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Dictator, Loyal, and Opportunistic Agents: The Soviet Archives on Creating the Soviet Economic System

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Abstract

Studies of the mature Soviet economy focus on the structuralweaknesses of rent seeking and corruption. Such an economy ispresumed to perform better in its adolescent phase under astrong stationary-bandit dictator, dedicated to growth andable to control rent-seekers. We use the recently openedSoviet state and party archives to show the process that beganin the 1930s of transforming the inner circle of the Sovietstationary bandit into a rent-seeking bureaucracy lackinglong-term goals.

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Belova, E., Gregory, P. Dictator, Loyal, and Opportunistic Agents: The Soviet Archives on Creating the Soviet Economic System. Public Choice 113, 265–286 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020896123596

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