Command Economy

This article examines the problem of Uzbekistan's high geographical export concentration and explores how it can be reduced by developing new markets outside the CIS. An analysis of the current export structure shows that the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) reveals a significant dependence on a limited group of partner countries, while revealed comparativeadvantage (RCA) indices highlight product niches in which Uzbekistan is competitive (e.g., cotton, non-ferrous metals). Using principal-component analysis (PCA), we construct a composite priority score for prospective markets-India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Vietnam-taking into account economic size, import demand, growth rates and trade barriers. The resulting scores are compared with those of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan-countries with similar export profiles-to identify common trends and differences. The findings indicate that Uzbekistan's exports are highly concentrated both regionally and by product, creating vulnerability to external shocks. Entering South and Southeast Asian markets could improve the resilience of its export activities. The paper concludes with policy recommendations for diversification: negotiating trade agreements, supporting non-commodity sectors, upgrading product-quality standards and improving logistics.

The centrally-planned Soviet command economy was one of the twentieth century's most radical and complex economic, political and social experiments. Its establishment did not coincide with the onset of Soviet power across the former Russian Empire in 1917-1918, but instead resulted from fifteen years of shifts, readjustments and breaks, and through experiments with both quasi-socialist market economics and centralised administrative command practices. The present article surveys the conflictual relationship between Soviet planning and Marxism in this period. It demonstrates how the Stalinist command economy contradicted much of the theory and practice that the Bolsheviks themselves had thought ought to characterise the new economic system.

Жеравен хълм е получил името си заради жеравите, които някога са се реели тук. По време на руско-турската война на този хълм се разполагат руските войски, а самият император Николай I ръководи обстрела на турската крепост при Варна. По-късно, през 1974 г., на същото това място се издига паметникът на българо-съветската дружба – символ на социалистическата епоха. Архитектурният стил на паметника е определян като „социалистически брутализъм“, термин, който често се свързва с грубите форми и открития бетон, характерни за периода. „Брутализмът не идва от думата ‘брутален’, както може да си помислим, а от френския термин ‘béton brut’, което означава суров бетон. Този стил се утвърждава след Втората световна война като реакция срещу буржоазните елементи в архитектурата, и макар и противоречив, той продължава да бъде ценен инструмент за критически анализ на културно-историческия контекст. Това съоружение с многоцелеви функции може да бъде социализиран и интегриран в съвременната градска среда., То макар и противоречиво, има условия да се превърне в инструмент за критическо мислене и диалог, като помогне на хората да анализират историята и да изграждат нови, по-различни, стойностни и полезни цели, възгледи и условия.

Crane Hill got its name because of the cranes that once soared here. During the Russo-Turkish War (1828-1829), Russian troops were stationed on this hill, and Emperor Nicholas I himself led the shelling of the Turkish fortress near Varna. Later, in 1974, the monument to Bulgarian-Soviet friendship, a symbol of the socialist era, was erected on this same spot.
The architectural style of the monument has been defined as “socialist brutalism,” a term often associated with the rough shapes and exposed concrete characteristic of the period. “Brutalism does not come from the word ‘brutal’, as we might think, but from the French term ‘béton brut’, which means raw concrete. This style was established after World War II as a reaction against bourgeois elements in architecture, and although controversial, it continues to be a valuable tool for critical analysis of the cultural and historical context. This construction can be socialized and integrated into the contemporary urban environment. And the monument, although controversial, can become a tool for critical thinking and dialogue, helping people analyze history and build new, more conscious, creative and contemporary views on the interpretation of the past, the role of modernity and the vision of the future.

Annotation. We need to look back at the craftsmanship progress in the distant past, in order to know about the roots of the industrial development in Uzbekistan. As the emergence of industry as an independent branch of social production is associated with the separation of handicrafts from agriculture-the second largest division of labor. This article gives information about the steps the industry has taken so far and what policies have been implemented in this field, as well as the outcomes of those policies.

present author believes that certain processes cannot be understood without providing a broader historical background to them Therefore the aim of this paper is to present what the author believes to be the most important trends in the development of the Polish economy and Polish economics not only in the postwar period but also before World War II Interestingly it is Poland-with its Solidarity movement Round Table talks between SerieS: The hiSTory of economic ThoughT in TranSiTional counTrieS 2

