The Economic Development of the USSR

The Economic Development of the USSR (1982) examines the economic advances the Soviet Union made as the first major economy to adopt full-scale socialist planning. It argues that the Soviet experience demonstrates that remarkable quantitative economic progress can be achieved but at a price which Western democracies would not tolerate. Moreover, while the planning and control mechanism of the USSR produced striking results, in the case of agriculture it often failed to produce satisfactory results. The book provides an impartial assessment of the merits and defects of the Soviet planning system, which also served as a model for many other Communist countries.