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In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionaries came to power in the war-torn Russian Empire in a way that defied all predictions, including their own. Scarcely a lifespan later, in 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed as accidentally as it arose. The decades between witnessed drama on an epic scale—the chaos and hope of revolution, famines and purges, hard-won victory in history's most destructive war, and worldwide geopolitical conflict, all entwined around the dream of building a better society.This book is a lively and authoritative distillation of this complex history, told with vivid details, a grand sweep, and wry wit. The acclaimed historian Sheila Fitzpatrick chronicles the Soviet Age—its rise, reign, and unexpected fall, as well as its afterlife in today's Russia. She underscores the many ironies of the Soviet experience: An ideology that claimed to offer humanity the reins of history wrangled with contingency. An avowedly internationalist and anti-imperialist state birthed an array of nationalisms. And a vision of transcending economic and social inequality and injustice gave rise to a country that was, in its way, surprisingly normal.Moving seamlessly from Lenin to Stalin to Gorbachev to Putin, The Shortest History of the Soviet Union provides an indispensable guide to one of the twentieth century's great powers and the enduring fascination it still exerts

As the Soviet economy recovered from WWII devastation, economic officials struggled to design better incentives for promoting rapid technological progress in industry. They created model contracts for R&D work hoping to improve Soviet industry's relatively mediocre performance in using new technologies. This article describes the problems encountered in making model R&D contracts into an effective tool for promoting industrial innovation in the USSR. At the same time model R&D contracts were being established, a more radical reform, a "socialist license," was proposed by an official at the Soviet patent office (State Committee for Inventions and Discoveries), an agency whose top management came from the military-industrial complex. These proposed licenses gave R&D organizations greater financial benefits from new technologies by allowing licensing fees that related to cost savings and quality improvements. Economic officials, however, rejected the reform, viewing it as a challenge to the Communist Party's central planning authority. R&D contracts succeeded primarily in the educational ministry (MinVuz) and Academy of Sciences institutes, linking them more closely to industry, especially to facilities in the military-industrial complex.

The primary purpose of this Comment is to examine the problems facing Americans who want to set up joint ventures in the Soviet Union. Before examining the challenges, the rationale for the decision to permit joint ventures and the objectives that the Soviets hope to achieve will be addressed. This Comment will then discuss the major provisions of the laws and the major problems these laws have caused for American investors. Finally, the major systemic and political problems confronting joint ventures will be examined.