Current perceptions of the dynamics of production in the USSR

The economic history of the USSR is of great interest both for global economic history and for the economics of development and growth. It is interesting as a unique domestic experience of responding to the challenge of maintaining centuries of backwardness from developed countries in terms of technological development and living standards.

Research Objectives

This project describes and restores the reproducibility of Bergson's methodology, adapting it to modern statistical standards and refining the estimates of economic growth in the USSR, taking into account new data of official macroeconomic statistics of the USSR and the Soviet republics, which were previously unavailable to researchers. The restoration of the methodology opens up opportunities for the future construction of retrospective estimates of the Soviet republics prior to 1990, and their integration into the international Maddison's project, supported by the Center for Development and Growth of the University of Groningen.

The project will be an important step for the construction of updated estimates of GDP in the USSR and will prepare the methodological basis for the construction of similar estimates in the industrial sector and separately for the Soviet republics.

Research Tasks

• To form a complete bibliography on the methodological issues of Bergson's methodology construction;
• To digitize the necessary dynamic series published in Bergson (1953; 1961) and Moorsteen and Powell (1966) and the subsequent CIA reports; the digitization includes dynamic series of physical volumes and price indices of various products;
• To verify the cited sources of statistical information;
• To replicate calculations;
• To identify approaches to measuring Soviet GDP dynamics, which require revision from the point of view of the SNA 2008;
• To identify opportunities for the refinement of calculations using new historical statistics;
• To describe the methodology of constructing Bergson's "refined factor cost" and the data for its reproduction;
• To prepare a full methodological description (in the form of a preprint)