Although the history of centrally planned economies has been widely studied, the development of socialist thinking on the subject has remained largely uncharted. In this pathbreaking work, Pekka Sutela presents a detailed analysis of recent and contemporary Soviet economic thought. Dr. Sutela traces the competing currents in the Marxist tradition of socialist economies from the Revolution to the present day. In particular he shows how the Gorbachev economic reform program of 1987 rose from the work of Nobel Prize economist L. V. Kantorovich and his followers, and explains why this program subsequently failed. Since then, Soviet economists have tried to abandon their traditional theory of central planning and move along the path toward a market economy. Through extensive research, as well as his long established contacts with leading Soviet economists, Pekka Sutela shows how Soviet economic thinking has moved from dogmatism through reformism to pragmatism.