Dictator, Loyal, and Opportunistic Agents: The Soviet Archives on Creating the Soviet Economic System.

Studies of the mature Soviet economy focus on the structural weaknesses of rent seeking and corruption. Such an economy is presumed to perform better in its adolescent phase under a strong stationary-bandit dictator, dedicated to growth and able to control rent-seekers. We use the recently opened Soviet state and party archives to show the process that began in the 1930s of transforming the inner circle of the Soviet stationary bandit into a rent-seeking bureaucracy lacking long-term goals. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers