Soviet Economists in Opposition and Overseas

Abstract

Much ink has been spilt debating whether leading Bolshevik politicians such as Bukharin, Trotsky and Rykov could have provided alternative programmes for the economic development of the USSR after 1929.1 While this is a useful avenue of research, its pursuit has been accompanied by the neglect of many ‘proper’ Soviet economists from the 1920s: people such as N. D. Kondratiev, L. N. Yurovsky, N. N. Shaposhnikov, S. A. Pervushin, V. A. Bazarov, A. A. Konyus, V. G. Groman, Ye. Ye. Slutsky, A. L. Vainshtein, A. V. Chayanov, N. P. Oganovsky, P. I. Popov and many others.2 These people were ‘proper’ economists in the sense that they were not political animals first and only economic theorists second, as Bukharin and Trotsky were; rather, they were professional economists who devoted all their scholarly attention to purely economic and statistical analysis. Political consequences no doubt followed from their work, but they were not strict ‘party members’ in any organisational sense and many of them were fully conversant with Western economics as it was being developed in Europe and America at the time. It should have been from this group of economists that any genuine alternative programme for the economic development of the USSR would have emerged (and in fact did so) during NEP. While the political leadership for such alternatives could not have originated from this group of economists, any such leadership would have been doomed to failure without these scholars to elaborate, implement and manage the detail of their economic policies.