Building a Ruin: The Cold War Politics of Soviet Economic Reform

by Yakov Feygin

Overview

A masterful account of the global Cold War’s decisive influence on Soviet economic reform, and the national decay that followed.

What brought down the Soviet Union? From some perspectives the answers seem obvious, even teleological—communism was simply destined to fail. When Yakov Feygin studied the question, he came to another conclusion: at least one crucial factor was a deep contradiction within the Soviet political economy brought about by the country’s attempt to transition from Stalinist mass mobilization to a consumer society.

Building a Ruin explores what happened in the Soviet Union as institutions designed for warfighting capacity and maximum heavy industrial output were reimagined by a new breed of reformers focused on “peaceful socioeconomic competition.” From Khrushchev on, influential schools of Soviet planning measured Cold War success in the same terms as their Western rivals: productivity, growth, and the availability of abundant and varied consumer goods. The shift was both material and intellectual, with reformers taking a novel approach to economics. Instead of trumpeting their ideological bona fides and leveraging their connections with party leaders, the new economists stressed technical expertise. The result was a long and taxing struggle for the meaning of communism itself, as old-guard management cadres clashed with reformers over the future of central planning and the state’s relationship to the global economic order.

Feygin argues that Soviet policymakers never resolved these tensions, leading to stagnation, instability, and eventually collapse. Yet the legacy of reform lingers, its factional dynamics haunting contemporary Russian politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674296657
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	06/11/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Yakov Feygin is an economic historian and policy analyst at the Center for Public Enterprise and the Jain Family Institute. Formerly associate director of the Future of Capitalism program at the Berggruen Institute, he has written for Foreign Policy, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Phenomenal World, and Noema.

Table of Contents

Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acronyms Introduction 1. From Stalinist to Cold War Economics 2. Values—Economic, Soviet, and Otherwise 3. The Fiscal Crisis of the Soviet Growth Model and the Rise of Reformist Politics 4. The Kosygin Reforms 5. Building a Conservative Consensus 6. Détente Economics: The Scientific-Technical Revolution and Technocratic Internationalism 7. The Collapse of the Conservative Consensus and the Making of Perestroika Afterword: The Making of the Post-Soviet Condition Abbreviations Notes Acknowledgments Index

Editorial Reviews

Deeply researched, original, and illuminating. Feygin’s sophisticated account of the political origins of Soviet economic thought overturns the conventional argument that Soviet economic reforms foundered against the resistance of self-interested bureaucrats. Building a Ruin is important for understanding not only the Soviet economy, but also the broader history of the late twentieth century.

Artemy Kalinovsky

A profound reinterpretation of the politics that shaped Soviet economic policy. Driven by deep archival research and close reading of Soviet economic decision making, Building a Ruin transforms our understanding of key turning points in Soviet economic history, from the failed Kosygin reforms to the chaotic policies of perestroika. It also provides new insight into the complex economic inheritance the Soviet Union bequeathed to post-Soviet Russia. A landmark in the field of Soviet economic history, this book will be required reading for many years to come.

Chris Miller

Although both are in some sense exemplars of central planning, the value chain orchestrated by Apple Inc. today is more productive and infinitely more efficient than the economy of the Soviet Union, even in its heyday. Yakov Feygin tells us how, and why.

J. Bradford DeLong

A fresh and nuanced examination of the Soviet Union’s economic trajectory during the Cold War…essential reading for scholars and students of Soviet history, economic policy, and Cold War studies.

Giovanni Cadioli

A first-rate analysis of the pitfalls of the high-savings, high-investment development model. Far from applying just to the USSR, Feygin’s intriguing book is full of lessons for development economists in general, especially those focusing on the Chinese economy.

Michael Pettis

A fascinating book. Feygin offers a fresh take on the structural problems and political constraints that faced Soviet economists and politicians in the Cold War era. Despite the economists’ cutting-edge ideas, the government’s insistence on political stability over economic reform ultimately led to the collapse of the Soviet system.

Kristy Ironside