Reforming What Couldn’t Be Reformed
The Soviet Economy and Its Reforms in Osteuropa
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
In the issues of Osteuropa published between 1925 and 1939, various authors described the economic development of the Soviet Union from “War Communism” through the “New Economic Policy” to Stalin’s planned economy. They made no mention of economic reforms, as it was only years after Stalin’s death that the Soviet leadership attempted to improve the efficiency of the economic system through reforms, which had to remain within existing ideological constraints. These attempts, which continued until 1989, were presented and evaluated in Osteuropa. Most authors confined themselves to explaining the problems of implementation, which were denounced in the Soviet press. The de facto impossibility of proper centralised production and price planning was occasionally mentioned, but its significance for the Soviet Union’s increasingly weak economic development was hardly discussed.
(Osteuropa 1-3/2025, pp. 295–312)