2. The Soviet planned economy

2020 ◽  
pp. 12-35
Author(s):  
Richard Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Planned Economy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Human Cost ◽  
Rapid Industrialization ◽  
Systemic Problems

‘The Soviet planned economy’ details the economic, political, and human consequences of the Soviet Union’s fully centralized economic planning. This bold experiment enabled rapid industrialization and urbanization, helped to defeat Nazi Germany, and defined the Soviet Union as one of only two military superpowers. These developments came at a substantial human cost, from the millions who died during the collectivization of farms to the victims of the Chernobyl meltdown. The discovery of oil in Siberia masked systemic problems in a stagnant infrastructure and rendered the socialist experiment dependent on the vagaries of Western markets. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many hoped for a better standard of life.

scholarly journals INFORMATION CONFRONTATION OF NAZI GERMANY AND THE USSR IN HISTORIOGRAPHY

2018 ◽  
pp. 52-62
Author(s):  
Oksana Salata
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Information Technologies ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
The United States ◽  
Information Policy ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Psychological State ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Second World

The second world and its constituent German-Soviet wars became the key events of the 20th century. Currently, the study of domestic and foreign historiography in the context of the disclosure of the information policy of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, the information confrontation of the Nazi and Soviet systems of information and psychological infl uence on the enemy population is relevant. Thanks to the work of domestic and foreign scholars, the attraction of new archival materials and documents, the world saw scientifi c works devoted to various aspects of the propaganda activities of Nazi Germany, including in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Among them are the works of Ukrainian historians: A. Podolsky, Y. Nikolaytsya, P. Rekotov, O. Lysenko, V. Shaikan, M. Mikhailyuk, V. Grinevich; Russian historians M. I. Semiaryagi, E. Makarevich, V. I. Tsymbal and G. F. Voronenkova. An analysis of scientifi c literature published in Germany, England and the United States showed that the eff ectiveness and negative eff ects of German information policy are revealed in the works of German historians and publicists O. Hadamovsky, N. Muller, P. Longerich, R. Coel, et al. Along with the works devoted to armed confrontation, one can single out a study in which the authors try to show the information technologies and methods of psychological action that were used by the governments of both countries to infl uence the consciousness and the moral and psychological state of their own population and the enemy’s population, on the results of the Second World War. Most active in the study of Nazi propaganda and information policy of the Third Reich, in general, were the German historians, in particular E. Hadamovskie , G. Fjorsterch and G. Schnitter, and others. The value of their work is to highlight the process of the creation in 1933–1945 of the National Socialist Party in Germany of an unprecedented system of mass manipulation in the world’s history, fully controlled by the Nazi leadership of the information space. Thus, an analysis of the works of domestic and foreign scholars shows that the information confrontation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was extremely powerful, since both warring parties possessed the most up-to-date information and ideological weapon. Unfortunately, today there is no comprehensive study of this problem that could reveal all aspects of the information confrontation in the modern information world.

Information and the Market Economy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sarokin ◽  
Jay Schulkin
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Planned Economy ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
Subprime Mortgage ◽  
Market Signals ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Mortgage Crisis ◽  
Centrally Planned Economy

The Soviet Union tried to manage the information needed to run a centrally-planned economy. Their efforts failed in large measure due to information shortcomings. Capitalism is a much better information processor, relying on the ‘invisible hand” to recognize and respond to market signals. But capitalism can have information failures too, as evidenced by Enron, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the work of information economists.

