Lessons of the Soviet Economic Reform

Abstract

The Soviet economic system as it existed on the eve of the September (1965) Plenum was basically the same as that created at the end of the 1920s. It was created because the alternative system, the market economy of the NEP period, was incompatible both with the political and social objectives of the Communist Party, and also with the rapid development of heavy industry which the Party leaders aimed at. The traditional Soviet economic system-"imperative planning" as it has come to be called-represented a rational answer to the problems which confronted the Soviet leaders at that time.