Soviet industrialization in the context of economic theory

In the book by Paul Gregory, the leading scholar on economic history of Rus-sia/USSR the planned economy was described as «the most important social, politi-cal, and economic experiment of the twentieth century». In this article the author re-view modern theoretical approaches proposed within the field of economic history to the pre-war Soviet industrialization of 1928–1940. The author tries to show how economic modelling not only helps to understand mechanics of planned economy during the first five-year plans, but also estimate how efficient economic decisions were and how alternative (counter-factual) historical trajectories might unfolded