Economic Ideas and Institutional Change: Evidence from Soviet Economic Discourse 1987-1991

In recent years, institutional and evolutionary economists have become increasingly aware that ideas play an important role in economic development. In the current literature, the problem is usually elaborated upon in purely theoretical terms. In the present paper it is argued that ideas are always also shaped by historical and cultural factors. Due to this historical and cultural specificity theoretical research must be supplemented by historical case studies. The paper analyses the shift in ideas that took place in Soviet economic thought between 1987 and 1991. This case study, it is argued, may contribute to our understanding of the links between ideas and institutions. More specifically, it sheds new light on the issue of whether the evolution of economic ideas is pathdependent, so that they change only incrementally, or whether their development takes place in a discontinuous way that can best be compared with revolutions

The Principal Conflict in Contemporary Russian Economic Thought: Traditional Approaches Against Economics

The work deals with the ideological clashes in Russian economic thought after 1991. Based on Schumpeter's distinction between economic analysis and economic thought, the paper focuses on a principal conflict that divides a new generation of Westernminded scholars and traditional Russian political economists. This conflict, on the one hand, is described as an attempt of traditional political economists to keep their positions at the economic departments of the universities. The most vivid manifestation of the resistance to economics is the so-called Tsagolov School at Moscow State University. On the other hand, the conflict might be regarded as the reaction of Russian nationalism to the penetration of ?alien? influences that are rather incompatible with the antiindividualist traditions of Russian social thought. The movement towards the creation of a ?national political economy? based on holism and etatism is seen not only as an expression and a by-product of resistance to methodological individualism in economics, but also as implicitly state-induced ideological efforts in a period of transition to an autocratic regime in Russia

Socialist Economic Theory: Past and Present

When we examine current problems of economic science, we invariably look back. As A. I. Herzen said in his day: "The better we know the past, the more clearly we see the present. The more we become immersed in the meaning of the past, the deeper is our understanding of the sense of the future." This statement is all the more important and timely in the years in which the country is observing the sixtieth anniversary of Soviet power.

The Economic Mechanism and the Style of Thinking

The practical implementation of measures outlined in the July (1979) decrees of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers is a major step on the road to the development of an economic mechanism that is consistent with the conditions in a mature socialist society.