This paper explores the economics and politics of the tragic Soviet experiment with socialism. Beginning with the period of “War Communism” between 1917 and 1921, the Soviet government's attempt to implement socialism failed to achieve its stated objectives, namely to create social harmony,...

It has become a copybook maxim to assert that the policy of "War Communism" was imposed on the Bolsheviks by the Civil War and the foreign intervention. This is completely untrue, if only for the reason that the first decrees on introducing the "socialist ideal" exactly "according to Marx" in...

1 Introduction -- 2 The Meaning of the First Decade of Soviet Socialism -- 3 The Political Economy of Utopia: Communism in Soviet Russia, 1918–1921 -- 4 The Political Economy of NEP: Market Relations and Interventionism in Soviet Russia, 1921–1928 -- 5 The Political Economy of Development...