Economy and Society in Russian Reforms

Abstract

Speaking of entities and model relations between them, the transition from central directive planning to self-regulating markets requires first of all a fundamental change in property rights. The Soviet state was both sovereign and owner by the right of conquest even if the conquest took the form of a social revolution and a civil war1 and installed itself simultaneously as the supreme manager of what it owned. In a civil society, there is a multitude of owners who either manage their assets themselves or authorize others to do so.2 Moreover, in the Soviet case, the sovereign-owner started from a physical seizure of the assets and was always prepared to defend its property in the same manner. By contrast, the relation of an individual personbe it a natural or a juridical one to the things owned is ideal in the sense of intangible or intelligible.3 To say that I own something is to claim that all others have to recognize and respect my title to it, at least as long as they act legally. As the nature of ownership changes, so does that of typical transfers: central commands yield to contracts, negotiated by the agents themselves. By the same token, price is invested with a new meaning, and so is money. Under directive planning, prices could be,