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A Note on Russian Industry in 1947

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2018

Alexander Gerschenkron*
Affiliation:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System

Extract

On January 18, 1948, the Gosplan, the supreme planning authority of the USSR, published its annual report on the economic results of the past year. The following comments are presented on that portion of the report which deals with the development of Russian industry during 1947. The report follows the exasperating practice of its predecessors in that the information given refers almost exclusively to percentage changes from unspecified magnitudes, and thus with-holds absolute data on the growth of industrial output. The present report contains, however, an interesting indirect disclosure with respect to the total value of industrial output.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1948

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References

2 See footnote to table.

3 See footnote 5.

4 The volume of gross output of all industry of the U.S.S.R. is set for 1950 at 205 billion rubles (at 1926-27 prices) or an increase of 48 percent over the prewar level…. In order to assure such a substantial rise in production … it will be necessary to achieve an annual absolute increase in production of 15.6 billion rubles.” Cf. speech by N. A. Voznesenskij at the First Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Pravda, March 16, 1946, p. 2. Accordingly, 205 — (5 x 15.6) = 127 billion rubles, gross value of output of all industry in 1945.

5 It may be noted, however, that for certain reasons inherent in the nature of the Soviet index of production, which is based on the 1926-27 price system, it is likely that industrial output in 1945 was in reality somewhat lower than 127 billion rubles, so that the decline from 1945 to 1946 may have been somewhat less than 19 per cent. For a discussion of the index problem see Gerschenkron, Alexander, “Soviet Indices of Industrial Output,” Review of Economic Statistics, XXIX (November 1947), 4.Google Scholar