Statistics in the Soviet Epoch / Statistics in the Soviet Epoch

Sheynin Oscar
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Sheynin Oscar: Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, Wilhelmstr. 130, D-10963 Berlin

Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), 1998, vol. 217, issue 5, 529-549

Abstract: This paper is based on a large number of Soviet and western sources and describes the development of statistics in the Soviet Union. After ca. 1922, Russian statisticians were able to work successfully drawing on the contemporaneous national and foreign professional knowledge. From 1927 onward, however, many of them were labelled saboteurs or enemies of the people, arrested and even shot. Pre-Soviet statistics was denied, and its classics were called ideologists of the bourgeoisie (Siissmilch, Quetelet) or enemies of materialism (Pearson). The new crop of Soviet statisticians, largely composed of ignoramuses, restricted the aims of statistics to confirming Marxist political economy. In the post-war period, ideology continued to dominate over statistics, econometrics had to overcome great ideological resistance, and genetics, crushed in 1948, in particular because of its ties with statistics, did not return to life until the 1960’s.

Keywords: Statistics in the Soviet Union; history of econometrics; history of genetics; Marxist definition of statistics; Statistik in der Sowjetunion; geschichtliche Entwicklung der Ökonometrie; Marxistische Definition der Statistik (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:jns:jbstat:v:217:y:1998:i:5:p:529-549

DOI: 10.1515/jbnst-1998-0502

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