Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:13:11.779Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Central Planning and Unintended Consequences: Creating the Soviet Financial System, 1930–1939

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 July 2012

Paul R. Gregory  and
Aleksei Tikhonov
Paul R. Gregory
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Economics, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-5882. E-mail: pgregory@uh.edu, tihono@aol.com.
Aleksei Tikhonov
Affiliation:
Graduate student, Department of Economics, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-5882. E-mail: pgregory@uh.edu, tihono@aol.com.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We use the Soviet state and party archives to study the creation of the Soviet financial system. Although its framers intended to centralize all emission and monitoring of money and credit, in practice the system was characterized by informal mechanisms involving multiple players, soft budget constraints, and massive moral hazards. Enterprises issued “illegal” commercial credits and surrogate monies, causing liquidity growth to far outpace real economic activity. When confronted with the choice of solvency versus plan fulfillment, firms always chose the latter: credit risks were passed on to solvent enterprises, the state bank, and the state budget.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , December 2000 , pp. 1017 - 1040
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Arnold, Arthur. Banks, Credit, and Money in Soviet Russia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1937.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atlas, M. S.Razvitie gosudarsvennogo banka SSSR ‘The Development of the State Bank of the USSR’. Moscow: Gosfinizdat, 1958.Google Scholar
Batyrev, V. M., and Sitnin, V. K.. Planovaia kreditnaia sistema SSSR ‘The Planned Credit System of the USSR’. Moscow: Ogiz, 1945.Google Scholar
Bergson, Abram. The Real National Incomes of Soviet Russia Since 1928. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Bergson, Abram. “National Income”. In Economic Trends in the Soviet Union, edited by Abram, Bergson and Simon, Kuznets, 1–31. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berliner, Joseph. Factory and Manager in the USSR. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bogolepov, M. N.Finansovaia plan piatiletia ‘The Financial Plan of the Five-Year Plan’. Moscow: n.p., 1929.Google Scholar
Bogolepov, M. N.. Sovetskaia finasovaia sistema ‘The Soviet Financial System’. Moscow: Gosfinizdat, 1947.Google Scholar
Bogomolova, E. V.Upravelenie sovetskoi ekonomiki v 20-e gg. Opyt regulirovaniia i samoorganizatsii ‘The Management of the Soviet Economy in the 1920s: The Experience of Regulation and Self-Organization’. Moscow: INION RAN, 1993.Google Scholar
Carr, E. H., and Davies, R. W.. Foundations of the Planned Economy, 1926–1929. London: Macmillan, 1969.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, R. W. “Short-Term Credit in the USSR: Some Post-War Problems”. Soviet Studies 5, no. 1(1953/1954): 18–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, R. W.The Development ofthe Soviet Budgetary System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958.Google Scholar
Davies, R. W.The Industrialization of Soviet Russia. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.Google Scholar
Davies, R. W.The Soviet Economy in Turmoil, 1929–1930. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Davies, R. W.Crisis and Progress in the Soviet Economy, 1931–33. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denezhnoe obrashchenie i kredit Soiuza SSR za XX let ‘Money Circulation and Credit of the USSR for 20 Years’. Moscow: Gosfinizdat, 1939.Google Scholar
Denezhnoe obrashchenie i kredit v SSSR ‘Money Circulation and Credit in the USSR’, various issues.Google Scholar
Ekonomicheskaia zhizn (EZ) ‘Economic Life’, various issues.Google Scholar
