http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-04-02-1563257295_x.htm
This is a news story from USA Today, written by "Mansur Mirovalev, Associated Press Writer". It also includes a piece of an interview from Nikolai Baibakov, who served as Josef Stalin's oil commissar. It connects to what we're studying in class by its discussion of Baibakov's role in Stalin's Centrally-Planned Economy and in Gosplan, "the huge Soviet central planning agency"... It enhances what we've learned by giving more general information and examples about how the central-planning system worked, and some specific details about Baibakov's duties as Commissar of oil and head of Gosplan as well as Stalin's use of terror and violence to motivate lower Commissars etc. to get the jobs done that he wanted them to (it even quotes Stalin specifically telling Baibakov to control the oil just right or he would be shot). A limitation faced when using this source (for our class) is that the article is only about events in the 1940s and after, so it doesn't tell us much about the beginning of the centrally planned economy or how it came about... and also the article is structured pretty poorly in my opinion, so if you are looking for a certain piece of information, it's kind of confusing...
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