Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T16:14:08.938Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Great War, Civil War, and Recovery: Russia's National Income, 1913 to 1928

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2011

Andrei Markevich  and
Mark Harrison
Andrei Markevich*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor, New Economic School, Suite 1721, Nakhimovskii Prospekt 47, 117418 Moscow, Russia; and Associate Fellow of the Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. E-mail: amarkevich@nes.ru.
Mark Harrison*
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Economics and CAGE, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom; and a Research Fellow of the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom; and the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. E-mail: mark.harrison@warwick.ac.uk.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The last remaining gap in the national accounts of Russia and the USSR in the twentieth century, 1913 to 1928, includes the Great War, the Civil War, and postwar recovery. Filling this gap, we find that the Russian economy did somewhat better in the Great War than was previously thought; in the Civil War it did correspondingly worse; war losses persisted into peacetime, and were not fully restored under the New Economic Policy. We compare this experience across regions and over time. The Great War and Civil War produced the deepest economic trauma of Russia's troubled twentieth century.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , 13 September 2011 , pp. 672 - 703
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2011

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

Adamets, Serguei.Guerre civile et famine en Russie: Le pouvoir bolchévique et la population face à la catastrophe démographique de 1917-1923. Paris: Institute d’études slaves, 2003.Google Scholar
Allen, Robert C.Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreev, E.M., Darskii, L.E., and Kharkova, T.L.. “Otsenka liudskikh poter’ v period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny.” Vestnik statistiki 10 (1990): 25–27.Google Scholar
Andreev, E.M., Darskii, L.E., and Kharkova, T.L.. Naselenie Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1922-1991. Moscow: Nauka, 1993.Google Scholar
Anfimov, A.M., and Korelin, A.P., eds. Rossiia. 1913 god. Statistiko-dokumental'nyi spravochnik. St. Petersburg: Blits, 1995.Google Scholar
Antonio Ortega, José, and Silvestre, Javier. “Las consecuencias demográficas.” In La Economía de la Guerra Civil, edited by Martín Aceña, Pablo and Martínez Ruiz, Elena, 53–106. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2006.Google Scholar
Bergson, Abram.The Real National Income of Soviet Russia Since 1928. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961.Google Scholar
Blattman, Christopher, and Miguel, Edward. “Civil War.” Journal of Economic Literature 48, no. 1 (2010): 3–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boiarskii, A. Ia. “K voprosu o estestvennom dvizhenii naseleniia v Rossii i v SSSR v 1915-1923 gg.” (first published in 1948). In Naselenie i metody ego izucheniiya. Sbornik nauchnykh trudov, edited by Boiarskii, A. Ia., 225–38. Moscow: Statistika, 1975.Google Scholar
Brainerd, Elizabeth, and David, M. Cutler. “Autopsy on an Empire: Understanding Mortality in Russia and the Former Soviet Union.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 19, no. 1 (2005): 107–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broadberry, Stephen.Market Services and the Productivity Race, 1850-2000: British Performance in International Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Broadberry, Stephen, and Harrison, Mark. “The Economics of World War I: an Overview.” In The Economics of World War I, edited by Broadberry, Stephen and Harrison, Mark, 3–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, J. David, Earle, John S., and Telegdy, Álmos. “Employment and Wage Effects of Privatisation: Evidence from Hungary, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.” Economic Journal 120, no. 545 (2010): 683–708.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carr, E.H.The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923. Vol. 2. London: Macmillan, 1952.Google Scholar
Carr, E.H.Socialism in One Country, 1924-1926. Vol. 2. London: Macmillan, 1959.Google Scholar
Collier, Irwin L.“The ‘Welfare Standard’ and Soviet Consumers.” Comparative Economic Studies 47, no. 2 (2003): 333–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crafts, Nicholas, and Terence, C. Mills. “Europe's Golden Age: An Econometric Investigation of Changing Trend Rates of Growth.” In Quantitative Aspects of Europe's Postwar Growth, edited by van Ark, Bart and Crafts, Nicholas, 415–31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Crafts, Nicholas, and Toniolo, Gianni. “Postwar Growth: An Overview.” In Economic Growth in Europe Since 1945, edited by Crafts, Nicholas and Toniolo, Gianni, 1–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, R.W. “Introduction: From Tsarism to NEP.” In From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy: Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR, edited by Davies, R.W., 1–28. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, R.W. “Industry.” In The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945, edited by Davies, R.W., Harrison, Mark, and Wheatcroft, S.G., 131–57. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Davies, R.W. Review of Farm to Factory: A Reinterpretation of the Soviet Industrial Revolution, by Allen, Robert C.. EH.NET, 2004. Available online at http://eh.net/book_reviews/farm-factory-reinterpretation-soviet-industrial-revolution.Google Scholar
