Unlikely Bedfellows: The Plan and the Market in a Stalinist Economy

My presentation explores how the scholarly understanding of the nature of the Soviet economy has changed since the opening of the Soviet archives in the early 1990s. Drawing on my research and critically engaging recent scholarship by an international group of economic historians, I question whether the Cold war's vision of the Stalinist economy as "marketless" (which continues to dominate mainstream academic discussions in and outside the field of modern Russian history) is still viable.  In its place, I propose a radical rethinking of the Soviet economy as a peculiar symbiosis of the plan and the market (both illegal and legal).  In order to explicate my argument, I explore the social nature of the socialist market, its limits and interdependence with the planned centralized economy.