В статье описана технократическая утопия академика А. И. Берга, его видение будущего и путей достижения этого будущего. Обозначены конкретные шаги, которые академик Берг делал для этого: создание Научного совета по комплексной проблеме «Кибернетика»-центра развития кибернетики в СССР и России; работа в области цифровизации образования. Этим направлениям деятельности А. И. Берга и тех, кто продолжил его труды, посвящены две отдельные статьи, которые публикуются в этом же сборнике.

present author believes that certain processes cannot be understood without providing a broader historical background to them Therefore the aim of this paper is to present what the author believes to be the most important trends in the development of the Polish economy and Polish economics not only in the postwar period but also before World War II Interestingly it is Poland-with its Solidarity movement Round Table talks between SerieS: The hiSTory of economic ThoughT in TranSiTional counTrieS 2

Cameraless photography was born short after the invention of photography in the XIX century. Henry Fox Talbot is one of the pioneers of
photography. He created cameraless photography called his works photogenic drawings. In the XX it`s associated mainly with Man Ray, Laslo
Moholi-Nagi and Christian Schad. The article begins with description of
some of the most popular ways to achieve this kind of photography. The
author tries to trace the development of cameraless photography in Bulgaria by researching a photographer called Elisaveta Barkova. She is not well known because of her modesty and her early death in 1995.
Keywords: Photography, art, XX century, Bulgaria, Man Ray.

This is Alisher Ilkhamov’s presentation to the conference "Turning Point In Eurasia: Geopolitics, Economics And Civil Society In Central Asia - Current Situation And Future Prospects" held in Almaty, Kazakhstan on August 28-29, 2023.

The main point is that the system of cotton-textile clusters created from above by the government of Uzbekistan has nothing to do with a free market economy, at least with the conditions of free and fair market competition. This system still remains command, as it was under Islam Karimov, while private textile companies, including those with foreign capital, simply fit into the framework of this command economy and play by its rules, combining the privileges of monopolists in each agricultural district with administrative power.

This paper explores the transition from the command & control (C2) structure and culture of the traditional hierarchy-as backbone of last Century's Industrial Revolution-towards the eNetworked Industrial Ecosystem-as backbone for this Century's ongoing IT-Revolution. Socio-cultural and economic contextual variables that may help or hinder the implementation of a heterarchical organization driven by responsible autonomy, are analyzed underlining the paradox hidden in the 'emergent' nature of an eNetworked organization. We illustrate how, within the classical 'top-down' managerial approach, the very power of initiative that can leverage 'bottom-up' clustering of resources to address dynamic organizational goals is hindered to conclude that a deep culture of trust and collaboration can unleash this power enabling the untapped 'mystery' of complexity to be used as a competitive advantage.

W pierwszej połowie lat siedemdziesiątych XX w. pod rządami Edwarda Gierka w Polsce wprowadzono jeden z największych programów inwestycyjnych po II wojnie światowej. W jego realizacji kluczową rolę odgrywały technologie importowane z krajów wysokorozwiniętych oraz projekty inwestycyjne finansowane z zachodnich kredytów. Rezultaty modernizacji kraju, chociaż spowodowały krótkotrwałe przyspieszenie rozwoju, nie przyniosły oczekiwanych efektów.

Blat and guanxi are terms describing personal networks in Russia and China respectively. They have existed and been practiced for centuries and remain highly relevant today. By employing a social network perspective, we analyze the architecture of blat and guanxi and some of the similarities between them. We also argue that personal networks in Russia and China are products of specific cultural heritages and as such have their own particular configurations and characteristics. Following a dynamic perspective, we examine how blat and guanxi have evolved over time: while they were similar in a number of dimensions during the command economy period, there are interesting signs of increasing differentiation in the post-command decade. The paper outlines important insights for Western managers and expatriates in terms of surviving in and effectively using blat and guanxi.

account. The movement in the target or changing expectation should be accurately monitored. To be successful, a number of challenges need to be met, e.g. planning experience limited to conventional models, the capability to identify and evaluate the most urgent planning needs and the realization that the needs analysis may identify expectations that cannot be solved by conventional planning techniques. Today, more than ever before, public sector management is subjected to such a range of demands--to re-engineer, to franchise, to be entrepreneurs. Many require planning initiatives. The opportunities for success and for failure in planning have never been so numerous. :~?i!! !i~i ! ~i ~! ¸¸¸

