Faulty Foundations (ebook)

Argumento de Faulty Foundations (ebook)

Could the USSR have been prepared for World War II more humanely and efficiently? In this first integrated evaluation of Stalin's economic goals and actions, Holland Hunter and Janusz Szyrmer reconstruct and test Soviet results annually and by sector. Addressing historians, political scientists, and economists, the authors build a new, internally consistent, twelve-sector annual record of output and capital growth (assembling and reconciling Western reconstructions of Soviet data) to assess Soviet policy and test how alternative policies might have worked. They point out lessons from the 1930s that can be applied today. The authors analyze the basic steps marking the prewar Soviet drive: agricultural collectivization, head-long investment in heavy industry, autarkic foreign trade, and rearmament. They conclude that the economy's growth potential was misused, that collectivization was a mistake, and that with a slower drive to build heavy industry, living standards could have been higher throughout the 1930s while the ability to withstand invasion would have been stronger. A related implication for the 1990s is that correct prices, small-scale production, and individual initiative are key requirements for an effective Soviet economy.

Originally published in 1992.

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 paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback 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 1905.0List of Figures List of Tables Preface Pt. I Introductory Background Ch. 1 The Nature of Our Work 3 Ch. 2 Soviet Economic Policy Alternatives in the 1920s 13 Ch. 3 Overall ends in Output and Final Use, Capital, Labor, and Population 26 Pt. II The Charge of the New Bolsheviks Ch. 4 Operational Issues in Administering Rapid Output Expansion 53 Ch. 5 New-Bolshevik Policies outside Agriculture 64 Ch. 6 New-Bolshevik Agricultural Policy and an Alternative 90 Ch. 7 Foreign Trade Developments 124 Ch. 8 Identifying the Role of Defense Outlays 136 Ch. 9 Keeping Track of Capital Growth 144 Ch. 10 An Appraisal of New-Bolshevik Economic Policies 160 Pt. III Testing Alternative Economic Policies Ch. 11 The KAPROST Model: Logic and Structure 177 Ch. 12 Insights Derived from the KAPROST Model 205 Ch. 13 Tracing the Consequences of Alternative Policies 231 Ch. 14 Lessons from Soviet Economic Experience 255 Appendix A: Statistical Foundations for Our Analysis 273 Appendix B: Dealing with the Index Number Problem 302 Appendix C: Model Equations 309 References 329 Index 337