Математическая экономика в эпоху социализма и переход к рынку

Mathematical Economics in the Era of Socialism, and Transition to the Market

Victor Polterovich
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Виктор Меерович Полтерович

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The article is devoted to the study of the history of the Soviet school of economics and mathematics, its struggle with the official ideology and attempts to influence the choice of strategies of socio-economic development. During the NEP period in the USSR a pleiad of brilliant economists worked, who possessed advanced statistical and economic-mathematical methods and obtained a number of fundamental results, which under favorable circumstances could become the basis for Russia's inclusion in the world flow of economic research. However, the leaders of the emerging scientific direction advocated a rational combination of the plan and the market, which contradicted the government's decision to curtail the NEP. The authorities demanded justification of their policy, they regarded independent research as hostile, and the school was crushed. Its revival began in the late 1950s after the exposure of the Stalin’s cult of personality, and took place in a fierce struggle with the Nachetnik Marxism. The paper shows that this struggle revealed the imperfection of the world mathematical economics of that time, which was focused on the study of market competition and did not consider the mechanisms of rationing, queues and black market characteristic of the planned economy. The intensive efforts made by Russian economists in this direction were belated. In the "war of programs" on the transition to the market that unfolded in the late 1990s, the concept of shock economy won. This result was facilitated by the pressure of international organizations, which did not care about the welfare of the USSR population, and the lack of unity among Russian economists. They united with each other and with leading Western economists belatedly, so that the program of reforms put forward by them could no longer influence the results of reforms. Nevertheless, the efforts of mathematical economists contributed to the formation of modern economic education and independent economic science in Russia.

Keywords: Soviet mathematical economists; planned economy; ideology; rationing; queues; black market; reform programs; shock therapy; economic education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A11 B23 B24 N01 O21 P21 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-04-22
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis, nep-hme, nep-hpe and nep-sog
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