A Critique of Soviet Economics is a work ofMarxist–Leninistpolitical economy written byMao Zedong. It includes a critique of two Soviet works:Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, a short 1951 work by Soviet leaderJoseph Stalin; andPolitical Economy: A Textbook, an official publication of Institute of Economics of theAcademy of Sciences of the Soviet Union published in 1957. First published in 1967, the book is regarded as an early polemic of theSino-Soviet split which emerged in the late 1950s and the 1960s.

From 1958 to 1960, Mao Zedong organized a reading group, readingPolitical Economy: A Textbook, leaving notes and talks. The conversation was recorded byDeng Liqun. The content was first published in 1967, which was included in theLong Live Mao Zedong Thought. by which time theSino-Soviet split had fully erupted.^[1]

The book was reissued in English translation in the nameA Critique of Soviet Economics by theMonthly Review Press in 1977.^[2]

In 1995, Deng Liqun, after six systematic collations, made theTranscript of Talks on Reading the Political Economy: A Textbook of Soviet, and in 1998, the State Historical Society of the People's Republic of China publishedMao Zedong's Notes and Talks on Reading Socialist Political Economy (Chinese:毛泽东读社会主义政治经济学批注和谈话) under the name of study materials for state historical research, of which Deng Liqun'sTranscript is the main part. In 2000, the State Historical Society published a short version of the book in two volumes.

InA Critique of Soviet Economics, Chinese leader Mao criticizes the economic views of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, arguing that theSoviet Union'scollectivization of agriculture by means of stateexpropriation represented a "rightist deviation" by substituting the action of the state in place of the grass-roots action of the peasant masses.^[1] Mao additionally criticized Soviet economists for making the assumption that socialist industrialization was a necessary precondition for the collectivization of agriculture and consequently over-prioritizing the development ofheavy industry in an unbalanced way.^[3]

Mao also challenged the division betweenpeople's democracy andSoviet democracy.

• Gilbert Rozman (1987).The Chinese Debate about Soviet Socialism, 1978-1985. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
• Lynn Turgeon (December 1978). "A Critique of Soviet Economics, by Mao Tse-tung".Journal of Economic Literature. 16:4. pp. 1445–1447.In JSTOR.

• Ideology of the Chinese Communist Party
• Maoism
• Works by Mao Zedong

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles containing Chinese-language text