This paper is about how a command system allocated resources under profound uncertainty. The command system was the Soviet economy, the period was Stalin's dictatorship, and the resources were designated for military research & development. The context was formed by the limits of the existing aviation propulsion technology, the need to replace it with another, and uncertainty as to how to do so. We observe the formation of a quasi-market in which rival agents proposed projects and competed for funding to carry them out. We find rivalry and rent seeking, imperfectly regulated by principals. As rent seeking spread and uncertainty was reduced, the quasi-market was closed down and replaced by strict hierarchical allocation and monitoring. In theory, a dictator cannot commit to refrain from taxing the returns from today's effort tomorrow; therefore, we expect agents in a command system to seek only short-term returns from quasi-market activity. Agents' willingness to invest in the Soviet quasi-market for inventions is ascribed to a reputation mechanism that enforced long-run returns.

This paper explores the transition from the command & control (C2) structure and culture of the traditional hierarchy -as backbone of last Century's Industrial Revolution -towards the eNetworked Industrial Ecosystem -as backbone for this Century's on-going IT-Revolution. Socio-cultural and economic contextual variables that may help or hinder the implementation of a heterarchical organization driven by responsible autonomy, are analyzed underlining the paradox hidden in the 'emergent' nature of an eNetworked organization. We illustrate how, within the classical 'top-down' managerial approach, the very power of initiative that can leverage 'bottom-up' clustering of resources to address dynamic organizational goals is hindered to conclude that a deep culture of trust and collaboration can unleash this power enabling the untapped 'mystery' of complexity to be used as a competitive advantage.

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including: • Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about • Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job • Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure • Increasing productivity • A deep culture of collaboration

Informal networking can be seen as a positive activity with beneficial outcomes for individuals, firms, and society as a whole, but informal networking can also lead to collusion, cliques, nepotism, and other forms of unethical or corrupt conduct – largely related to research on emerging markets. To date, the construction of informal networks and their cultural intertwinement and development have not been a focus of international management and organization studies, a gap that this special issue seeks to address. This special issue contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of informal networks and their ambivalence, in which the same networks have different modes of operation and have positive and negative sides intermittently or simultaneously. We demonstrate the context in which informal networks operate, highlight their complexity, and encourage dialogue among scholars studying informal networks in a variety of countries. Using a context-based and comparative perspect...

Informal networking can be seen as a positive activity with beneficial outcomes for individuals, firms, and society as a whole, but informal networking can also lead to collusion, cliques, nepotism, and other forms of unethical or corrupt conduct – largely related to research on emerging markets. To date, the construction of informal networks and their cultural intertwinement and development have not been a focus of international management and organization studies, a gap that this special issue seeks to address. This special issue contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of informal networks and their ambivalence, in which the same networks have different modes of operation and have positive and negative sides intermittently or simultaneously. We demonstrate the context in which informal networks operate, highlight their complexity, and encourage dialogue among scholars studying informal networks in a variety of countries. Using a context-based and comparative perspect...

The paradigm of the last mile is most significant in its embrace of complexity, self-organization and achieving ends without direct control. Network technologies, architectures of participation and peer-production challenge traditional approaches to control but enable organizations to harness new and emergent capabilities including: • Engagement: by pursuing (work-related) interests that workers are passionate about • Continuity of effort beyond the boundaries of particular job • Extended Specialization: beyond the limits of the occupational structure • Increasing productivity • A deep culture of collaboration

Informal networking can be seen as a positive activity with beneficial outcomes for individuals, firms, and society as a whole, but informal networking can also lead to collusion, cliques, nepotism, and other forms of unethical or corrupt conduct – largely related to research on emerging markets. To date, the construction of informal networks and their cultural intertwinement and development have not been a focus of international management and organization studies, a gap that this special issue seeks to address. This special issue contributes to a better understanding of the dynamics of informal networks and their ambivalence, in which the same networks have different modes of operation and have positive and negative sides intermittently or simultaneously. We demonstrate the context in which informal networks operate, highlight their complexity, and encourage dialogue among scholars studying informal networks in a variety of countries. Using a context-based and comparative perspect...

