Donovan’s Reviews > Soviet Economic Development Since 1917 > Status Update

"To restore the mass of the peasantry to the position of allies and to revive the exchange of products between town and village, it was necessary to abolish the system of requisitioning and to replace this initially by an agricultural tax in kind. ...The proposed tax was to be assessed as a proportion of the net produce above minimum subsistence needs of the family."

"...the economist Preobrazhensky...preached the inevitable 'dying out of money' in Soviet economy and welcomed the inflationary printing press as 'that machine-gun which attacked the bourgeois regime in its rear, namely through its monetary system'. 'Honour to our printing presses,' he wrote in a study of paper money in the Soviet epoch. (pp. 121-122)

"Already in August, 1918, a decree of Vesenkha had stipulated that "settlements for products delivered or received are to be effected by means of book entries without the use of money", thereby eliminating money as a medium for transactions between State undertakings." etc etc.

"Against those who repeated traditional formulas about the dangers and oppressiveness of State Capitalism he emphasised that such fears were groundless in the novel situation where the working class held State power and occupied the "key positions" from which it could steer the course of development. In such circumstances it was with an "encircled Capitalism" that compromises were being made."