Erlich, Alexander. The Soviet Industrialization Debate, 1924–28. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaddy, Clifford, and Ickes, Barry. “Russia's Virtual Economy”. Foreign Affairs 77, no. 5 (1998): 53–67. GARF (State Archive of the Russian Federation).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garvy, George. Money, Banking and Credit in Eastern Europe. New York: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 1966.Google Scholar
Gekker, Paul. “The Banking System of the USSR”. Journal of the Institute of Bankers 84, Part 3 (06 1963): 189–97.Google Scholar
Gosplan, USSR. Metodicheskie ukazanii k rasrabotke gosudarstvennykh planov ekonomicheskogo i sotsial 'nogo razvitiia SSSR ‘Methodological Directives to Formulating the State Plan of Economic and Social Development of the USSR’. Moscow: Economika, 1980.Google Scholar
Granick, David. Management of Industrial Firms in the USSR. New York: Columbia University Press, 1954.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granick, David. Job Rights in the Soviet Union: Their Consequences. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Gregory, Paul, and Stuart, Robert. Russian and Soviet Economic Structure and Performance. 6th ed. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1998.Google Scholar
Holzman, Franklyn. “Financing Soviet Economic Development”. In Capital Formation and Economic Growth, edited by Moses, Abramovitz, 229–74. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955.Google Scholar
Holzman, Franklyn. “Soviet Inflationary Pressures, 1928–1957: Causes and Cures”. Quarterly Journal of Economics 74, no. 2 (1960): 167–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kantorovich, V. Ia.Sovetskie sindikaty ‘Soviet Syndicates’. Moscow: n.p., 1928.Google Scholar
Khlevniuk, Oleg V., and Davies, R. W.. “The End of Rationing in the Soviet Union”. Europe-Asia Studies 51, no. 4 (1999): 557–609.Google Scholar
Khlevniuk, Oleg V., Kvashonkin, A. V., Koshelova, L. P., and Rogovaia, L. A., eds. Stalinskoe Politburo v 30-e Gody ‘Stalin's Politburo in the 1930s’. Moscow: AIRO–XX, 1995.Google Scholar
Kornai, Janos. Economics of Shortage. Amsterdam, New York, and Oxford: North-Holland, 1980.Google Scholar
Kratki, putevoditel'. Fondy I kollektsii sobrannye Tsentral'nym partiinym arkhivom (Gosudarstvennaaia Arkhivnaia Sluzhba Possiiskoi Federatsii) ‘Short Guide to Funds and Collections of the Central Party Archives of the State Archival Service of the Russian Federation’. Moscow: Blagovest, 1993.Google Scholar
Lewin, Moshe. Russian Peasants and Soviet Power. London: Allen & Unwin, 1968.Google Scholar
Nove, Alec. An Economic History of the USSR. London: Penguin, 1969.Google Scholar
Preobrazhensky, E. A.The New Economics. Translated by Brian, Pearce. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.Google Scholar
Rees, E. A., ed. Decision Making in the Stalinist Command Economy, 1932–3. London: Macmillan, 1997. RGAE (Russian State Archive for the Economy).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sitnin, V. K.Kontrol rublem v sotsialisticheskom obshchestve ‘Ruble Control in Soviet Society’. Moscow: Gosfinizdat, 1956.Google Scholar
Rees, E. A.. Vospominaniia finansista ‘The Memoirs of a Finansist’. Moscow: Luch, 1993.Google Scholar
Spulber, Nicolas. Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964.Google Scholar
State Archival Service of the Russian Federation. A Research Guide: I. Guide to Collections. American editors: William, Chase and Burds, Jeffrey. Moscow: Blagovest, 1994.Google Scholar
Tsakunov, S. “The People's Commissariat of Finance”. In Decision Making in the Stalinist Command Economy, 1932–3, edited byRees, E. A., 67–93. London: Macmillan, 1997.Google Scholar
Tsipkin, I. N.Sovetskiy kredit ‘Soviet Credit’. Part 1. Moscow: n.p., 1933.Google Scholar
Vestnik'pravleniia Gosbanka (VPG) ‘Bulletin of the Directors of Gosbank’, later became Kredit i khozrashchet ‘Credit and Accounting’ (1933–1937), later became Den 'gi i kredit ‘Money and Credit’ (1938–), various issues.Google Scholar
Yurovsky, L. N. “Banki v Rossii i SSSR ‘Banks in Russia and the USSR’“. In Kredit i banki, 413–15. Moscow: n.p., 1929.Google Scholar
Zaleski, Eugene. Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth 1933–1952. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar