Across parts of Eastern Europe, Communism is increasingly treated not as a political tradition to be debated but as an ideology to be restricted, equated with Nazism under the language of “extrem
Author: Dmitry Pozhidaev
“Emergency! Today.” Was the Soviet Economy Really Planned?
Reading Brezhnev Through Mitrokhin’s Lens Introduction: Was It Really a Planned Economy? Winter holidays are supposed to be for rest. Naturally, many of us use them to do unpaid intellectual labo
Overvalued for Whom? The Ruble in a New Hierarchy of World Money
Here’s a piece in the Kyiv Independent trying to solve the riddle of the ruble’s strengthening in 2025. The ruble has strengthened despite what Konstantin Sonin calls the “classic macroeconom
Rethinking Lenin’s Economic Legacy: Beyond “Ones and Tooze”
FP’s podcast Ones and Tooze has recently launched a new mini-series to mark two key dates in twentieth-century history: the beginning and the end of the Soviet Union (December 1922 and December 1
Can Socialism innovate? Soviet lessons and the dependent resilience of global capitalism
Introduction It has become almost an article of faith among economists that a key reason for the demise of the Soviet economic system, and of “really existing socialism” more broadly, was its i
Russia’s 1917 October Revolution: A warning, an alternative, a challenge
Each anniversary of Russia’s 1917 October Revolution (November 7 in the new style calendar) offers an opportunity to reflect on the global significance of that historic event. For some, it is a c
Would Marx Approve This Year’s Nobel?
Innovation won the Nobel this year. Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion, and Peter Howitt were honored for a simple engine: invention plus incentives plus diffusion equals growth. Marx wouldn’t quarrel w
Out of the Ivory Tower: Teaching Economics for Real Economies
It must be the beginning of the new university year that makes us — once again — think long and hard about our profession, its meaning and what, as economics educators and professionals, we are
Was Stalin “Necessary”? Three Ways to Read Soviet Industrialization
In a little over a decade after the 1917 Revolution, the Soviet Union vaulted from a mostly agrarian economy to an industrial power. By 1940, overall industrial output was several times its late-19
Political Crisis Without an Economic Cost?
This text is a slightly expanded conclusion of my article “Politička kriza bez ekonomske cene?”, originally published in Serbian on Peščanik. The full version (in Serbian) is available here: