The Tragedy of Soviet Market Economists

The Failed Quest to Civilise Russia, 1972-2022

Bibliography

The bibliography published in this book often refers to the "Private collection Sokirko", but the exact urls of the documents were redacted for clarity. Since "Private collection Sokirko" is a digital archive, we offer the exact references on this page.

The reference number serves as a key and is placed at the beginning of the segment. The referring sentence is copied here for clarity, directly followed by the footnote in italic. The document name serves as a label for the url link within this website.

  1. Crisis
    1. Well versed in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Sokirko saw in his daily work not a rationally planned economy, but the same contradictions, inefficiency, and exploitation that the founders of scientific communism had attributed to capitalism.
      V. Sokirko, "Kharakteristika TsEMI, fevral 1972". My conversation with Olga and Alexander Obolonsky, online, June 2023; my conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, September 2023.
    2. "I have to admit that I'm strongly influenced by the philosophy of cybernetics", Sokirko said of himself at the time, noting that his views on nature, human beings, and markets were "a direct result of the bold penetration of cybernetics into the scientifically untouched virgin lands of social science"
      K. Burzhuademov, Ocherki rastushchej ideologii: Antigelbrejt (Paris: Ekho, 1974).
    3. This is probably what made me finally say to myself: "I am a marketeer and, therefore, not a Marxist."
      V. Sokirko and L. Tkachenko, Zhizn' i porazhenija sovetskogo inakomysljashchego: Poiski vzaimoponimanija (Moskva: OntoPrint, 2015).
    4. Viktor Volkonsky, a non-partisan economist connected to the emerging scene of dissidents in Moscow, persistently argued for a fundamental overhaul of the Soviet economy, even after such talk became politically precarious following the Prague Spring. He asserted that consumer choice and a price system freed of state control were needed to provide information for the producers, while still maintaining that this was essential to preserve socialism, not to overcome it.
      Viktor Sokirko, Summa golosov prisjazhnykh v poiske granej ekonomicheskoj svobody (Moskva: Roskonsul't, 2000), p. 162; V. Volkonskij, Printsipy optimal'nogo planirovanija (Moskva: Ekonomika, 1973).
    5. In Samizdat, the underground publishing network of Soviet dissidents, he deliberated on what he saw as an already emerging market economy in the USSR, and on the ways in which its development could be supported.
      Sokirko's fine was six months of "correctional labour", that is, a 25 per cent reduction of his salary also colloquially known as "6-25". Viktor Sokirko, Po povodu stat"i "Videnieja Anri Barbjusa, 1972", undated. Private collection Sokirko; my conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, September 2023; my conversation with Alexander Obolonsky, online, November 2023.
    6. Rather than indulging in fantasies about convergence, Sokirko called for a sober analysis of the practical and theoretical inconsistency of the socialist planned economy in the USSR, and also in its satellite states. For Eastern Europe, better than the West, could provide concrete advice on how to reform a Soviet-type economy " and how better not to.
      Burzhuademov, Ocherki rastushchej ideologii (Paris: Ekho, 1974); my conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, April 2023.
    7. "The Hungarian experience is the most comparable perspective for us, like a prognosis of what could happen in the Soviet Union."
      V. Sokirko, "Opyt ekonomicheskoj reformy v Vengrii. Shag vpered, shag nazad". Undated book review of V. Goluba, "Sistema planirovanija i upravlenija narodnym khozjajstvom v Vengerskoj narodnoj respublike, Moscow 1978". V zashchitu ekonomicheskikh svobod 4 (probably 1979). Private collection Sokirko.
    8. "Inflation and unemployment are higher than in capitalist countries," he argued as early as 1979, "the masses are forced to earn their money as guest workers in Germany, [the Yugoslav dissidents] Djilas and Mihailov are jailed ... the economy is not very efficient."
      N. Kirillov: Jugoslavskij Fenomen, kak on predsdstavljaetsia iz nashego daleka, in V Zashchitu Ekonomicheskikh Svobod 5 (1978 or 1979). Private collection Sokirko.
    9. "Without public pressure, pushing for marketisation, the leadership will not keep tack towards an efficient economy"
      V. Sokirko, "Opyt ekonomicheskoj reformy v Vengrii. Shag vpered, shag nazad". Undated book review of V. Goluba, "Sistema planirovanija i upravlenija narodnym khozjajstvom v Vengerskoj narodnoj respublike, Moscow 1978". V zashchitu ekonomicheskikh svobod 4 (probably 1979). Private collection Sokirko.
    10. In 1979, Sokirko wrote a remarkably prescient essay that gained some attention in the Moscow Samizdat. In "The Economy of 1990. What Awaits Us, and Is There a Way Out?", Sokirko offered an expansive account of the alarming condition of the national economy ... Sokirko even called for a "perestroika" towards "freedom and democracy", advocating for the Soviet Union to become a country of "normal market relations.
      V. Sokirko, Ekonomika 1990-go goda: Chto nas zhdet i est" li vykhod? Letter to the editorial of Pravda, 30-11-1979. Archiv der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen. + { Zes N9} + { "Poiski" N8}
    11. Dennis Meadows shared his apocalyptic vision of industrial modernity. INION immediately had his 1972 study, The Limits to Growth, translated into Russian. The parts that were considered 'Malthusian' and thus anti-communist were cut out, however. Official access to the document was strictly limited, but copies allegedly sold for 300 American dollars in the commercial Samizdat - obviously the market logic of limited supply applied to the Soviet Union, too.
      K. Burzhuademov, "Ekonomika 1990-go goda: Chto nas zhdet i est' li vykhod?," Za zashchitu ekonomicheskikh svobod, November 30, 1979. Archiv der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen; Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, "The power of systems", pp. 132-4.
    12. Sokirko captured the mood in a 1978 Samizdat review of Albert Schweizer's Civilisation and Ethics, a collection of philosophical essays on the relationship of technological progress and human values. The volume had been officially published in Moscow nearly fifty years after its German original, and it was well suited to the sceptical zeitgeist. 'We are living in expectation of disintegration, moral crisis, cultural decay,' Sokirko wrote in his summary. 'Our troubles are part of a global problem.'
      V. Sokirko, Prisyv Al'berta Shvejtsera. Sbornik otklikov-sporov na stat'ju Solzhenitsyna 3 (1978). Private collection Sokirko.
    13. Those in the late Soviet Union who advocated a 'normal economy' and a return to the 'civilised world' faced a paradox: they wanted to create markets, free prices, and labour discipline. But looking to the West, they had to acknowledge that 'in the West, the protestant ethic is already dead and replaced with hedonistic ethics', as an anonymous contributor put it in Sokirko's Samizdat journal.
      S. O., O reminitsentsii ekonomicheskoj romantitsizma. Zametki na poljakh stat'i Burzhuademova. 1977. Private collection Sokirko.
    14. In a letter to his friend and former TsEMI colleague Viktor Volkonsky, Sokirko sketched out this civilising mission to change mentalities, morals and culture: "The painful process of psychological restructuring of people for highperformance work will not be very simple, it may last not even years, but decades, and people will always be tempted to return to the current conditions. To cope with these difficulties can only be the firm conviction of the majority of society in the need for such a restructuring, readiness for sacrifices and diligence, the power of ideological and religious-moral propaganda."
      V. Sokirko, V.A. Volkonskomu - avtoru knigi "Problemy sovershenstvovannija khozjajstvennogo mekhanizma". Letter to Viktor Volkonskij, 28 May 1981. Private collection Sokirko.
    15. The liberals' offer replaced Slavic nationalism with private property and markets. Sokirko, now co-editor with his closest friends Valery Abramkin and Gleb Pavlovsky of the Samizdat journal Poiski, advocated for an ideological transition of the ruling party, instead of its toppling. Sokirko called it a "new communism that will provide economic freedom"
      Sokirko was one of altogether nine editors of Poiski. The quote about "new communism" is from a separate Samizdat publication: V. Sokirko,Prisyv Al'berta Shvejtsera Sbornik otklikov-sporov na stat'ju Solzhenitsyna 3 (1978). Private collection Sokirko.
    16. Viktor Sokirko, who extensively travelled across the entire country throughout the 1970s, described a similar phenomenon in his 1979 text about looming economic collapse: "There is no, and there never will be, such a thing as a planned economy. In fact, what exists is only an illegal market economy."
      K. Burzhuademov, Ekonomika 1990-go goda: Chto nas zhdet i est' li vykhod?, p.1. Archiv der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen.
    17. Sokirko warned in his "Anti-Galbraith": if "the intelligentsia, this spiritual leader of the people, again, [...] does not have real plans to achieve a bourgeois-democratic system, [...] people will again go astray into the swamp of Asian autocracy".
      K. Burzhuademov, Ocherki rastushchej ideologii: Antigelbrejt (Paris: Ekho, 1974), p. 7; my conversation with Zaytuna Aretkulova, online, April 2023.
    18. When he sent his prognosis of looming economic collapse to the editors of the newspaper Pravda under his real name ("although, honestly, I am also scared"), he received a reply from the newspaper’s ideological department: "What you wrote cannot be the subject of discussion, for it is provocative in both spirit and content. All your arguments about the elimination of central planning and the transfer of the socialist economy to the market economy are, in other words, the proposal to eliminate public ownership of the means of production, that is to eliminate the socialist system. However, to your regret, our economy continues to develop successfully and will continue to develop at a pace that is inaccessible to the capitalist system."
      Letter to Viktor Sokirko from Pravda, 14 March 1980. Ekonomicheskie materialy i obsuzhdenija 1980-1988gg. Private collection Sokirko; my conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, September 2023.
    19. In the same letter, Sokirko, who harboured a life-long interest in Russian colonialism, demanded unilateral disarmament, a Soviet retreat from the Third World and Eastern Europe, and pressure on allies such as Cuba to retreat from Angola and Vietnam from Cambodia. Additionally, he advocated for the new Soviet leadership to "grant inviolable political and civil rights and freedoms", that is, "freedom of conscience, freedom of belief, speech and press, the right to own personal property, and freedom to travel abroad and return".
      Viktor Sokirko, "Zapiska Ju. V. Andropovu "O zheljatel'nykh v strane peremenakh"". Letter to General Secretary Andropov, 20 December 1982. Private collection Sokirko.
    20. One of their closest acquaintances and a regular participant fondly recalled these meetings at the Sokirkos' as a "school of civic consciousness"
      Alexander Obolonsky, Obituary Viktor Sokirko, 13 January 2018. Private collection Sokirko; my conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, June 2024
    21. The informal liberals had other priorities: "The most important thing is the condition of our economy, co-operation with West, and the education of the population," wrote one of Sokirko's fellow liberals among the dissidents.
      Chto zhdet Sovetskij Sojuz?: Collection of Answers to Solzhenitsyn's "Letter to the Leaders" (Samizdat Sammlung, Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen, 1974).
    22. From 1978, disappointed with the lack of interest in economic questions among fellow dissidents generally and his co-editors of Poiski in particular, Sokirko published his own short-lived Samizdat journal. Within the pages of For the Defence of Economic Freedoms, he - under his pen name 'Burzhuademov' - and a small group of fellow liberal authors called for a complete privatisation and financial de-regulation of the Soviet economy. They also deliberated on what they saw as an already emerging market economy in the USSR, and on the ways in which this development could be supported.
      The journal was called "Za zashchitu ekonomicheskikh svobod" in the Russian original. It is available at the Archiv der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen. and here: Issue 1, Issue 2, Issue 3, Issue 4, Issue 5, Issue 6, Issue 7
    23. Much of Sokirko's own critique was directed at his fellow dissidents more than at the Soviet leadership. In a provocative "J'accuse" piece in the first issue, he reproached the intelligentsia for their ignorance of political economy, their opposition to free markets, and their willingness to live on the exploitation of workers.
      K. Burzhuademov, "Ja obvinjaju inteligentov: Sluzhashchikh i potrebitelej v protivostojanii ekonomicheskim svobodam i progressu Rodiny," Za zashchitu ekonomicheskikh svobod, no. 1 (1978). Archiv der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen.
    24. Sokirko chided his fellow dissidents who had cheered for these "positive rights", "this means demanding the strengthening of its power and actually contradicting the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms."
      K. Burzhuademov, "A gde zhe zashchita ekonomicheskoj svobody?," Za zashchitu ekonomicheskikh svobod, no. 7 (1979). Archiv der Forschungsstelle Osteuropa, Bremen.
    25. Appositely for liberals, the contributors in Sokirko's journal saw the stagnating growth rates and low productivity of Soviet workers primarily as a cultural problem. Their proposed solution was thus a cultural one as well: more labour discipline should be created by developing responsible individuals with a pro-market mentality. A small disagreement broke out among the informal liberals on the role of ideology: some argued that capitalist morals had to be created by challenging communist ethics; others held that a communist work ethos would, to the contrary, be helpful, but had long been replaced by widespread cynicism in the population.