The paper describes the procedures for planning the Soviet defense industry in the interwar period and analyses its limitations. Three features differentiated the planning of the defense industry from that of the civilian economy. First, the supply of national defense in the broadest sense had high priority and received the close attention of the country’s top leadership. Second, the process of military and economic planning for defense that created the context of defense industry plans had a strongly forward-looking character and generated increasing demands through the interwar years. Third, the detailed planning of defense industry was carried on simultaneously in two separate bureaucracies, a military hierarchy preoccupied with formulating demands and an industrial hierarchy the task of which was to organize supply; planners made strenuous efforts to reconcile supplies and demands in the defense industry, and met with limited success.

The unprecedented escalation in the number of organisations that have decided to internationalise their operations in the last two decades, and the international movement of labour that has accompanied such expansion, has meant that understanding the process of knowledge sharing within subsidiary operations has become an issue of increasing importance. Where the cultural distance between home and host nations is great, as it is between Western industrialised economies and the transition economies of the (former) Communist nations, there is even greater saliency for achieving effective knowledge sharing if its potential value for gaining organisational competitive advantage is to be harnessed. In examining knowledge sharing in Russia and China, this paper specifically addresses how group membership and personal networking in these countries facilitate and impede knowledge sharing. Ultimately, the paper provides important insights for Western managers about how to optimise knowledge s...

Mankind has always feared the future. We have always recognised the precariousness of life and sought ways to defend ourselves against the inevitable--from physical decline and death. The surrounding ruins of earlier civilizations remind us of our fate. We look hopefully to forces greater than ourselves--to gods or science--for guidance or protection. Yet our precautionary efforts betray signs of desperation, as we know that all great societies of the past have crumbled into dust. Still we hope to succeed where those that went before us failed. This is our belief, despite all evidence and logic to the contrary.
In order to go beyond reason, mankind has developed great myths about its ability to control the forces of destiny. These great myths provide the confidence required to live without total despair and to be able to step confidently into the future. Great myths about gods and super heroes have emerged in all societies in the past. Even today in modern technological societies we invest the masters of science, such as medical, climate and technological scientists, with a god-like status. We expect them to be able to cure all maladies of the body and mind, to protect us from the terrorist attacks of disease, to transform our hostile world into a human-friendly universe, and to provide a soft landing for exponential technological change that, some say, is projecting us at neck-breaking speed into the future. Surely it will take god-like powers to change the world's climate, to control the "technological singularity" and, ultimately, to transcend the natural force of entropy that threatens to eliminate all life in the universe.
This article is Essay One in my book GREAT MYTHS TO DIE FOR: ESSAYS ON THE SHIP OF METAPHYSICAL FOOLS (IGDS eBooks: February 2021). Recall what Sebastian Brant wrote in THE SHIP OF FOOLS (1494):

"The world is full of superstition,
Men prophesy by star's position
And every fool deems this his mission
The whole world wants to be deceived."

Surely this is an apt description of the proceedings of the November 2022 Climate Summit in Egypt!

presented via images and short descriptions. The central approach used to introduce the objects is anthropological. It establishes the main code for deciphering the meaning of the artifacts-a glimpse into history through the medium of the personal story and moments that have been preserved in human memory. The book is an original Bulgarian response to A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor (2011).

Fruzsina Müller’s Jeanssozialismus: Konsum und Mode im staatssozialistischen Ungarn is the first cultural historical monograph on the history of consumption in socialist Hungary which enquires into the politically stabilizing role of fashion. Based on the author’s dissertation submitted at the University of Leipzig and winner of the award for junior researchers of the Southeast Europe Association (SOG) in 2017, the book draws not only on archival sources of state and factory records but also on oral history interviews with central actors within the state bureaucracy and the producing entities, as well as on published sources in professional magazines and to a lesser extent on literary sources. It is somewhat surprising that a monograph on this subject was only published nearly thirty years after the political changes, especially since the case of Hungary is in many ways unusual within the socialist bloc. Taking both legal …

