism To The New Economic Policy

A comparison between the tsarist economy on the eve of the revolution and the Soviet economy in the mid-1920s. Questions posed include, was the tsarist economy successful, but destroyed by World War I? And was the breakdown of the mixed economy of the 1920s an arbitary political act?

Russia's Economic Transitions examines the three major transformations that the country underwent from the early 1860s to 2000. The first transition, under Tsarism, involved the partial break-up of the feudal framework of land ownership and the move toward capitalist relations. The second, following the Communist revolution of 1917, brought to power a system of state ownership and administration - a sui generis type of war-economy state capitalism - subjecting the economy's development to central commands. The third, started in the early 1990s and still unfolding, is aiming at reshaping the inherited economic fabric on the basis of private ownership. The three transitions originated within different settings, but with a similar primary goal, namely the changing of the economy's ownership pattern in the hopes of providing a better basis for subsequent development. The treatment's originality, impartiality and historical breadth have cogent economic, social and political relevance.

In a work with significant implications for present-day economic reform in the Soviet Union, Paul Gregory examines Russian and Soviet economic history prior to the installation of the administrative command system. By drawing on basic economic statistics from 1861 to the 1930s, Gregory's revisionist account debunks a number of myths promulgated by historians in both the East and the West. He demonstrates that the Russian economy under the tsars performed much better than has previously been supposed; the Russian economy and its financial institutions were integrated into the world economy, allowing Russia to attract significant foreign capital. Furthermore, he shows that Stalin's justifications for the abandonment of the New Economic Policy in the late 1920s were incorrect: the so-called crises of NEP were either fabricated or the result of misguided economic thinking. Before Command is the culmination of the author's lifelong study of the economic history of Russia and the Soviet Union. In convincing detail it describes little-known Russian and Soviet successes with market capitalism, while it also shows the problems inherent in a mixed system, such as the NEP, which seeks to combine very strong elements of command with market resource allocation. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 transformed the face of the Russian empire, politically, economically, socially, and culturally, and also profoundly affected the course of world history for the rest of the twentieth century. Now, to mark the centenary of this epochal event, historian Steve Smith presents a panoramic account of the history of the Russian empire, from the last years of the nineteenth century, through the First World War and the revolutions of 1917 and the establishment of the Bolshevik regime, to the end of the 1920s, when Stalin simultaneously unleashed violent collectivization of agriculture and crash industrialization upon Russian society. Drawing on recent archivally-based scholarship, Russia in Revolution pays particular attention to the varying impact of the Revolution on the various groups that made up society: peasants, workers, non-Russian nationalities, the army, women and the family, young people, and the Church. 0In doing so, it provides a fresh way into the big, perennial questions about the Revolution and its consequences: why did the attempt by the tsarist government to implement political reform after the 1905 Revolution fail; why did the First World War bring about the collapse of the tsarist system; why did the attempt to create a democratic system after the February Revolution of 1917 not get off the ground; why did the Bolsheviks succeed in seizing and holding on to power; why did they come out victorious from a punishing civil war; why did the New Economic Policy they introduced in 1921 fail; and why did Stalin come out on top in the power struggle inside the Bolshevik party after Lenin's death in 1924. A final chapter then reflects on the larger significance of 1917 for the history of the twentieth century - and, for all its terrible flaws, what the promise of the Revolution might mean for us today.

Leading scholars in the field analyse the Soviet economy sector by sector to make available, in textbook form, the results of the latest research on Soviet industrialisation.