From permanent revolution to institutional design: the evolution of authoritarian discourse of Russian economists
The evolution of views on the socio-economic institutions operating in society supposes the existence of a process of cognitive changes. This process is not smooth, cumulative. There are three phases in the development: (1) of a revolutionary shift, during which the main research topics and rhetoric itself change; (2) improvements - analysis tools are improved, necessary data are collected and supplemented; (3) cognitive stagnation, which is characterized by the absence of discussions about the assumptions of institutional analysis, with a sharp increase in the number of works related to measurements, ratings, quality of statistical results. The lack of cumulativeness is associated with traumatic experiences that are caused by exogenous events in relation to economics (repression, financial collapse, military actions, etc.). The work distinguishes three such cognitive cycles. The first is associated with the Trotskyist criticism of the “bourgeois” bureaucratic Bolshevik leadership in the late twenties and early thirties of the twentieth century, the necessary to move to a “permanent revolution”, and the subsequent Stalinist repression. The question of whether the Soviet system was socialist or whether it was state capitalism remained open, although in the 21st century it ceases to be so acute and relevant. The second cognitive cycle was associated with the discussions of the “marketers” and the planners-“cavalrymen” in the sixties and the subsequent Kosygin reforms. The traumatic experience associated with the entry of the Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968 leads to subsequent cognitive stagnation. The third cycle is due to radical market reforms in the countries of the former USSR in the 1990s. The incompleteness of the reforms and dissatisfaction with their results led to the transition to the search for the institutional design, which were gradually replaced by the next cognitive stagnation in the late 10s. XXI century.