Letters to Stalin

Stalin and Our Times

The paper considers how a number of features of Stalin’s rule that appear most pointless or counter–productive from a present day standpoint, summed up as “futile repression”, can be understood as the rational choices of a dictator optimising his regime. The same reasoning may be applied to those aspects of Stalin’s legacy that are most commonly seen as positive, such as the industrial and mili...

Research-agenda Bias: letters to the editor

Stalin on Stamps: Design, Propaganda, Politics

Was Stalin Necessary for Russias Economic Development?

This paper studies structural transformation of Soviet Russia in 1928-1940 from an agrarian to an industrial economy through the lens of a two-sector neoclassical growth model. We construct a large dataset that covers Soviet Russia during 1928-1940 and Tsarist Russia during 1885-1913. We use a two-sector growth model to compute sectoral TFPs as well as distortions and wedges in the capital, lab...

Letters to the editors.

Dear Sirs, In their letter Chatauret et al. [1] address an interesting issue: in hypothermic machine perfusion for kidney preservation we should have a better understanding of the machine effects versus solution effects. During the discussions concerning the study design the scientific steering committee also discussed which preservation solutions should be used. For more than 40 years, KPS-1 i...