The 1950s—the triumph of the Soviet economy

The frequent assertions in both Russian and Western economic literature and the broader press that the command economy is not viable are based on data showing the inefficient use of material and labour resources in the pre-war period and the continuous decline in the rate of economic growth and the efficiency of resource use in the 1960s–1980s. Yet it is a long way from observing these facts to confirming the failure of the command economy. Before the political system of the USSR began to collapse in 1990–91 there had been no prolonged absolute fall in GDP nor, in the post-war period, in the standard of living of the population, nor had technical progress come to a halt as it did, for example, in the 1990s after the rejection of the command economy. Compared with the latter period it is justifiable to talk of the indisputable advantages of the command over the market economy in Russian conditions, if of course we do not consider (for which there are some grounds) the enormous difficulties of the Russian economy in the 1990s to be consequences of a protracted transformation crisis. I would like to draw attention to the fact that these advantages are evident even in comparison with the degenerate mid-1980s version of the command economy, which was very different from the classical model.