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Socialist in form, mercantilist in substance : the transformation of Soviet Russia into a mercantilist empire, 1917–91
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Florence : European University Institute, 2025
EUI; HEC; PhD Thesis
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KAUP, Georg-Henri, Socialist in form, mercantilist in substance : the transformation of Soviet Russia into a mercantilist empire, 1917–91, Florence : European University Institute, 2025, EUI, HEC, PhD Thesis - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/92785
Abstract
This dissertation reinterprets the economic history of the Soviet Union through the lens of mercantilism, challenging the conventional narrative that considers the Soviet Union a failed socialist experiment. By analyzing the Soviet approach to natural resource management—particularly in the oil-and-gas, petrochemical, hydro, and agricultural sectors—this work argues that the Soviet state operated more as a mercantilist empire than as a socialist state. The dissertation traces Soviet economic policies from 1917 to 1991, showing how "aspiringly socialist" policies devolved into mercantilist stratagems. Chapter 1 examines the origins of Soviet resource management strategies, showing how the 1920 GOELRO plan laid the groundwork for mercantilism in the Soviet context by prioritizing oil exports. Chapter 2 focuses on the 1920s and 1930s, highlighting Soviet oil policies’ parallels with the resource management policies of earlier European mercantilist empires. Chapter 3 analyzes Khrushchev’s "petrochemical plan," which, despite its developmentalist goals, deepened the Soviet Union’s reliance on crude oil exports and strengthened its economic ties with the capitalist world. Chapter 4 explores Soviet hydro projects in Central Asia, illustrating how efforts to boost cotton production mirrored past mercantilist practices and fueled nationalist movements, which destabilized the USSR. The final chapter links the Soviet Union’s collapse to its mercantilist economic practices, particularly its dependence on oil exports to the west to not dilute its domestic power through agricultural reform, which left the state vulnerable to external shocks, that materialized in the 1980s and destroyed the state in 1991. The thesis aims to contribute to historiographical debates on Soviet economic history and offer a novel framework for understanding the Soviet Union’s historical trajectory. It argues that the Soviet Union’s failure was not merely due to mismanagement but was fundamentally rooted in contradictions of its resource-based mercantilist policies, which ultimately led to the state’s economic and political collapse.
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Defence date: 02 June 2025
Examining Board: Prof. Alexander Etkind (Central European University, External Supervisor); Prof. Nicolas Guilhot (European University Institute); Prof. Iver B. Neumann (The Fridtjof Nansen Institute); Prof. Jeronim Perović (University of Zurich)
Examining Board: Prof. Alexander Etkind (Central European University, External Supervisor); Prof. Nicolas Guilhot (European University Institute); Prof. Iver B. Neumann (The Fridtjof Nansen Institute); Prof. Jeronim Perović (University of Zurich)