2002/01/01 by Paul R. Gregory, Andreĭ Markevich · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Soviet and Russian History #Russia and Soviet political economy #European history and politics
paper · doi:10.2307/3090390
openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
This article uses the Soviet state and party archives to describe the workings of a key Soviet economic institution and is designed to serve as a bridge between historical and economic research in the archives. Drawing on the archival records concerning the People’s Commissariats for Heavy and Light Industry, Paul R. Gregory and Andrei Markevich examine how these commissariats interacted with both superiors and subordinates. The principal/agent conflict between vertical orders and "economic rents" from unsanctioned horizontal dealings provide the theoretical framework. Gregory and Markevich explore such disfunctionalities as the tendency to conceal information, to act opportunistically, and to build autarkies as well as the primary measure used to combat these tendencies: splitting the commissariat up.