enough to keep her reforms in place. Even when the Labour Party later came back to power, it did not attempt to challenge the key principles of Thatcherism. Soviet Union and Russia Within a few years of the rise of the Russian Revolution, the Soviet economy went into a major crisis. Lenin responded with the New Economic Policy, a program that allowed limited capitalistic activity, which resulted in what he would call state capitalism, and the economy began to improve. Lenin's commanding heights speech was his attempt to defend himself against accusations that he sold out the principles of the revolution by implementing the new policy. Under Joseph Stalin, the Soviet agricultural and heavy manufacturing sectors were largely centralized. During the 1940s to the 1970s, the Soviet economy grew at a rate that outpaced that of Western European nations. By the 1980s, however, the Soviet economy was in shambles. Because of a lack of incentives and, ironically, a more tolerant central government, workers did not put much effort into their duties. Nonetheless, the Soviet Union continued to build the military even though at times such spending took up half the country's revenue. Mikhail Gorbachev tried to reform the economy, but he took only limited steps (see perestroika and glasnost). When he lifted the Brezhnev Doctrine and allowed Poland's Solidarity to usurp that country's communist regime, the entire Warsaw Pact collapsed, soon followed by the Soviet Union itself. However, even with the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the relatively free market-minded Boris Yeltsin, former members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union maintained much power in Russia, blocked free-market movements, and forced the resignation of Yeltsin's free-market allies such as Yegor Gaidar. During the 1996 presidential election, Yeltsin was forced to accept support from Russian oligarchs to counter the growing power of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. While Yeltsin remained in power, the privatization of industries proceeded extremely unequally. Germany As had been predicted by Keynes, the hyperinflation caused by the Treaty of Versailles devastated the German economy and created political instability. In addition to widespread unemployment, the hyperinflation effectively wiped out the country's middle class. That environment made it easy for the Nazi Party to gain power. The authors also argue that the Nazis practiced central planning although industries were privatized en masse. After the war and the division of Germany, East Germany