The Command Economy Before Stalinism: Rethinking the Soviet Union of the 1920s

The article discusses the precursors of the transition to a command economy in the USSR that took place after Stalin consolidated power. The author identifies the foundational elements of the New Economic Policy (NEP) of the 1920s, which became fundamental to the command economy from the 1930s on. Cadioli considers the move away from the NEP, the transition to a Stalinist economy, and the mechanisms of the shift from collective planning with no use of force in the 1920s to the "planning without theory" that characterized the rest of the Soviet period.