Chris Miller’s book is a historian’s account of Mikhail Gorbachev’s efforts to save the Soviet economy. Miller focuses on the question of why Gorbachev did not follow Deng Xiaoping and did not manage to reform the economy. Miller argues that it was not for the lack of understanding (Gorbachev did invest in learning China’s approach to reform and did understand it well), nor for the lack of trying. In fact, Gorbachev did try to implement Deng’s agricultural and industrial enterprise reforms. However, Gorbachev’s reforms were blocked by powerful vested interests. An inability to tackle the agricultural and industrial lobbies eventually resulted in the bankruptcy and collapse of the Soviet Union. While I generally agree with the political economy argument, I discuss a number of alternative explanations. I also discuss sources of Gorbachev’s weak state capacity and offer an evaluation of Gorbachev’s and post-Gorbachev reform efforts and mistakes based on the political economy research carried out in the last twenty-five years.

This survey discusses recent developments in the growing literature on the economic history of Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using novel data and modern empirical methods, this research provides important lessons for development and political economy. We address four strands of this literature. First, we present long-term trends in economic development, illustrating that throughout history, Russia significantly underperformed advanced economies, and quantify the human cost of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship. Second, we discuss studies of imperial Russia focusing on the causes of Russia’s relatively low level of economic development and the 1917 revolution. The third strand of the literature focuses on the Soviet period, explaining its slowdown over time and eventual collapse. The fourth strand documents the long-term economic, social, and political consequences of large-scale historical experiments that took place during both the imperial and Soviet periods. We conclude by discussing the lessons from this research and highlighting open questions.