Социализм в отдельно взятой стране: структурные дефекты и распад СССР

Khramov, Denis (2026): Социализм в отдельно взятой стране: структурные дефекты и распад СССР.

Abstract

The USSR did not collapse from any single trigger but from the interaction of two structural defects rooted in its founding choice — building socialism in one country by command rather than market. First, administrative pricing left the economy unable to measure its own internal flows: the question of who subsidized whom has no ruler-independent answer and flips sign between domestic and world prices. Second, the ethno-territorial design — fixed by the 1922 Union Treaty and the 1924 Constitution — embedded nations in bordered republics with the right to exit. Drawing on three independent transfer computations (world-price recalculation, budget transfers, long-run capital flows) and the recovered primary Goskomstat 1988 world-price recalculation, the paper shows the RSFSR was the net donor in world prices and in the budget yet roughly balanced in raw domestic prices — its apparent domestic deficit is entirely a foreign-trade artifact of underpriced energy exports that reverses sign under world pricing. The donor direction is robust; its magnitude is an artifact of non-market pricing, and the same measurement defect extends beyond Soviet borders. The dissolution is presented as a structural consequence of the founding choice — an explanatory model, not a theorem. Data and code are open.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• English Title: Socialism in One Country: Structural Defects and the Break-up of the USSR
• Language: Russian
• Keywords: распад СССР, командная экономика, централизованное планирование, спор о социалистическом расчёте, административные цены, искажения относительных цен, межреспубликанские трансферты, мировые цены, межотраслевой баланс, этнофедерализм, право выхода, энергетические субсидии, СЭВ, кто кого субсидировал, Госкомстат
• Subjects: B - History of Economic Thought, Methodology, and Heterodox Approaches > B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches > B53 - Austrian; F - International Economics > F1 - Trade > F14 - Empirical Studies of Trade; F - International Economics > F5 - International Relations, National Security, and International Political Economy > F54 - Colonialism ; Imperialism ; Postcolonialism; H - Public Economics > H7 - State and Local Government ; Intergovernmental Relations > H77 - Intergovernmental Relations ; Federalism ; Secession; N - Economic History > N1 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics ; Industrial Structure ; Growth ; Fluctuations > N14 - Europe: 1913-; N - Economic History > N4 - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation > N44 - Europe: 1913-; P - Economic Systems > P2 - Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies > P21 - Planning, Coordination, and Reform; P - Economic Systems > P2 - Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies > P22 - Prices; P - Economic Systems > P5 - Comparative Economic Systems > P51 - Comparative Analysis of Economic Systems

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