NOTE TO SELF: TEACHING: A Whole Course's Worth of Reading on Really-Existing Socialism
As it really existed. My reaction to teaching one week on "Behind the Iron Curtain" was that I wish I could teach a whole seminar course on it...
Lecture Notes on Behind the Iron Curtain: <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/lecture-rise-%26-fall-of-res-text.pdf>
Rick Ericson (1991): The Classical Soviet-Type Economy: Nature of the System & Implications for Reform <https://delong.typepad.com/files/ericson-soviet.pdf>
Martin Weitzman: Prices vs. Quantities <https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/weitzman/files/prices_vs_quantities.pdf>
Herbert Simon: Organizations & Markets <https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.5.2.25>
Francis Spufford: Red Plenty <https://books.google.com/books?id=PioE2EDcuMsC>
Cosma Shalizi:In Soviet Union, Optimization Problem Solves You! <https://crookedtimber.org/2012/05/30/in-soviet-union-optimization-problem-solves-you/>
Yegor Gaidar (2007): The Soviet Collapse: Grain & Oil <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/article-gaidar-soviet-collapse.pdf>
Robert Allen (2011): The Rise and Decline of the Soviet Economy <http://tinyurl.com/dl20161210v>
Simeon Djankov (2015): Russia’s Economy under Putin: From Crony Capitalism to State Capitalism <http://tinyurl.com/dl20161210ad>
Slavenka Drakulić: How We Survived Communism & Even Laughed <https://books.google.com/books?id=7HOBZPajtQ8C>
Café Europa: Life After Communism <https://books.google.com/books?id=_UM9gVkjh78C>
The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of the War <https://books.google.com/books?id=_13btgAACAAJ>
Anya von Bremzen: Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food & Longing <https://books.google.com/books?id=JkL2AhgFrw0C>
Edmund Wilson: To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing & Acting of History <https://books.google.com/books?id=x8m3DwAAQBAJ>
Roy Medvedev: Let History Judge: The Origins and Consequences of Stalinism <https://books.google.com/books?id=Tf2dwwEACAAJ>
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: Lenin in Zurich <https://books.google.com/books?id=hKtTwgEACAAJ>
Arthur Koestler: Darkness at Noon <https://books.google.com/books?id=AcGdAmm4_xcC>
Lecture Notes on Marx <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/lecture-notes-marx.pdf>
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Should I add...?
G. Warren Nutter: The Strange World of Ivan Ivanov <https://books.google.com/books?id=7SvJDwAAQBAJ>
G. Warren Nutter: Some Observations on Soviet Industrial Growth <https://github.com/braddelong/public-files/blob/master/readings/article-nutter-soviet-growth.pdf>
Milovan Djilas: The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist System <<https://books.google.com/books?id=8CIWAQAAMAAJ>>
Sheila Fitzpatrick: Everyday Stalinism: Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s <https://books.google.com/books?id=QS6IlPQf6owC>
Anna Akhmatova: Requiem & Poem without a Hero <https://books.google.com/books?id=I6xTDwAAQBAJ&>
Alan Furst: Dark Star <https://books.google.com/books?id=msDFn0ShKlwC>
History appears to have shown us that socialist economies fail badly, rather than producing and allocating goods and services well. Rather than just providing a history lesson, why no take a view of using economic ideas to fix the system to make it work (if that is indeed possible) and perhaps show how aspects can be grafted onto other systems, like the democratic Socialism that some countries seem to make work very well. After all, Finland is supposedly the happiest nation on Earth. Surely it isn't just due to national temperament and cold weather!