1941–
An economic historian who traced the bureaucracy of Soviet planning
In the final 1938 Politburo transcript Gregory unearthed, Stalin explained the purge: 'I explain it by the fact that we were engaged in great deeds.'
Paul R. Gregory is an American economic historian whose work examines the Russian and Soviet economies. Combining statistical analysis with interviews, he studied how Soviet bureaucracies and planners actually operated and helped preserve officials’ testimony through the Soviet Interview Project. His 2000 retrospective on the Soviet planned economy, co-authored with Yuri Olsevich, interpreted the Kosygin reform as an attempt to combine directive planning with profit incentives without resolving their institutional tension.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1963B.A. in economics, University of Oklahoma
- 1964M.A. in Russian, University of Oklahoma
- 1969Ph.D. in economics, Harvard University
- 1969–1972Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Oklahoma
- 1972–현재Professor of Economics, University of Houston
- 1979–1988Principal investigator, Soviet Interview Project
- 1990Published Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy
- 2000Co-authored a retrospective study of the Soviet planned economy with Yuri Olsevich
Related historical events
Studying the inner workings of the Soviet economic bureaucracy
In Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy (1990), Gregory examined how the Soviet economic bureaucracy operated and why it resisted change. The study drew on Soviet and Western published accounts as well as interviews with former economic officials, mainly from the middle-level elite. Interviewees described how routine and exceptional decisions alike shaped the allocation of resources. Gregory argued that practices often criticized as irrational nevertheless had an internal logic and consistency, studying the institution not only through its formal rules but also through the experience and decision-making practices of those who worked within it.