      K. Burzhuademov, "V zashchitu moral"nogo rigorizma", Zhit" ne po lzhi. Sbornik otklikov-sporov na stat'ju Solzhenitsyna 1 (1977). Private collection Sokirko.
    26. Western civilisation was the yardstick for the informal liberals' assessments of the Soviet economy, which failed to provide comparable freedoms and living standards. References to contemporary Western authors, however, were rare in the liberal Samizdat, and did not go beyond the odd mention of philosophers and historians. Instead, the focus was on pre-revolutionary Russian liberal traditions, the predicaments of liberals in the aftermath of the October Revolution, and the historical insights gleaned from Lenin's NEP.
      The political and intellectual impact of Soviet informal liberalism in the years of Stagnation was negligible. No more than a couple of dozen people regularly read Sokirko's journal, and he even occasionally authored articles under different pseudonyms to create the impression of a larger group of contributors.
      Print run and readership of Samizdat publications are difficult to gauge. The figure here, and the assumption of Sokirko's multiple authorship, is the estimate by Sokirko's son: My conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, April 2023
    27. He agreed to make a self-incriminating public statement. This led to his release even before his court hearing, but also further alienated him from the Soviet human rights movement, which strongly opposed even the smallest form of concessions to the state.
      My conversation with Olga and Alexander Obolonsky, online, June 2023; my conversation with Alexander Obolonsky, online, November 2023; my conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, April 2024.
  2. Catastrophe
    1. Without flexible prices, Sokirko argued, economic actors, no matter how much independence they are told to develop, will always depend on and even ask for orders from above.
      Viktor Sokirko, "O nevozmozhnosti radikal'nogo rasshirenija samostajatel'nosti i initsiativy predprijatij bez vvedenija gibkikh, dogovornykh tsen, kak osnovnogo jadra ljuboj khozjajstvennoj perestrojki". Letter to the journal EKO, 1983. Private collection Sokirko.
    2. During the early years of Perestroika, a small group around Sokirko sent similar recommendations to the Central Committee demanding "Hands off price formation!" Only immediately freed prices for all wholesale and retail sales could create financial stability and provide the information needed for economic efficiency, they argued in 1987.
      Ruki proch" ot tseneobrazovanija!. Letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, 4 December 1987. Private collection Sokirko.
    3. A year later, Sokirko vociferously rejected the proposals of a leftist group called the Committee for Fair Prices: "A necessary condition for the success of the reform is the refusal of the state from its arbitrariness in printing new money to cover its losses. The state can only act within the framework of the taxes it collects - no more. [...] No economic recovery is possible without hard money."
      Viktor Sokirko, Zamechanija k stat'jam "Komiteta za spravedlivye tseny". Samizdat letter, 19 March 1988. Private collection Sokirko.
    4. Sokirko called her article "excellent", but warned her not to neglect the importance of public order for economic reform.
      V. Sokirko, Rynok i Kommunizm (k probleme ideala perestrojki). Samizdat discussion of Perestroika reforms, 6 June 1987. Private collection Sokirko.
    5. Sokirko, too, prescient as ever, warned against a rash disempowerment of the Communist Party in the late 1980s, which would only lead to disintegration of the country, social turmoil, and eventually a return to dictatorship. Democracy and freedom were important goals, but their immediate introduction, when most people were more egalitarian than democratic, might produce contradictory results, he argued.
      V. Sokirko, Rynok i Kommunizm (k probleme ideala perestrojki). Samizdat discussion of Perestroika reforms, 6 June 1987. Private collection Sokirko
    6. Sokirko occasionally used the historical term "cadet" for pro-market liberals in his Samizdat publications.
      Burzhuademov, Ocherki rastushchej ideologii, p. 7.
    7. Among his chief concerns was agricultural reform. He urged Gorbachev to free Soviet farmers from local political mingling, and create efficiency by monetising trade in the countryside.
      Viktor Sokirko et al, "Perspektivy radikal'noj ekonomicheskoj reformy v promyshlennosti". Declaration, 6 November 1987. Private collection Sokirko.