In Ungarn markierte der Aufstand von 1956 und seine Niederschlagung durch die sowjetischen Truppen einen zeithistorischen Wendepunkt. Nach einer Phase tiefgreifender politischer Erschütterungen entschied sich Generalsekretär János Kádár, die Konsumpolitik zu einem Schwerpunkt seiner Agenda zu machen. Steigende Lebensstandards sollten dem Regime neue Unterstützung schaffen.
Annina Gagyiova geht in ihrer Studie der Frage nach, wie sich Konsumpolitik und -praktiken in Ungarn zwischen 1956 und 1989 entwickelt und die Einstellungen der Bevölkerung zum Regime verändert haben. Sie stellt Alltagspraktiken, Aushandlungsprozesse und den kulturellen Kontext von Artefakten in den Vordergrund ihrer Analyse. So kann sie die enge Verbindung von individuellen Praktiken und planwirtschaftlichen Prozessen aufzeigen. Die am Konsum beteiligten Menschen und Institutionen hatten ihren Eigen-Sinn, weshalb sich der Konsum anders entwickelte als von Regierung und Partei erwartet. Diese erste umfassende Arbeit zur Konsumgeschichte der Kádár-Ära arbeitet auf der Basis eines breiten Spektrums historischer Quellen heraus, wie eine sozialistische Konsumkultur gleichermaßen zur Legitimation wie zur Erosion des Staatssozialismus beitrug. Nicht zuletzt zeigt sie, dass es sich bei der sozialistischen Konsumkultur keineswegs nur um eine defizitäre Variante des westlichen Modells gehandelt hat, sondern dass sie eine eigenständige Form des consumerism hervorgebracht hat.

This paper is concerned with the relationship between strategy, management control systems (MCS), and innovation. MCS are described in terms of a package of controls that is comprised of social networking, organic innovative culture, and formal controls. We develop a path model that proposes that product differentiation is associated with more extensive innovation. It is argued that this association is explained, in part, by paths from product differentiation to the three dimensions of MCS, and then paths from these MCS dimensions to innovation. Using a survey of Russian enterprises we confirm that product differentiation is associated with innovation. Also, product differentiation is associated with each dimension of the MCS. Organic innovative culture and formal controls have direct paths to innovation, while social networking has an effect on innovation by acting indirectly through its connection with organic innovative culture. JEL Classification: M41.

The paper studies the influence of Gordon Tullock (1967) and the rent-seeking literature more generally on the study of corruption. The theoretical corruption literature with its emphasis on principal-agent relationships within government and rent creation by corruption politicians has largely, but not entirely, overlooked that contestable rents encourage unproductive use of real resources in seeking these rents. As a consequence, the literature underestimates the value of corruption control and the cost of corruption itself.

Market-based approaches have a long tradition in supporting of taskassignment multiagent systems. Such systems consist of customer agents with jobs to assign, and provider agents that have the resources to perform these jobs. Jobs can be complex in the sense that they require the collaboration of several provider agents. We present a set of organisational forms of collaboration between firms that have the potential to increase performance through the structure they impose. This gain of structure, which comes with a loss of autonomy of the individual agents, is especially valuable in settings where communication has to be limited.

This paper explores the influences of the traditional Chinese culture on social relations in China. It provides an introduction to the concept of Guanxi, the notion that social connections are based on socially situated reciprocity. This is different from social interaction in Western society that is based on self-interest and equity. Guanxi represents the foundation of social networks in many Eastern countries. As such, the study of social networks in China requires scholars to examine Guanxi networks. The paper demonstrates how a Guanxi perspective might be added to the examination of various theories that comprise structural (network) theory, including social capital theory, social exchange theory, cognitive and contagion theories, and the role of homophily for the study of Chinese society and its social organizations.

This article starts by mapping the growing (Western based) literature that deals with participation and empowerment by outlining two clusters of writingsÐthose that glorify these phenomena and those that problematize them. The article then examines why participation and empowerment, as introduced in the Western literature, do not work in Russian organizations. Explanations are found in one-man authority, anti-individualism and dependence, tightly coupled hierarchies, lack of knowledge sharing, and double-bind situations. The arguments are illustrated by examples from two case studies of Russian companies with Western participation.

This article starts by mapping the growing (Western based) literature that deals with participation and empowerment by outlining two clusters of writingsÐthose that glorify these phenomena and those that problematize them. The article then examines why participation and empowerment, as introduced in the Western literature, do not work in Russian organizations. Explanations are found in one-man authority, anti-individualism and dependence, tightly coupled hierarchies, lack of knowledge sharing, and double-bind situations. The arguments are illustrated by examples from two case studies of Russian companies with Western participation.

