Create a East bloc/USSR that prospers on par with the West.

After having read through this I have to say that I agree with John Rankins commentary of ASB.

To change the USSR to what Walter Williams is asking, you have to:

1) Avoid Stalin and Stalinism.

2) Somehow avoid WW II which means no National Socialism in Germany.

3) Totally somehow make the largely agrarian Eastern Europe & Russia more industrialized and this has to begin in the 1890's in my opinion, which, if it did happen averts or changes the Great War of 1914-1918.

4) If # 3 above takes place then there is no WWI, no Hitler, no successful Bolshevik revolution, no Provisional gov't of Kerensky, France does not lose a generation of its young men, ditto Great Britain. AND...no Soviet Union.

Please recall that IOTL, the USSR was a country that had difficulties manufacturing and distributing soap to its rather large nation. I am of the opinion that one of Russia's largest problem was just that...it's largeness. Imagine using the USA as a temporary template but picture all of the huge manufacturing centers located only in the northeast (NYC, Philadelphia, Newark NJ, Camden NJ, Easton Pa, and...Baltimore). So, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Milwaukee, etc. are the same size in 1910 as they were in 1855. But, there are farming communities all throughout the Great Plains, Rockies, and California. To transport anything and everything made in factories in the Northeast not only requires a huge amount of rail mileage which BTW is running at a loss since goods returning east are "cheap" agricultural goods while everything "heavy" goes west. It is both time consuming, economically disastarous in the long run and eventually saps the country's strength. It wears down rolling stock on their long journeys to the West for little return.

Is there a similarity in Russia? Yes... think Vladivostok and everything east of Irkutsk. It is a strain to maintain these territories yet no nation is going to willingly surrender territories because they are to hard to defend/economically unviable. If this hypothetical USA were real, would we consider giving up that small outpost on the Pacific named San Diego...Los Angeles...Seattle? No and neither would Russia/USSR consider giving up their maritime provinces on the Pacific. Russian development is stunted due to the large size of its landmass. Add to that fact human nature with all of its strengths and foibles, long dark winter nights, low levels of literacy prior to the 1930's, bloody revolution WWI & WWII, tens of millions dead, prime agricultural land wrecked...no...it cannot be done and as history proves could not be done.

Cheers, Joho

I wouldn't say a pre-WW2 PoD is necessary. I once wrote a TL about a reformist USSR with a late 1960s PoD. You can find it here.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Yes but pricing didn't determine what was produced and how, which is why the material balances technique would lead to inefficiencies even without political interference in the plans. The prices, as you imply, were more of an afterthought and used to put a value on output, and of course as another way to control consumer demand.

The command economy could concentrate resources and focus investment on socially desirable goals, like housing or transport, better than a completely unregulated market could. But any outperformance in these fields never really lasted as the overall economy eventually stagnated as their inferiority in productivity (labour, capital and total factor productivity) grew year on year. And the low priority given to consumer goods was a defect but one that I think grew out of the obsession with investment in heavy industry and basic industrialisation. The Soviets never made the mental switch to seeing industrialisation as done and the time had come to push other secors within the basic model. Given the Soviet history that's understandable but a different post war world might have seen them make the switch before the oil price shocks helped to destroy the viability of Eastern European economies. IMHO obviously.
The problem with making a switch too late (and the USSR was at that point by the 1950s) is that you run into political opposition from the bureaucratic classes which likes their planning ministries and economic fiefdoms based on the state owned economy. You can't have a real pricing system without a market and a market isn't compatible with a centralized planning system. That's why glasnost was necessary: you needed to bring in outside forces to fight the bureaucrats if reforms are to be implemented.
 
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