Stalin's abrupt resolution of the crucial Soviet economic debate of the twenties - on the pace and method of industrialization - forced upon many the alternative of imprisonment or flight. Among them were not only political opponents and anti-collectivist peasants, but also economic officials and academics who argued an alternative path for socialist planning: had not the author of this book left the Soviet Union for Germany in 1920, he would have been a defendant in the trial of Mensheviks of March 1931. The life and work of economist friends and colleagues, condemned to long terms of imprisonment which few survived, form the principal part of this study, for which Naum Jasny drew on their writings before and after the Revolution and on a personal knowledge shared by scarcely anyone outside the USSR.
