This work provides an in-depth case-study of decision-making in the
Soviet Union in the Stalin era. It focuses on the development of rail
transport policy, upon which the entire economy as well as the country's
defence were so crucially dependent. It analyses the role of
institutional lobbies in shaping policy, and sheds new light on the
Stakhanovite movement, and analyses for the first time the impact of the
Great Purges on the railways. The work provides a critical examination
of the adequacy of existing conceptualisations of the Stalinist state.