This article is devoted to analyze the current condition of elaboration of regional investment projects at the present-day stage of economic reforms being led in Uzbekistan. Article sets forward proposals on working out prospective and present-day programs on inviting international financial institutions, foreign financial and insurance organizations and donor countries in order to implement with them investment projects of high importance for Uzbekistan. Practical recommendations on working out the mechanisms for implementation and efficiency assessment of investment projects, investment projects portfolio revolving to choose high priority investments were also suggested.

Business today is increasingly global, requiring entrepreneurs and managers aiming to internationalize their enterprises to develop and foster business network relationships. Therefore, business researchers have often focused on the role that networks have in business relationships in general, and those occurring in international business and entrepreneurship in particular. However, the cultural background of managers may affect the ways in which they make sense of business networking, an area the research has paid less attention to. In this study, we applied a qualitative methodology through the sensemaking approach on managers in mutual business relationship dyads. The research context is Finnish and Russian managers of internationally operating enterprises. We sought to illustrate how they make sense of their mutual business relationship and how their cultural background can affect that understanding. The study is based on a long-term research project where the researchers aim to explain sensemaking in small- and medium-sized enterprises in different cultural contexts. Readers will learn how the sensemaking approach can be used to capture cultural understanding of business concepts. In addition, they will learn how to structure the interviews, how to code the data, and what challenges can arise in interpreting the data.

This article discusses agricultural production enterprises as well as the benefits and preferences used in their activities, the issues of providing benefits and preferences to agricultural production enterprises, developed proposals and recommendations for stimulating the activities of these enterprises.

Although the new ruling regime of Uzbekistan has made some progress towards ending the practice of state-sponsored forced labor in its cotton industry, the government at the same time has moved to expand the use of forced labor into a new sphere, the household plots of land the owner of which had for many years, even in Soviet times, enjoyed a relative freedom of deciding what to do with these pieces of land, not anymore. The government has decided to impose upon the owners of household plots directive plans obliging them produce agricultural products. This step has been notably made in the condition of the COVID-19-caused lockdown and against the backdrop of massive increase of human rights violations across the country.

В статье с привлечением архивных фондов РГАЭ, результатов интервью с плановиками и советской экономической литературы реконструируются причины создания Госпланом СССР автоматизированной системы плановых расчетов (АСПР), которая должна была стать необходимым промежуточным шагом на пути к общегосударственной информационной системе (ОГАС). Собран и проанализирован массив литературы об АСПР советского периода, архивные документы по вопросу создания АСПР из фонда Госплана в РГАЭ, проведены интервью с руководителями (В. Б. Безруков, В. В. Коссов, Я. М. Уринсон) и сотрудниками ГВЦ Госплана. Это позволило восстановить фактографию работ над АСПР, описать ее архитектуру (основные блоки и функции), а также
проследить ход политической борьбы вокруг идеи перевода общегосударственного планирования на компьютерную основу. Обсуждение и заключение. Скорректирован сложившийся в
исторической литературе нарратив об ОГАС как полностью нереализованном проекте, предложена объяснительная модель тактики Госплана СССР, позволившей ему выиграть борьбу
за право руководить создаваемой системы общегосударственного управления. АСПР трактуется как необходимый для преодоления бюрократического противодействия промежуточный шаг. Ее статус как ведомственной системой позволил Госплану исключить из процесса разработки другие ведомства, которые тормозили согласование концепции ОГАС, а переход от идеи единой к идее объединенной системы позволил перевести всех желающих иметь собственные информационные системы из противников в наблюдателей. В дальнейшем, когда АСПР уже начала функционировать и были получены практические результаты, они дали Госплану СССР аргумент для требований о подключении к АСПР иных информационных систем и создания таким образом ОГАС с АСПР как его ядром.

Based on first-hand account, this paper offers evidence on price setting and price adjustment mechanisms that were illegally employed under the Soviet planning and rationing regime. The evidence is anecdotal, and is based on personal experience during the years 1960–1971 in the Republic of Georgia. The description of the social organization of the black markets and other illegal economic activities that I offer depicts the creative and sophisticated ways that were used to confront the shortages created by the inefficient centrally-planned command economic price system with its distorted relative prices. The evidence offers a glimpse of quite explicit micro-level evidence on various types of behavior and corruption that were common in Georgia. Rent-seeking behavior, however, led to emergence of remarkably well-functioning and efficiency-enhancing black markets. The evidence, thus, underscores once again the role of incentives in a rent-seeking society.