Kristy Ironside is Assistant Professor of Russian History at McGill University.
Ironside contests the view that money had limited value in the
Soviet system. She demonstrates that Soviet postwar governments
were very concerned with increasing the ruble's purchasing power as
a means to economic growth and eventual abundance. This goal,
however, remained unfulfilled. By examining political leaders'
beliefs, economic experts' debates, and citizens' complaints to the
authorities, Ironside shows how a variety of economic policies
introduced in the decades after World War II repeatedly led to the
accumulation of unspendable money in the hands of the people. --
Maria Lipman * Foreign Affairs *
A brilliant piece of research, equally useful for historians and
economists...It offers a path-breaking narrative that expands on
established economic models of central planning such as soft budget
constraints, shortages and slacks, worker behavior under socialism
and economic coordination...A must read for economists ready to
take risks in interdisciplinary research and for historians willing
to undertake cutting-edge research interactions with quantitative
social science. -- Theocharis Grigoriadis * H-Net Reviews *
Fascinating...Ironside's highly original book fills in so many
important gaps in the scholarship and offers so many insights into
Soviet politics and economics that it deserves to be read by all
serious students of the postwar USSR. -- Julie Hessler * Soviet and
Post-Soviet Review *
A masterful account of Stalin's and Khrushchev's lost battle to
bring prosperity to the Soviet people and state through the
strengthening of the ruble. -- Elena Osokina, author of Stalin's
Quest for Gold: The Torgsin Hard-Currency Shops and Soviet
Industrialization
As Ironside shows so convincingly in this highly original account,
Soviet leaders and experts saw the politics of the ruble and the
role of money as crucial to their efforts to engineer a better
society. An excellent, exciting contribution to the new history of
political economy, with implications for other welfare states and
the history of inequality far beyond the Soviet Union. -- Vanessa
Ogle, author of The Global Transformation of Time:
1870-1950
How should socialists deal with money? In A Full-Value
Ruble, Kristy Ironside examines the dilemmas posed by money in
the postwar Soviet Union. Though Bolshevik leaders promised that
communism would produce universal abundance, the postwar Soviet
Union faced severe scarcity. So money decided who got what. From
prices to pensions, from bread allowances to savings bonds,
Ironside shows how monetary debates were fundamental to defining
the Soviet social and economic order. A Full-Value Ruble
revolutionizes our understanding of Soviet political economy. And
in doing so, it poses profound questions about the meaning of money
in our society, too. -- Chris Miller, author of Putinomics:
Power and Money in Resurgent Russia
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