INTRODUCTION

It is a pleasure for me to be writing the preface to this very interesting volume. I learnt of the existence of the original many years ago but being ignorant of Russian could never have got beyond a broad knowledge of its content without an English translation. Now that I have been enabled to read it I find my expectations confirmed: anybody interested in economic history owes a great debt to Professor Davies and Dr Wheatcroft for opening up this hitherto almost unknown page of it.

Official work on economic statistics in early Soviet Russia was considerable. Some information on it and on the personalities involved is given by Naumjasny in [8, 9], and one of its most remarkable achievements, the 1923–4 input–output table, is reproduced by V. S. Nemchinov in [16]. The present study was originally published in 1932 in 500 copies for official use only. The statistical material it contains relates mainly to 1928, 1929 and 1930 and is of great interest from two points of view. To the student of Russian history it shows the kind of information available as a basis for planning during an important period which saw the unfolding of the first Five-Year Plan, the intensification of the drive towards industrialisation and the introduction of collective farming. And to the student of economic ideas it shows the progress made in Russia during the 1920s towards the construction of national accounts.