The enduring fascination with Russia’s twentieth-century economic historyhas its roots in the politics of revolution. For the Bolshevik leadership, theevents of 1917–18 presaged the foundation of a more equitable, humane andmodern economic and social order, one that would hold out hope to millions ofoppressed and impoverished people within and beyond Russia’s borders. Forthe Bolsheviks’ opponents, the revolution was destructive and barbaric,reversing a half-century of prior economic progress under the tsarist regime, forthe sake of what seemed to many of them to be dubious social and economic goals.These sharply polarised opinions have, to a greater or lesser extent, coloured theway in which later generations have assessed the aspirations and the performanceof the Russian economy during the twentieth century. When Stalin launched anextraordinarily ambitious programme of economic modernisation and social changeupon the Soviet Union after 1928, jettisoning traditional forms of agriculturalorganisation and cementing a system of central economic planning, the controversybetween enthusiasts and sceptics only deepened. The enthusiasts pointed to rapideconomic growth and dramatic technological change during the 1930s, contrastingthis with the prolonged depression in the capitalist West. Victory in the waragainst Nazism seemed to them to have validated the Stalinist industrialrevolution. For their part, the sceptics questioned the magnitude of economicgrowth, drew attention to systemic deficiencies and highlighted the widespreadterror and population losses.