| 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 |