Abstract

After the Bolshevik 1917 Revolution, the challenge for the newly formed socialist government was to envision and then build a workable society, without having any detailed plans. What were available for this massive social engineering experiment were Marxist concepts and insights, which were adopted and adapted to guide a transition to socialism in a predominantly backward country. Through that process, Soviet ¹ economic science was born. To understand the logic and ideological underpinning of the construction and development of Soviet economics, some historical context needs to be provided. An assessment of women’s contributions within Soviet economic thought cannot be meaningfully done without taking account of dramatic shifts in the social and political reality of Soviet socialism.