The Soviet Legacy in Thinking about Fascism

2021 ◽  
pp. 28-42
Author(s):  
Marlene Laruelle
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Soviet Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Great Patriotic War ◽  
Soviet Legacy ◽  
Second World

This chapter goes back in time to look at the Soviet construction of the Russian term fashizm and some of the ambiguities that the Soviet society cultivated toward the term and its historical personification, Nazi Germany. It recalls that the term fascism (fashizm), in Soviet times, belonged more to an emotional than to an analytical lexicon. The chapter also discusses Russia's history and Russians' memories of the Second World War, called the Great Patriotic War in Russian (Velikaia otechestvennaia voina) and Victory Day (Den´ pobedy). It reviews how the cult of war is intimately linked to the Brezhnev era and provided the context in which commemoration of the Great Patriotic War was institutionalized as a sacred symbol of the Soviet Union, a confirmation of the soundness of the socialist system and the unity of its peoples. The chapter then argues that the very solemnity of Soviet anti-fascism, and its centrality to the country's political identity constitute the fundaments inherited from Soviet times on the basis of which the notion of fascism is operationalized in today's Russia. Ultimately, the chapter further elaborates the three main sources of the Soviet's cryptic fascination with Nazi Germany and source of knowledge about fashizm: the Nazi propaganda, criminal culture, and cinema and culture.

Estonia

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-132
Author(s):  
Michael J. Bazyler ◽  
Kathryn Lee Boyd ◽  
Kristen L. Nelson ◽  
Rajika L. Shah
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
The Soviet Union

The independent Republic of Estonia was attacked and formally annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940. It was subsequently invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941 until Soviet troops re-entered the country in 1944. At the end of the war, virtually every member of Estonia’s small prewar Jewish community had been murdered, deported, or had fled the country. Estonia’s independence was restored in 1991, and post-Communist Estonia passed restitution laws that applied generally to private and communal immovable property confiscated during the Communist era. Estonia endorsed the Terezin Declaration in 2009 and the Guidelines and Best Practices in 2010.

Stalin’s Dilemma

2012 ◽  
pp. 965-990
Author(s):  
Edward Bever
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Educational Game ◽  
Military Effectiveness ◽  
Design Development ◽  
Simulation Games ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Complex Design ◽  
Human Cost ◽  
Historical Levels

Stalin’s Dilemma is an educational game that simulates the industrialization of the Soviet Union during the three Five Year Plans between 1928 and 1942 (Bever, 2000). The goal of the game is to reach or exceed the historical levels of industrial capacity, military effectiveness, and political stability in order to prepare the country to repel an attack by Nazi Germany, but with less human cost than was inflicted by Josef Stalin. This chapter describes the game and discusses its design, development, and use in various educational settings and structures. Its goal is to convey insights and lessons that can be applied to future development and employment of other instructional simulation games. The primary conclusions are the need to support a complex design with extensive player aids and to harness students’ competitiveness and ambition by directly connecting performance in the game to performance in the course.

The institutional change in action: Transitioning to Economic Man

2012 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 363-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelina Tverdohleb
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Planned Economy ◽  
Economic Man ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Unique Nature ◽  
Western Market ◽  
Economic Ideology ◽  
The Creation

This article sketches the roots and social underpinnings of both Economic Man (EM) and Soviet Man (SM) and looks at the interaction between the two archetypes during the transformation of former socialist nations since 1990. It depicts the creation of SM as the bearer of socialist “planned economy” ideology while also showing how EM was able to survive, albeit often underground, in the Soviet Union and its satellites. It also looks at the unique nature of the Soviet EM and to what extent SM has been dismantled. This paper concludes by examining how well the Western, market-oriented economic ideology was implemented and why the process occurred differently in various former socialist countries. It illustrates the varying malleability of the human mentality and provides some insights into the possible outcomes of future efforts at sociopolitical transformation.

State Terrorism

2019 ◽  
pp. 330-347
Author(s):  
Tim Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Path Dependency ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
State Terrorism ◽  
Historical Awareness

Seeing official violence as unduly neglected, “critical terrorism studies” scholars have pushed hard for state terrorism to become a central concern of the emergent field of “terrorism studies.” Although laudable in intention, such critiques have been blunted in their impact by path dependency in how state violence has conventionally been studied. Some examples such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union have indeed been relatively well explored by scholars. Yet these truly spectacular examples are only a small part of the historical picture of state violence—and against that wider backdrop they appear highly aberrational. Any systematic attempt to understand the complexity of inter-relationship between state and non-state violence must develop both far greater historical awareness and sociological discernment.

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