Statism and Entrepreneurship: Russian Economic History, 1890-1998
Author(s)
Bean, Jonathan J.
Abstract
Both tsars and commissars assumed that only the state could modernize the Russian economy. In pre-Revolutionary Russia the state was more of a problem than a solution with regard to Russia’s economic backwardness, reflecting an anti-capitalist mentality. Stalin’s state socialism and climate of terror led to an economy plagued by food shortages, inferior technology, and a bloated bureaucracy. Mikhail Gorbachev unsuccessfully attempted to fashion a mixed economy, while Boris Yeltsin’s attempts to create a genuine free-market economy have been stymied by corruption and general lawlessness.
