Planning in the Soviet Union
Planning in the Soviet Union

Author: Judith Pallot

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-12-24

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1000399532

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Originally published in 1981 and based on the authors’ own research, this book provides a comprehensive review of planning in the Soviet Union up until the early 1980s for both geographers and Soviet specialists. Planning was particularly important in the Soviet Union since not only most spatial change, but all economic planning was the product of a systematic socio-political ideology. Planning was therefore the key to understanding the Soviet economy, society and spatial change. When it was first published, this was the first study in which the focus had been directed specifically at spatial planning in the Soviet Union in any systematic way.

Spatial Revolution
Spatial Revolution

Author: Christina E. Crawford

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2022-02-15

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 1501759213

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Spatial Revolution is the first comparative parallel study of Soviet architecture and planning to create a narrative arc across a vast geography. The narrative binds together three critical industrial-residential projects in Baku, Magnitogorsk, and Kharkiv, built during the first fifteen years of the Soviet project and followed attentively worldwide after the collapse of capitalist markets in 1929. Among the revelations provided by Christina E. Crawford is the degree to which outside experts participated in the construction of the Soviet industrial complex, while facing difficult topographies, near-impossible deadlines, and inchoate theories of socialist space-making. Crawford describes how early Soviet architecture and planning activities were kinetic and negotiated and how questions about the proper distribution of people and industry under socialism were posed and refined through the construction of brick and mortar, steel and concrete projects, living laboratories that tested alternative spatial models. As a result, Spatial Revolution answers important questions of how the first Soviet industrialization drive was a catalyst for construction of thousands of new enterprises on remote sites across the Eurasian continent, an effort that spread to far-flung sites in other socialist states—and capitalist welfare states—for decades to follow. Thanks to generous funding from Emory University and its participation in TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem), the ebook editions of this book are available as Open Access volumes from Cornell Open (cornellpress.cornell.edu/cornell-open) and other repositories.

Red Plenty
Red Plenty

Author: Francis Spufford

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Published: 2012-02-14

Total Pages: 437

ISBN-13: 1555970419

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"Spufford cunningly maps out a literary genre of his own . . . Freewheeling and fabulous." —The Times (London) Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called "the planned economy," which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It's about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending. Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne.

The Future of the Soviet Economic Planning System
The Future of the Soviet Economic Planning System

Author: David A. Dyker

Publisher: M.E. Sharpe

Published: 1985

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780873324793

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First published in 1985, this book offered a fresh analysis of the problems faced by the Soviet economy by focussing on the key issues in the economic planning system. David Dyker considers the available options for reform during the 1980s and the most likely developments. Discussing the origins of the Soviet economic planning system and the theories which founded it, previous attempts to reform the organisational structure and the particular problem of agriculture, Dyker presents a picture of an increasingly bleak future for the Soviet economy. This is a comprehensive title written by a renowned expert on the Soviet economy, which will be of particular value to students and academics researching the political and economic development and history of the Soviet Union.

Everyday Soviet Utopias
Everyday Soviet Utopias

Author: Anna Alekseyeva

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-02-06

Total Pages: 467

ISBN-13: 1351019767

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This book explores how intellectuals of the later Soviet decades – the 1970s and 1980s – sought to bring about the socialist utopian world. It argues that the last two decades of the Soviet Union were not characterised by state withdrawal and malaise, as some scholars have argued; attempts to envisage and enact Utopia remained as imaginative and creative as ever. The book considers what these utopian ideas looked like through housing schemes, layouts of districts and cities, design of objects and interiors, and proposals for the organisation of family and social life. Relating developments in the Soviet Union to evolving social theory and postmodernism more broadly, the book draws transnational parallels between the intellectual history of east and west in the late twentieth century.

Fashion Meets Socialism
Fashion Meets Socialism

Author: Jukka Gronow

Publisher: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura

Published: 2015-08-19

Total Pages: 306

ISBN-13: 9522227528

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This book presents, above all, a study of the establishment and development of the Soviet organization and system of fashion industry and design as it gradually evolved in the years after the Second World War in the Soviet Union, which was, in the understanding of its leaders, reaching the mature or last stage of socialism when the country was firmly set on the straight trajectory to its final goal, Communism. What was typical of this complex and extensive system of fashion was that it was always loyally subservient to the principles of the planned socialist economy. This did not by any means indicate that everything the designers and other fashion professionals did was dictated entirely from above by the central planning agencies. Neither did it mean that their professional judgment would have been only secondary to ideological and political standards set by the Communist Party and the government of the Soviet Union. On the contrary, as our study shows, the Soviet fashion professionals had a lot of autonomy. They were eager and willing to exercise their own judgment in matters of taste and to set the agenda of beauty and style for Soviet citizens. The present book is the first comprehensive and systematic history of the development of fashion and fashion institutions in the Soviet Union after the Second World War. Our study makes use of rich empirical and historical material that has been made available for the first time for scientific analysis and discussion. The main sources for our study came from the state, party and departmental archives of the former Soviet Union. We also make extensive use of oral history and the writings published in Soviet popular and professional press.

Transition and Beyond
Transition and Beyond

Author: S. Estrin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2007-08-10

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0230590322

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This book covers a wide variety of aspects of transition in Central and Southeast Europe and the CIS, including the socialist legacy, privatization and growth, skills, and banking reforms. It also covers the evolution of the global economy beyond transition, looking at complexity, risk management, the optimal transition path, and globalization.