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“... This is a well-documented, thought-provoking monograph, much of it written when the author was still in Hungary, but reinforced by a fascinating introduction which makes the whole argument accessible to ‘bourgeois’ readers. Among the book’s many merits is its dry ironic humour. Szelenyi now lives in America, but, unlike some other émigrés, he has not swung from one extreme to the other ...”

“... to introduce central planning. There was no other alternative to the market. Tretevo ne dano, as Alec Nove says Russians still say: ‘there is no third way.’ And for all its extraordinary achievements, this planning has not been a success. The difficulties are not now technical: the advent of computers and the techniques of linear programming make it ...”

“... the soviets,’ and whose leaders now talk openly about the desirability of a multi-party system. Alec Nove’s book, though covering similar topics, is much more of a report from the front line of glasnost. Instead of simply referring to the most notable manifestations of intellectual openness, he summarises their arguments, quotes liberally from ...”

“... workforce, is a lack made all the more noticeable by the following chapter in which Professor Alec Nove does discuss just these questions, in relation to agriculture. ‘In my view,’ he writes, the basic principles of effective reform ... are those which underlie the relative success of Hungarian farming. Its essentials are the ...”

“... in the Cultural Revolution of the late Twenties just when their services were needed most? Alec Nove wrote, apropos the Bolsheviks’ decision to collectivise, that while a rabbi might have the choice between a cheese sandwich and a ham sandwich, this would not be a real choice for him. In other words, ideology counts – in this case, a genuinely ...”

“... times – a view which, at least until recently, was fashionable in all Soviet reform circles. Alec Nove, British Sovietology’s doyen, has noted that both Nikolai Petrakov, Gorbachev’s economic adviser, and Nikolai Shatalin, the sole reform economist in the Presidential Council, ‘repeatedly and openly attack the existing reform programme as too ...”

“... acts between consenting adults’? Take the following, from a novel by Vasili Grossman, quoted by Alec Nove in The Economics of Feasible Socialism: I wanted since childhood to open a shop, so that any folk could come in and buy. Along with it would be a snack-bar, so that the customers could have a bit of roast meat, if they like, or a drink. I would ...”