Shestidesyatniki Economics, the Idea of Convergence, and Perestroika

Joachim Zweynert

History of Political Economy, 2019, vol. 51, issue 6, 277-299

Abstract: The article analyzes the reception of the idea of convergence in Soviet economics from the 1960s to the end of the 1980s. It is predominantly concerned with convergence theory as a policy idea that inspired perestroika. Its central question is: Under the conditions of an authoritarian regime, how could an imported policy idea that bluntly contradicted official ideology reach a degree of dissemination and (among a specific stratum of the elite) popularity that would later turn it into a central pillar of reform policy? An important finding is that the idea of convergence united the Soviet “people of the sixties†and some Western “progressive†intellectuals who together formed a transregional epistemic community that only for a short period of time, at the end of the 1980s, gained political influence.

Keywords: Soviet Union; convergence theory; perestroika; John Kenneth Galbraith (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:51:y:2019:i:6:p:277-299

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