Assessment of the predictive potential of international Sovietology

Abstract

Aim. The work aimed to review and analyze the opinions of international Sovietologists regarding the ways of the Soviet economy development of the late socialist period, as well as to identify problems of the prognostic potential of international Sovietology.Tasks. The work was performed to study scenarios for the development of the pre-perestroika Soviet economic model and problems in their prediction by international analysts.Methods. The object of study was the international historiography of the USSR economic history in the pre-perestroika period. The sources of information were official statistics and the works of international analysts. The authors of this article used general scientific research methods, as well as methods of historical and economic analysis.Results. An analysis of international studies shows that the hypothetical scenarios for the development of the Soviet Union put forward by Sovietologists before perestroika were based on prognosis of previous years, conflicting statistical data and scientific methods tested under the conditions of the capitalist economic model. Meanwhile, the Soviet planned socialist model represented a different type of economy, which had not previously been tried to be implemented on a national scale (the situation remains the same in the period considered). According to the position of international researchers, despite the low growth values of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and the main leader of the economy, the industrial sector (taking into account the fall in oil revenues and stiffening of sanctions against the USSR in the early 1980s), the economy remained stable. Due to large margins of safety in the form of developed industry, agriculture, infrastructure, high scientific potential, and a huge stock of natural resources, the further existence of the USSR was not in doubt.Conclusion. Many Sovietologists have written about the need for fundamental changes in the Soviet planned economic system. At the same time, they took into account the significant difficulties and risks associated with possible reforms, believing that the consequences of the radical introduction of the market into the planned economy could be significant disturbances. This is one of the reasons why, in the pre-perestroika period, few Western analysts admitted the possibility of large-scale reforms in the near future.