Abstract
The Soviet Union initiated and implemented a heroic social experiment that included a rapid and fairly successful, albeit rather distorted, process of modernization and growth. It culminated more than 70 years later in a dead end that required a difficult and costly ‘transition’ in order to join the main road to modern economic growth and a market system. After presenting the record of Soviet economic growth and structural change, this article describes and analyses its particular strategy of extensive growth, its strengths and weaknesses, its relation to the Communist political regime, and the reasons for its non-sustainability and, hence, demise.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Allen, R.C. 2003. Farm to factory: A reinterpretation of soviet industrial revolution. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Åslund, A. 2002. Building capitalism: The transformation of the former Soviet bloc. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bergson, A. 1961. The real national income of Soviet Russia since 1928. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bergson, A. 1973. Toward a new growth model. Problems of Communism 22: 1–9.
Bergson, A. 1997. How big was the Soviet GDP? Comparative Economic Studies 39: 1–14.
Bergson, A., and H.S. Levine. 1983. The Soviet economy: Toward the year 2000. London/Boston: G. Allen & Unwin.
Berliner, J. 1976. The innovation decision in Soviet industry. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Birman, I. 1989. Personal consumption in the USSR and the USA. London: Macmillan.
Easterly, W., and S. Fischer. 1995. The Soviet economic decline. World Bank Economic Review 9: 341–372.
Erlich, A. 1960. The Soviet industrialization debate, 1924–1928. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grossman, G. 1983. The economics of virtuous haste: A view of Soviet industrialization and institutions. In Marxism, central planning, and the Soviet economy: Economic essays in honor of Alexander Ehrlich, ed. P. Desai. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hanson, P. 2003. The rise and fall of the Soviet economy. London: Longman.
Harrison, M. 1993. Soviet economic growth since 1928: The alternative statistics of G.I. Khanin. Europe-Asia Studies 45: 141–167.
Heston, A., R. Summers, and B. Aten. 2002. Penn world table version 6.1 (ICPb). Center for International Comparisons at the University of Pennsylvania (CICUP). Online. Available at http://pwt.econ.upenn.edu/php_site/pwt61_form.php. Accessed 8 Feb 2007.
Hunter, H., and J.M. Szyrmer. 1992. Faulty foundations: Soviet economic policies 1928–40. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ickes, B.W., and R. Ryterman. 1997. Entry without exit: Economic selection under socialism. Working paper, Penn State University.
Kuznets, S. 1966. Modern economic growth. Rate, structure, and spread. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Maddison, A. 1995. Monitoring the world economy. Paris: OECD.
Maddison, A. 2001. The world wconomy: A millennial perspective. Paris: OECD.
Moorstein, R., and R.P. Powell. 1966. The Soviet capital stock 1928–1962. Homewood: Richard D. Irwin.
Noren, J., and L. Kurtzweg. 1993. The Soviet economy unravels: 1985–91. In The former Soviet union in transition, vol. 1, ed. US Congress, Joint Economic Committee. Washington, DC.
Ofer, G. 1987. Soviet economic growth: 1928–1985. Journal of Economic Literature 25: 1767–1933.
Popov, V. 2007. Life cycle of the centrally planned economy: Why Soviet growth rates peaked in the 1950s. In Transition and beyond: A tribute to Mario Nuti, ed. S. Estrin, G. Kolodko, and M. Uvalic. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Rodrik, D. 2005. Growth strategies. In Handbook of economic growth, ed. P. Aghion and S. Durlauf. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
Summers, R., and A. Heston. 1991. The Penn World Table (Mark 5): An expanded set of international comparisons, 1950–1988. Quarterly Journal of Economics 106: 327–368.
United Nations. 1999. International comparison of gross domestic product in Europe 1996 (ECP96). Geneva: UN Statistical Commission and Economic Commission for Europe. (Also ECP80, 85, 90, 93).
Weitzman, M. 1970. Soviet postwar economic growth and capital–labor substitution. American Economic Review 60: 676–692.
Wilhelm, J.H. 2003. The failure of the American Sovietological economics profession. Europe-Asia Studies 55: 59–74.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2018 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
About this entry
Cite this entry
Ofer, G. (2018). Soviet Growth Record. In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2270
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_2270
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-95188-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-95189-5
eBook Packages: Economics and FinanceReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences