> To take a country that is a major, major agricultural exporter in
> 1913 and eliminate its agricultural surplus?
>
> To be "essentially self-sufficient" is the same as "not making
> anything anyone else would like to have."
IMO what this exemplifies is that liberal economists simply don't _get_ the USSR, because (1) they tend to start with the premise that the political/economic leadership was incompetent and/or evil, (2) it was organised with long-term objectives which are alien to liberal economics, such as abolishing (i.e. not reducing or ameliorating) poverty, and/or (3) they ignore or deal selectively with the historical context/s.
To take (3) and (2) first: for critics of the Soviet economic record, 1913 is a convenient date for comparison, since it avoids dealing with the non-economy that the Bolsheviks actually faced in _1917_, i.e. the Russian Empire was actually in the process of spontaneously _de-industrialising_, 100s of 1000s of people having fled the cities during WW1, as a result of ..... food shortages. (British India was also a major exporter of food commodities, and the social corollaries of that phenomenon are also well-known.)
More importantly, in relation to both points (1) and (2): how many Soviet citizens were going hungry or homeless in 1952? I can guarantee you that it was exponentially less than the number of the Czar's subjects who were in 1913 (not to mention 1917).
The USSR wasn't "making anything anyone else would like to have", because of point (2), i.e. the economy was obviously geared to the production of essential goods and commodities for the domestic market, rather than surplus goods for export.
regards,
Grant.