The USSR didn't have the great depression, but they did have the HoloDomor or terror famine of Ukraine between 1932 and 1933 and the wider Soviet Famine of that period.
The history of the famine later went on to inspire the book Animal Farm and were a pure artifact of the central planning economy forcing the export of the very food required to feed millions of people.
Calling the famine an issue of erroneous data does a disservice to the victims. Millions of people don't starve while having their food confiscated at gun point due to an accounting error.
It's the proximate cause. As we all know it had horrible effects. Had the USSR been able to accurately measure food production it wouldn't have happened, so it is indeed the proximal cause.
The interesting thing about market economies is that the economy itself measures the food and distributes it in a maximally efficient manner when left unmolested, no central planner needed.
Distributed economies will always be more efficient than planned economies, because everyone on a distributed economy participates in the cognitive load of measuring and distributing resources, so the network has more processing power and less latency than a centrally planned economy.
As for food being always produced in market economies, see the Bengal famine. Food wasn't destroyed in the Holodonor, it was simply redistributed. Similar famines happened under capitalism, all it takes is for a crop to come up first or for cash crops combined with the anarchy of production to lead to a crop that is beneath the requirements.
So no, similar famines did happen under capitalism, and your thesis is simply incorrect.
Markets can have latencies measuring in years or more, see the bullwhip effect. It's incorrect to say that they will be lo always have more processing power and less latency. They would if they were theoretically perfect, but markets are already at their limit and are not far away from the most primitive of planning.
This used to be believed by academic historians, until the opening of the Soviet Archives in 1992, and now the consensus is that it wasn't, it was just really bad data.
The link you're citing had multiple authors resign due to academic dishonesty and is funded by the US government, therefore making it state propaganda.
It’s worth looking at primary sources for “Holodomor”, a depressing amount are from Ukrainian fascists.
The consensus among historians is that there was indeed a famine, one of the periodic environmental ones in the region. Planning was indeed slow to react to the famine and the sabotage by landlords, so food aid arrived late.
It was also the last famine in the region. The landlords that destroyed food were expropriated, land was collectivised and agriculture was industrialised. Talk to any older Ukrainians and they’ll tell you there was plenty of food throughout their lifetimes until the 90s after the USSR was defeated.
Wasn't the Great Famine in 1932 and 1933 a direct result of central (mis-)planning? PS: also I wonder if you actually experienced living in a centrally planned economy, the East German economy for instance stumbled from one crisis into the next, not as bad as the Soviet Union under Stalin obviously (as in: people didn't starve to death), but a healthy economy is pretty much the opposite of the "real socialist" economies of the Eastern Bloc.
There had been periodic environmental famines in Eastern Europe for centuries. The one in the 30s in Ukraine was exacerbated by landlords (kulaks) refusing to sell food to the state for lower prices and even destroying grain and cattle in an effort to raise prices. Incomplete information meant central planning was slow to react to both of these problems and many did starve, but of course capitalist countries also exaggerated the numbers.
My parents and extended family lived in România before 89, they describe quickly improving conditions, in some ways better than today. Guaranteed homes, education and jobs went a long way, for example.
All of the Eastern European economies also started off semi-feudal with little industry when compared to Western Europe. They were also under constant attack and blockade from the capitalist countries, that’s what the Cold War was about.
Regardless of all that, it’s a fact that the Soviet economy was unaffected by the Great Depression, which was the whole point on planned economies.
Doesn't it have more to do with the fact that they didn't even recover yet from the 1st World War? Also don't forget Holodomor. It literally happened after the Great Depression yet unlike Western Nations, 3.5 million people died from disease or starvation. Unlike in said Western countries that just had an economic collapse.
The history of the famine later went on to inspire the book Animal Farm and were a pure artifact of the central planning economy forcing the export of the very food required to feed millions of people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%93...