Reluctant Cold Warriors ; Economists and National Security

289 Pages·2019·1.693 MB·English

by  Vladimir Kontorovich

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Reluctant Cold Warriors
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Reluctant Cold
Warriors
Economists and National
Security
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VLADIMIR KONTOROVICH
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ISBN 978– 0– 19– 086812– 3
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Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
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To the memory of Isaac Kantorovich, Ada Temkina,
and Vladimir Shlapentokh
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Contents
Preface xi
Introduction: Why bother with the writings on a defunct economy
by authors now at best retired? xiii
PART I: Sovietology and The Soviet Military Power
1. The Origin and Structure of Sovietology 3
1.1 The Cold War roots 3
1.2 Cradle- to- grave national security funding 5
1.3 The industrial organization of Sovietology 9
1.3.1 Structure and conduct 10
1.3.2 Reliability of results 11
1.3.3 Status within economics 15
1.4 Colleagues and competitors 18
1.4.1 The British, outsiders, political scientists, and others 18
1.4.2 Academics and government analysts 20
2. The Politburo’s Holy of Holies 25
2.1 A pillar of the system’s original design 25
2.2 A wartime- size peacetime military sector 26
2.2.1 Official Soviet data 27
2.2.2 Western estimates 29
2.2.3 Trying to make sense of it all 32
2.3 The defense industry 34
2.3.1 A sector apart 34
2.3.2 The most favored sector 38
2.3.3 The most successful sector 40
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2.4 Mobilization preparations 43
2.5 Importance and impact 46
PART II: Soviet Military Power in The Sovietological Mirror
3. The Missing Sector 53
3.1 How to document an absence 53
3.2 Textbooks and readers 54
3.2.1 Which sectors merited a chapter 55
3.2.2 Applying a finer comb: index entries 59
3.3 Research volumes 61
3.4 Publications on the military sector proper 70
3.4.1 Journal articles 70
3.4.2 Books 72
3.5 The user side 74
3.5.1 Comparative economic systems textbooks and
readers 74
3.5.2 Introductory economics textbooks 79
3.6 Summary 83
4. Civilianizing the Objectives of the Planners 87
4.1 Objectives and behavior in economics 87
4.2 Who exactly were the planners? 88
4.3 The Soviet account of the rulers’ objectives 89
4.3.1 The validity of self-p roclaimed objectives 89
4.3.2 Constitutions and planning manuals 90
4.3.3 Can they be believed? 92
4.4 The Sovietological account of planners’ objectives 93
4.4.1 Sources: fragmentation in action 93
4.4.2 Sovietology’s standard view 94
4.5 Making sense of multiple objectives 98
4.6 Problems with the standard view of the rulers’ objectives 101
4.7 Patterns that seem to suggest production for its own sake 102
4.8 Bringing the Soviet rulers back into the fold of rational
actors 104
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Contents ix
5. Civilianizing Industrialization 107
5.1 The standard account of industrialization 107
5.2 Stalin’s account of industrialization 109
5.2.1 Objectives of industrialization 109
5.2.2 The role of heavy industry 110
5.3 How the standard account developed 111
5.4 Problems with the standard account 114
5.5 The banality of military industrialization 117
5.6 The real industrialization debate 119
5.7 Taking socialism too seriously 121
5.8 Summary 122
PART III: Why Government Money Could not Buy Economists’ Love
6. The Secrecy Hypothesis 129
6.1 The shape of the constraint 129
6.1.1 Secrecy in Soviet society 129
6.1.2 Economic information: civilian and military sectors 130
6.1.3 Breaches in the wall 133
6.2 The constraint was not binding 135
6.2.1 Concern about secrecy and the recognition of gaps in
knowledge 135
6.2.2 The use of roundabout means to overcome secrecy 138
6.2.3 Response to the writings on the military sector 141
6.3 Direct test of the secrecy hypothesis 143
6.3.1 Sovietologists versus the New York Times 143
6.3.2 What an interested scholar found in Soviet
publications 147
6.4 Conclusion 150
7. Beating Soviet Swords into Sovietological Ploughshares 153
7.1 The norms of the economics profession 153
7.1.1 How scholars choose research topics 154
7.1.2 How Sovietology fit in 155
7.1.3 Military topics out of favor with economists 157
7.1.4 Dressing military buildup in fashionable civvies 160