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The Communist World of Public Debt (1917–1991): The Failure of a Countermodel?

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A World of Public Debts

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance ((PSHF))

Abstract

This chapter looks at the construction of a communist community of public debt in the twentieth century. Despite emerging as some of public debt’s most vehement critics in the early years of that century, communist governments made relatively conventional use of public debt to fund economic initiatives, foster bonds within the socialist bloc, and gain political influence. As these regimes’ economies stagnated, they borrowed heavily from capitalist lenders and ran into economic troubles in the 1980s, but they did not repudiate their debt, as the Bolsheviks had in 1918. Instead, they accepted technical solutions to their economic woes, which, in turn, helped to erode their already tenuous popular legitimacy in Eastern Europe.

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  • 29 December 2020

    Chapters 13 and 19 were previously published as non-open access. It has now been changed to open access under a CC BY 4.0 license and the copyright holder has been updated to “The Author(s).”

Notes

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    Ragna Boden, Die Grenzen der Weltmacht. Sowjetische Indonesienspolitik von Stalin bis Brežnev (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2006), 179–181.

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    PA AA (Archives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Berlin), MfAA, A 4392, ff. 1–2.

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    Iliana Zloch-Christy, Debt Problems of Eastern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 85; the Grabski Commission in Poland was the most significant example of such indictments: Zbigniew Błaěyński, Towarzysze zeznają (London: Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1987); Waldemar Kuczyński, Po wielkim skoku (Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Poltext, 2012).

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    Memorandum on Romania’s position in the negotiations at the IMF and BIRD, 26 March 1989, ANIC (National Archives of Romania, Bucarest), F. CC al PCR, Secţia Economică, Inv. 3294, ds. 367/1989, f. 34.

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    Entries on 17 May, 9 June and 5 July 1985, Cherniaev, Sovmestnyi iskhod, 630, 638.

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    Fidel Castro, Encuentro sobre la deuda externa de América Latina y el Caribe. Discurso, 3 de agosto de 1985 (Havana: Editora Política, 1985); Valerii Bushuev, Latinskaja Amerika-SShA: Revoljutsija i kontr-revoljutsija (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia, 1987), 251–253.

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    Thomas Kunze, Nicolae Ceauşescu: Eine Biographie (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2000), 304; Silviu Curticeanu, Mărturia unei istorii trăite (Bucarest: Historia, 2008), 42; Katherine Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceauşescu Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 130.

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    Under the Savings Protection Act of 1995, the Russian state recognized its liabilities to citizens of the former Russian socialistrepublic and promised that outstanding debts would be paid in special promissory notes in accordance with a new law, which was eventually written in 1996. The law has been repeatedly suspended by the Russian government since. In 2013, Russian lawmakers proposed a new law, canceling the Savings Protection Act and setting a firm deadline for paying all pre-reform savings as of 25 December 2020. See “Sovetskie obligatsii bol’she ne vyigraiut,” Kommersant, 22 May 2013, http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2194452. In 2018, the Russian Duma proposed a moratorium on paying back lost Soviet savings, delaying payments to no earlier than January 1, 2022. See “Gosduma prodlila do 2022 goda priostanovku vyplat kompensatsii po sovetskim vkladam,” Parliamenskaia gazeta, November 13, 2018, https://www.pnp.ru/social/gosduma-prodlila-do-2022-goda-priostanovku-vyplat-kompensaciy-po-sovetskim-vkladam.html

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  1. Sciences Po Lille, Lille, France

    Étienne Forestier-Peyrat

  2. Department of History and Classical Studies, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Kristy Ironside

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    Nicolas Barreyre

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    Nicolas Delalande

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Forestier-Peyrat, É., Ironside, K. (2020). The Communist World of Public Debt (1917–1991): The Failure of a Countermodel?. In: Barreyre, N., Delalande, N. (eds) A World of Public Debts. Palgrave Studies in the History of Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48794-2_13

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