The Soviet Economy: The Late 1930s in Historical Perspective

Abstract

The book is concluded by a retrospective view of the industrialisation of the Soviet economy in the 1930s. It considers the pattern of forced industrialisation, the measures of its progress that were made available at the time, the extraordinary militarisation of a mobilised society and economy, the emergence of the Soviet Union as a global military power, and the scope for reforms within the system that Stalin created and ruled over. Concluding, we ask what kind of economic development this was.