Modernising Lenin's Russia

In this book Anthony Heywood reassesses Bolshevik attitudes towards economic modernisation and foreign economic relations during the early Soviet period. Based on hitherto unused Russian and Western archives, he examines an extraordinary decision made in March 1920 to import vast quantities of railway equipment. The book argues that under War Communism and the NEP railway modernisation was vital to a strategy of rapid economic modernisation, and provides the first detailed case study of the government's import policy. Following the histories of the principal contracts, it analyses Soviet foreign trade as a means to tackle domestic economic challenges. This book provides readers with a new perspective on Soviet economic development, and reveals the scale of Bolshevik business dealings with the capitalist West immediately after the Revolution.

First sentence: Much of the explanation for the railway imports policy of 1920-4 must be sought in the Bolshevik leadership's economic strategy and assessment of the international situation in the winter of 1919-20.

Year

1999

Language

English

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

3

Pages

363

ISBN

9780521027175

Data source: Wikidata