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Extensions/applications/revisions of the Marxian vision of socialism can broadly be categorized into two polar strands: the centralized and the decentralized strands of socialist economic systems. Explores the main postulates of a decentralized version of a socialist economic system as provided by Kautsky, Luxembourg, Bernstein, Bukharin and Lange. The centralized strand of socialist economic systems has been elaborated drawing mainly from the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, Dobb, Sweezy and Baran.

Gorbachev′s vision of democratic, decentralised and market‐oriented socialism has generated diverse and controversial perceptions in the Soviet Union. Gorbachev′s claim that the USSR is not retreating from socialism but advancing towards it, having dismantled the Stalinist Command model, is assessed.

The Soviet experiment on socialism provides several distinguishable politico‐economic models. Employing dialectical methodology, examines the political economy of War Communism (1917‐21) as an exemplar of the “Socialist Command Model”. Explores the economic, political and social forces that were responsible for the emergence of the model, its policies, programmes and consequences, and finally, the forces that made it obsolete for the subsequent stages of Soviet development.