Journal Article

'The Russian revolution has not yet taken place': British views of the Soviet economy between the 1950s and the 1970s

Abstract

This article examines British officials’ and ministers’ attitudes towards the Soviet Union’s economy in the post‐Second World War era. In the nineteen‐fifties and early nineteen‐sixties, public and some expert commentary posited Soviet economic ‘success’ based on the country’s increasingly rapid growth rate, its potential for consumerization, the promise of economic reform, and the Soviet state’s emphasis on education, science and the application of computer technology. New evidence from British official archives, presented here, makes clear that Westminster and Whitehall were never persuaded of this view, and always believed that political meddling and microeconomic inefficiencies would ultimately restrain and undermine Soviet growth.

Attached files

Authors

O'Hara, Glen

Oxford Brookes departments

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences\Department of History, Philosophy and Culture

Dates

Year of publication: 2019
Date of RADAR deposit: 2018-08-10

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License

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Related resources

This RADAR resource is the Accepted Manuscript of ‘The Russian Revolution has not yet taken place’: British views of the Soviet economy between the nineteen‐fifties and nineteen‐seventies