Zigzags on the way to technological sovereignty. Review of the book “The Failed Acceleration: The Economic Strategy of the ‘Khrushchev Decade’” by E. T. Artemov and E. G. Vodichev

This review focuses on E.T.Artemov and E.G.Vodichev’s book, “The Failed Acceleration: The Economic Strategy of the ‘Khrushchev Decade’” published in 2025. The reviewers note the maximum possible data coverage within a single monograph. This allows the authors to offer a comprehensive study of reform trajectories influencing structural economic processes and systemic generalizations in their research contribution to solving the problem of how, after the “miraculous” post-war economic recovery, to explain the decline in economic growth rates at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s. The description of the economic changes of the “Khrushchev decade” is organically embedded in the historical context, allowing one not only to evaluate the effectiveness of the “spurt” of economic acceleration in an extremely compressed timeframe but also to assess their impact on the country’s movement toward technological sovereignty in the following decades, up until the collapse of the USSR. The authors of the reviewed book pay special attention to the historical dilemma facing the Soviet state during this period – the simultaneous pursuit of three incompatible objectives: strengthening geopolitical and strategic positions through the expansion of military might, accelerating economic growth through the forward-looking accumulation of fixed assets, and creating a socialist analogue of the “consumer society”. Entering into the historiographical discussion, the authors conclude that Khrushchev continued previous Stalinist strategies. Fundamentally, his initiatives posed no threat to the Soviet model of industrial modernization, and the reforms resulted in a series of ad hoc administrative restructurings. The book is intended for specialists in Soviet economic history and science and technology policy.