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The Reconstruction of Soviet Statistics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
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The Soviet statistical authorities first published an input-output table (for 1959) in their statistical yearbook of 1960; they had recommenced issuing their general abstracts in 1956—a direct consequence of, and only a few weeks after, the Twentieth Party Congress—following a lapse of nearly two decades. The input-output table as published was incomplete, and the coverage of the annual abstracts has only modestly increased since it reached its present size in 1958. The lacunae have presented a challenge to Western economists in three respects. The first difficulty is in reconstructing a series only part of which has been officially published. The best example of this lies in the reconstruction of input-output tables described below. The second challenge is to estimate aggregates (including the filling in of time series) which the statistical authorities of the USSR choose either not to make public or to publish in nontabular form.
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- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1974
References
1. The present writer has a short history of Soviet statistics in Treml, Vladimir G. and Hardt, John P., eds., Soviet Economic Statistics (Durham: Duke University Press, 1972, pp. 45–65.Google Scholar
2. The compilation of time series from occasional papers and sporadic remarks was, between 1938 and 1958, the chief task of “statistical Sovietology.”
3. A number of governmental and private agencies thus compile estimates of Soviet nonferrous metal production. The present writer has made a number of estimates of Soviet gold output, and of the balance of payments; see, for example, International Currency Rcviciv, May-June 1974, pp. 60-62.
4. M. R. Dohan’s Volume Index of Soviet Foreign Trade (forthcoming) is an example.
5. Treml, V. G., Gallik, D. M., Kostinsky, B. L., and Kruger, K. W., The Structure of the Soviet Economy: Analysis and Reconstruction of the 1966 Input-Output Table (New York: Praeger, 1972.Google Scholar
6. This work has since been published in revised form with many significant additions and totaling some 950 items: Treml, V. G., Input-Output Analysis in the USSR: An Annotated Bibliography (New York: Praeger, 1974 Google Scholar. The paper forming the first edition is now out of print.
7. Ellman, Michael, Planning Problems in the USSR: The Contribution of Mathematical Economics to Their Solution, 1960-1971 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.Google Scholar
8. “Économie mathématique, études de secteurs en URSS et en Europe de l’Est,” Cahiers de I'ISEA, ser. G, no. 31, Institut de Science Économique Appliquée, Paris, February-March 1973.
9. Wagener, Hans-Jürgen, “Zur sowjetischen Statistik der industriellen Inputs und Outputs,” Yearbook of East-European Economics, 4 (1973): 439–80.Google Scholar
10. Hanson, Philip, The Consumer in the Soviet Economy (London: Macmillan; Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968)Google Scholar, and, earlier, Nove, Alec, Was Stalin Really Necessary? (London: Allen and Unwin, 1964 Google Scholar. Tiraspolsky, Anita, “Le pouvoir d’achat du rouble en 1972,” Revue de l’Est, 5, no. 1 (January 1974): 79–123.Google Scholar
11. General Accounting Office, Comptroller General of the United States, Comparison of Military Research and Development Expenditures of the United States and the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: Department of Defense, January 1972). Becker, A. S., Ruble Price Levels and Dollar-Ruble Ratios of Soviet Machinery (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, January 1973)Google Scholar. See also an earlier study, Benoit, Emile and Lubell, Harold, “The World Burden of National Defense,” in Benoit, Emile, ed., Disarmament and World Economic Interdependence (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget; New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 29–59.Google Scholar
12. Michael Boretsky, “The Technological Base of Soviet Military Power,” and Cohn, Stanley H., “The Economic Burden of Soviet Defence Outlays,” in U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Subcommittee on Foreign Economic Policy, Economic Performance and the Military Burden in the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C., 1970), pp. 189–231 and 166-88Google Scholar respectively; Alec Nove, “Soviet Defence Spending,” and Michael Boretsky and Nove, Alec, “The Growth of Soviet Arms Technology: A Debate,” Survival, 13, no. 10 (October 1971): 328–32, and 14, no. 4 (July-August 1972): 169–77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, respectively, and Woroniak, Alexander, “Le probleme de la conversion du rouble en dollar,” Revue de I’Est, 5, no. 1 (January 1974): 5–54 Google Scholar. An anonymous paper, “La place réelle des charges militaires dans la défense nationale de l’URSS,” in Études 1972 sur les économies orientates, Groupe d’Études Prospectives Internationales, Paris, 1972 (mimeographed), points to the shortcomings of ratios which (like Benoit and Lubell, “World Burden of National Defense” ) assume that military pay equals opportunity cost. That study uses, inter alia, Kaplan’s construct of the 1941 input-output table.
13. Surveyed by the present writer in “Estimating the Soviet National Income,” Economic Journal, 67, no. 265 (March 1957): 83-104.
14. Becker, Abraham S., Soviet National Income, 1958-1964: National Accounts of the USSR in the Seven Year Plan Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969 Google Scholar.
15. Clarke, R. A., Soviet Economic Facts, 1919-1970 (London: Macmillan, 1972.Google Scholar
16. Narodnoc khoziaistvo SSSR, 1922-1972 gg. (Moscow, 1972).
17. Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1972 g. (Moscow, 1973).
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