  3. Hubris:
    1. Viktor Sokirko, aligning with Solzhenitsyn's approach to accept oneparty rule if it stuck to its own laws, had written an open letter to the constitutional committee as early as 1977, calling for an inclusion of property rights, the promotion of independent economic activity, and an independent judiciary.
      Viktor Sokirko; Lidia Tkachenko, Predlozhenija po ispravleniju Proekta Konstitutsii SSSR. Samizdat letter, 4 July 1977. Private collection Sokirko.
    2. But a social movement he created to help people who were convicted of economic crimes may have been the most impactful activity of any other former Soviet dissident.
      Sokirko's organisation, created in 1989, was called Obshchestvo zashchity osuzhdennykh khozjajstvennikov i ekonomicheskikh svobod, (Society for the defence of entrepreneurial convicts and of economic freedoms); my conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, September 2023, Andrey Pochmelkin, Obituary Viktor Sokirko, 13-1-2018.
    3. Over the years in early post-Soviet Russia, Sokirko thus managed to secure the release of around a thousand prisoners
      My conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, September 2023; my conversation with Alexei Sokirko, online, April 2023; Viktor Sokirko, Sbornik Nr 12, Golos osuzhdennykh khozjajstvennikov. Kommentarij k ocherku Shabashniki i Ratsionalizatory, 12-6-1993. Private collection Sokirko. Viktor Sokirko, Summa golosov prisjazhnykh v poiske granej ekonomicheskoj svobody.
    4. "Most of the Soviet population today are undemocratic," he warned in a letter to fellow dissidents in 1977, "and the very first free elections will show this with complete certainty."
      Viktor Sokirko; Lidia Tkachenko, Pis'mo sostaviteljam samizdatskikh bjulletenej "Vokrug proekta Konstitutsii SSSR". Letter, 6 September 1977. Private collection Sokirko.
  4. Diabolus Ex Machina
    1. Sokirko, as fictitious judge, was lenient, and handed a suspended sentence for embezzlement. True to form for an informal liberal in Russia, he was kind-hearted and idealistic - and mostly in conversation with himself.
      Viktor Sokirko, Stenogramma ICP po delu rukovaditelej vauchernogo fonda, 27 November 1996. Private collection Sokirko
    2. Sokirko always wholeheartedly rejected Putin, and later called him "the embodiment of violence and the imperial spirit".
      My conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, June 2024; Viktor Sokirko, Smozhem li my ostanovit' "AZEFA"? Popytka ob'jasnenijav s kollegami po antivoennomu dvizheniju. 16 November 2004. Private collection Sokirko.
    3. Sokirko, who as an ethnic Ukrainian always had a critical stance towards Russian great power, published anti-imperial critiques in Samizdat, and held discussions on Russian colonial history at his Friday soirées in his family flat. In the 1990s, his main concern was the war in Chechnya; he broke off contact with former allies such as Pavlovsky who now supported the war, and regularly, with only a handful of allies, picketed on Pushkin Square with a self-made poster on which he had written "All imperial dreams shall die!"
      "Pust' sdokhnut vse imperskie mechty"; my conversation with Alexander Obolonsky, online, February 2024; my conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, October 2024.
    4. Sokirko's reaction to the Second Chechen War was even more drastic: he now suggested decolonising Russia under the supervision of the United Nations.
      V. Sokirko, "Sova Minervy vyletaet eshche ne pozno". Review of Gaidar's book "Collapse of an Empire. Lessons for Modern Russia", 6-2-2007. Private collection Sokirko.
    5. What was needed was the overcoming of "imperial dreams about Russia's great power status and its uniqueness", Sokirko wrote
      V. Sokirko, "Sova Minervy vyletaet eshche ne pozno". Review of Gaidar's book "Collapse of an Empire. Lessons for Modern Russia", 6 February 2007. Private collection Sokirko.
    6. The indefatigable idealist Sokirko organised another public demonstration on Pushkin Square, which, as usual, only a handful of people attended.
      V. Sokirko, Antivoennoe dvizhenie - v zashchitu Rossijskoj Federatsii. Collection of articles 2007/8. Private collection Sokirko.
    7. Viktor Sokirko, of course, was in the midst of them, and assiduously spent as much time at the protests as his old age and frail health allowed him. The seasoned demonstrator, finally surrounded by large crowds, was a favourite image for the camerapeople who broadcast the spring of Russian democracy around the world.
      My conversation with Artyom Sokirko, online, September 2023.

Private collection Sokirko.