A Textbook on the Soviet Economy

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

IT is gratifying that, after only four years, a second edition of Harry Schwartz's book on the Soviet economy has appeared. The first edition was particularly distinguished by the strong emphasis it placed on Russia's economic development in the years immediately preceding its publication. There is probably no one better qualified to deal with the most recent periods of Soviet economic history than the man whose current reporting in the New York Times has given that newspaper a unique position in the West as a source of competent and sophisticated day-by-day analyses of Russian economic change. Thanks to the new edition, the story has now been brought up to the middle of I954. This is important because significant economic events, including the launching of the Fifth Five-Year Plan and the various measures taken after Stalin's death, have occurred in the interval. But the book is up-to-date in another sense as well. Over the same period, our knowledge of the Soviet economy has been enriched by a series of valuable contributions. We are now reaping a plentiful harvest from the years of intensive research initiated in the United States at the end of World War II. A few examples will suffice. Since the publication of the first edition, there have appeared A. Bergson's further studies on Soviet national income and N. Jasny's monographs on Soviet prices; Janet Chapman was able to announce the results of her long and detailed work on Soviet real wages; Donald Hodgman published his index of Soviet industrial output; and a large number of specialists on the various aspects of the Soviet economy united to produce an appraisal of Soviet economic growth in a symposium published under the editorship of A. Bergson.1 In preparing the revision of his book, Mr. Schwartz