Digitalization of Data Making Possible Return of a Planned Economy in the Best Sense, Putin Aide Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 26 – The autonomation of management processes and the widespread digitalization of economic relations is leading to the return of an updated version of the planned economy that operated in the USSR for more than 70 years, Maksim Oreshkin, a former economic development minister and now an aide to Vladimir Putin, says.

            He made that comment during a talk to a Moscow conference on Higher Education in the New Technological Era, and it is far from clear just how far he wants to go in that direction                                  (ru.themoscowtimes.com/2026/04/26/pomoschnik-putina-zayavil-o-vozvraschenii-planovoi-ekonomiki-a193757).

            But three things are clear: First, Oreshkin believes that computerization can address one of the biggest problems of the planned economy in Soviet times, the inability of planners to come up with plans given the complexity of economic activity and the uncertainties that such shortcomings inevitably produced.

            Second, the Putin aide mentions prices for taxi rides as a place where such planning could occur, an indication that if a move in this direction is made anytime soon, it is likely to be applied not across the economy as a whole but only in limited segments of the economy as a kind of test drive.

            And third, however that be, any suggestion of this kind by someone near the center of power is going to send shockwaves through the Russian economy and undermine international confidence in that economy still further given that the rise of the market in place of planning remains one of the chief victories of the end of the USSR as far as many are concerned.