Was Stalin Necessary? Counterfactual Evidence on Soviet Growth
斯大林是否必要?苏联经济增长的反事实证据
This article evaluates whether the exceptionally rapid growth of the Russian and Soviet economy after 1928 requires a specifically Stalinist explanation. The analysis treats this historical question as a sequence of increasingly demanding counterfactual comparisons rather than a binary comparison between observed growth and a single alternative. Long run output series from the Global Macro Database and the Maddison Project are combined with synthetic control, augmented…