A Necessary Clarification Regarding 'Stalinphilia'

Book Review: Oreshkin D.B. (2019) Stalinphilia and the Soviet Statistical Epic, Moscow: Misl’ (in Russian).

Abstract

Citation: Khanin G. (2020) A Necessary Clarification Regarding “Stalinphilia”. Mir Rossii, vol. 29, no 3, pp. 177–193 (in Russian). DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2020-29-3-177-193

This book contains severe criticism of the nostalgia for the Soviet past that has become popular in the last 15–20 years in Russian society, including its scientific elite. The author contrasts it with an exposition of many aspects of Soviet reality. He especially relies on the falsification of statistics by the Soviet authorities to demonstrate the achievements of socialism. Especially impressive are the calculations of the large number of victims in the Soviet period and other evidence of the material and spiritual deprivation of the people in this period. This review contains clarifications of some of the estimates provided in the book of various periods of the pre-revolutionary, Soviet and post-Soviet economic history of Russia. In particular, it shows that the economic achievements of pre-revolutionary Russia are somewhat idealized. Lenin’s efforts to regulate the monetary system in the spring of 1918 have also been ignored. There is some overestimation of the economic achievements during NEP. For most periods, the author did not take into account the significant errors in the valuation of capital funds, understating their value, leading to exaggerated dynamics and profitability estimates. I also show that the slow pace of railway construction in the USSR does not necessarily indicate the slow development of the Soviet economy. The author further understates some accomplishments of the USSR in the economy and in a number of other areas of life.