Industrialisation of Soviet Russia 3: The Soviet Economy in Turmoil 1929-1930

Planned as a number of independent volumes this work covers the years 1929-1937, the crucial period of the first two five-year plans, which saw the transformation of the Soviet Union from a peasant country into an industrial power. An examination of Soviet industrialization is seen as important in increasing an understanding of why the Soviet system took its present form; and as a case study of state-managed industrialization, should illuminate the economic problems of developing countries and questions of state planning generally. This book, the third part of the trilogy, re-examines the breakdown of the Soviet socialist market economy at the end of the 1920s and assesses its replacement by Stalinist centralized planning. The author explains how in those days of heroism and enthusiasm, hunger and repression, crucial Soviet economic and political institutions were established and are only now being effectively challenged by Gorbachev's revolution. While complementing the previous two volumes of this author's work this book is designed to be read independently. It sheds new light on a dramatic moment in Soviet history and in the formation of the Soviet system, by drawing on Soviet and Western archives, interviews, a wide range of Soviet newspapers, journals and rare statistical publications. The author has also written " The Development of the Soviet Budgetary System", "The Socialist Offensive, 1929-1930" and "The Soviet Collective Farm, 1929-1930".