The Economic Origins of Soviet Autarky 1927/28-1934

Abstract

Forty years ago the USSR was rushing toward a degree of economic isolation unparalleled by any industrial economy at peace. The autarkic position reached by the Soviet economy in the mid-1930s seemed to be a fundamental characteristic of Soviet policy. In the past two decades, however, Soviet foreign trade has grown rapidly. Thus, it is of both current and historical interest to understand and reassess the circumstances under which the USSR sharply curtailed economic relations with the world capitalist economies in the 1930s. Conventional interpretation stresses that Stalin, during the First and Second Five-Year Plans (1928/29-1932, 1933-37), deliberately pursued economic autarky—a policy intended to reduce Soviet foreign trade as quickly as possible to a “tolerable minimum” and without regard to the possible economic gains from higher levels of foreign trade. According to this explanation, the initial expansion of trade between 1927/28 and 1931 is interpreted as a policy of “imports of machinery intended to end imports” and the subsequent cutback in imports is cited as evidence of its success. In the following analysis of the policies and events that culminated in Stalin’s “autarkic policy,” it is argued that the collapse and stagnation of Soviet foreign trade after 1931 were unforeseen and caused by events beyond the control of Soviet planners.