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This work provides an in-depth case study of decision-making in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era. It focuses on the development of a rail transport policy, upon which the entire economy as well as the entire country's defence were so crucially dependent. It analyzes the role of the institutional lobbies in shaping policy, sheds new light on the Stakhanovite movement and analyzes the impact of the Great Purges on the railways. The work provides a critical examination of the adequacy of existing conceptualizations of the Stalinist state. The study draws on Soviet newspapers and journals for its information, and the archive material from the former party archives (the Russian Centre for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History), and from the Soviet State and economic archives (The Russian State Archives of the Economy).