Abstract
To realise the huge increases in production called for by the first Soviet Five-Year Plan from 1927–8 onwards, an organisational structure had to be set up to mobilise men and machines and to concentrate human and material resources on major projects. The core of this structure was the people’s commissariats (renamed ministries in April 1946). They were to administrate particular branches of industry in accordance with the dictates of the Five-Year Plans. These commissariats were intended to be under the control of those who dictated the plan targets, that is, Stalin and his Politburo. This system by which Stalin sought to control Soviet industry is commonly known as the command economy.
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Introduction
N. Jasny, Soviet Industrialisation 1928–52 (Chicago University Press, 1961) p. 235.
R. Conquest, Power and Policy in the USSR (London: Macmillan, 1961).
M. Djilas, Conversations with Stalin (London: Hart-Davis, 1962) p. 134.
L. Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (London: Methuen, 1963) pp. 507–8.
W. O. McCagg, Jr, Stalin Embattled 1943–8 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978).
M. Shulman, Stalin’s Foreign Policy Reappraised (Cambridge, Massachussetts: Harvard University Press, 1963).
See E. Frankel, ‘Literary Policy under Stalin in Retrospect: A Case Study 1952–3’, in J. P. Shapiro and P. T. Potichnyj (eds), Change and Adaptation in Soviet and East European Politics (New York: Praeger, 1976).
V. S. Dunham, In Stalin’s Time: Middle Class Values in Soviet Fiction (Cambridge University Press, 1976).
For example, see A. G. Frank, ‘The Organisation of Economic Activity in the Soviet Union’, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 1957, pp. 104–8.
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© 1980 Timothy Dunmore
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Dunmore, T. (1980). Introduction. In: The Stalinist Command Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05022-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05022-2_1
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