Soviet Agriculture in Perspective: A Study of Its Successes and Failures

Soviet Agriculture in Perspective (1969) examines the framework within which Soviet agriculture had to operate from the start: the dilemma of a revolutionary regime in a backward peasant country, the straightjacket of a bureaucratic system inherited from Tsarism, made even more rigid by the internal tensions of the new society, and the imperative needs of economic development. In analysing Soviet agricultural policy, it looks at the appropriate volume of agricultural output, the need for massive capital investment, the level of prices and costs, and the optimum size of a farm.