Summaries have been provided at the end of each chapter, and an understanding of the major findings of this study is best gained by rereading the chapter summaries in succession. In this final chapter I list what I consider to be the most important conclusions of this work on Russian national income.

FINDINGS

1. The rate of growth of the tsarist economy has been understated by past studies of Russian national income. The annual growth rate during Russia's “industrialization era” (1885 to 1913) was approximately 3.25% (net national product) and 1.7% (net national product per capita). This contrasts with Raymond Goldsmith's earlier finding of rates of approximately 2.75% (GNP) and 1.25% (per capita GNP) for the same period.

2. The growth rate of the tsarist economy was relatively high by the standards of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Russia belonged to the group of more rapidly growing economies such as the United States, Japan, and Sweden. On a per capita and per worker basis, Russian growth was average when compared with the experiences of the industrialized countries.

3. Comparison of tsarist and Soviet growth rates reveals an acceleration during the Soviet plan era, and this acceleration likely raised the volume of real output of the contemporary Soviet economy (by a factor of more than two) above that which would have prevailed under a capitalist Russia. This judgment rests upon the crucial assumption that the long-term growth rate of the tsarist economy would have been indicative of the growth of a capitalist Russia after 1917. It also omits the negative growth of the period of “transition” from capitalism to planned socialism (1917-28). If the “transition” is included in the computation of long-term Soviet growth, then the difference between the long-term tsarist and the Soviet growth rate disappears.

4. […]