This paper covers the history of the economies in Tsarist Russia during 1900–1917 and in the Soviet Union during 1917–1991. The Tsarist economy section, which accounts for about one-quarter of the paper, examines issues such as the emancipation of the serfs, industrialization, fiscal and monetary policy, foreign economic relations, and the war economy during 1914–17. Candidates will be expected to be familiar with the evolution of the command economy in the USSR (War Communism, New Economic Policy, Stalinist central planning, regionalization during the Khrushchev period, the mature command economy under Brezhnev). But emphasis is placed on knowledge of the features and policies of the Soviet command system (e.g. central planning, performance of state enterprises, fiscal and monetary policies, foreign trade), rather than on the details of economic history. The final section of the paper examines the economic reforms during the perestroika, economic collapse, and the break-up of the Soviet Union.
