Mikhail Heller’s recent book, Cogs in the Wheel: The Formation of Soviet Man, forcefully argues that an understanding of the Soviet Union requires an appreciation that, from the inception of the Soviet State in 1917, not only the means chosen were different from those in the West, but also the ideological ends for which the power of government has been applied are different. Nationalization of the means of production by Lenin and the Bolsheviks was a tool for a specific purpose: to control all aspects of the social and economic environment so as to create the conditions necessary to make over human nature and produce a new Soviet or Communist Man.

[Richard M. Ebeling, Book Review, FEE< December 1988]