« Building the first system of state industry in history »* [Piatakov's VSNKh and the crisis of the NEP, 1923-1926

Abstract

Andrea Graziosi, "Building the first system of state industry in history". The paper tries to go beyond the traditional analyses of the economic policies of the 1920's, generally grounded in the intellectual perspective of the "industrialization debate." It centers around the reconstruction of the administrative-economic activities of G. L. Piatakov in 1923-1926, when he was the VSNKh Vice-President. Special attention is devoted to Piatakov's attempt to build what he called the "first system of state industry in history" and to the consequences such a policy had tor the NEP, whose crisis it accelerated. At the same time, the article is the first scholarly work devoted to Piatakov to appear in the West. For such reason, it also tries to give an assessment of Piatakov's role and importance, witnessed among other things by the fact that he was one of the six "outstanding" Bolshevik leaders mentioned by Lenin in his Testament.