Demoscope. “Smertnost’ v Rossii skvoz’ prizmu privatizatsii.” Demoscope Weekly, no. 363-364. February 2 to 15, 2009. Available online at http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2009/0363/lisa01.php.Google Scholar
Earle, John S.“Mass Privatisation and Mortality.” The Lancet 373 (April 11, 2009), 1247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earle, John S., and Gehlbach, Scott. “Did Mass Privatisation Really Increase Post-Communist Mortality?” The Lancet 375 (January 30, 2010), 372.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellman, Michael.“The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 24, no. 5 (2000a): 603–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellman, Michael.“The Social Costs and Consequences of the Transformation Process.” Economic Survey of Europe no. 2-3 (2000b): 125–45.Google Scholar
Ellman, Michael.“Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments.” Europe-Asia Studies 54, no. 7 (2002): 1151–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellman, Michael.“Soviet Industrialization: A Remarkable Success?” Slavic Review 63, no. 4 (2004): 841–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ellman, Michael, and Maksudov, S.. “Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War.” Europe-Asia Studies 46, no. 4 (1994): 671–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eloranta, Jari, and Harrison, Mark. “War and Disintegration, 1914-1945.” In The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Europe, Vol. 2, edited by Broadberry, Stephen and O'Rourke, Kevin, 133–55. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Figes, Orlando.Peasant Russia, Civil War: The Volga Countryside in Revolution, 1917-1921. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Gatrell, Peter. “The First World War and War Communism.” In The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945, edited by Davies, R.W., Harrison, Mark, and Wheatcroft, S.G., 216–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Gatrell, Peter. “Poor Russia, Poor Show: Mobilising a Backward Economy for War, 1913-1917.” In The Economics of World War I, edited by Broadberry, Stephen and Harrison, Mark, 235–75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gatrell, Peter, and Harrison, Mark. “The Russian and Soviet Economy in Two World Wars.” Economic History Review 46, no. 3 (1993): 425–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerry, Christopher J., Mickiewicz, Tomasz M., and Nikoloski, Zlatko. “Did Mass Privatisation Really Increase Post-Communist Mortality?” The Lancet 375 (January 30, 2010), 371.Google Scholar
Gerschenkron, Alexander.A Dollar Index of Soviet Machinery Output, 1927-28 to 1937. Santa Monica, CA: Rand, 1951.Google Scholar
Gordon, Donald F., and Gary, M. Walton. “A Theory of Regenerative Growth and the Exereince of Post-World War II West Germany.” In Explorations in the New Economic History: Essays in Honor of Douglass C. North, edited by Ransom, Roger L., Sutch, Richard, and Walton, Gary M., 169–90. New York: Academic Press, 1981.Google Scholar
Gregory, Paul R.Russian National Income, 1885-1913. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Gregory, Paul R. “National Income.” In From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy: Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR, edited by Davies, R.W., 237–47. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groman, V.G.Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR. Moscow: Gosizdat, 1927.Google Scholar
Gukhman, B.A.Produktsiia i potreblenie SSSR. First edition. Moscow: Gosplan, 1925.Google Scholar
Gukhman, B.A.Produktsiia i potreblenie SSSR. K narodno-khoziaistvennomu balansu (1922/23 khoziaistvennyi god).With introduction by S. G. Strumilin. Second edition. Moscow: Gosplan, 1928.Google Scholar
Harrison, Mark.“Why Did NEP Fail?” Economics of Planning 16, no. 2 (1980): 57–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Mark. “The Peasantry and Industrialization.” In From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy: Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR, edited by Davies, R.W., 104–24. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Mark. “National Income.” In The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945, edited by Davies, R.W., Harrison, Mark, and Wheatcroft, S.G., 38–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Harrison, Mark.Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940-1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Mark.“Trends in Soviet Labour Productivity, 1928-1985: War, Postwar Recovery, and Slowdown.” European Review of Economic History 2, no. 2 (1998): 171–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Mark. “Prices in the Politburo, 1927: Market Equilibrium versus the Use of Force.” In The Lost Transcripts of the Politburo: From Collective Rule to Stalin's Dictatorship, edited by Gregory, Paul R. and Naimark, Norman, 224–46. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hessler, Julie.A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917-1953. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgs, Robert V.Depression, War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Il'iukhov, A. A.Kak platili bol'sheviki: Politika sovetskoi vlasti v sfere oplaty truda v 1917-1941 gg. Moscow: Rosspen, 2010.Google Scholar
Jánossy, Ferenc.The End of the Economic Miracle: Appearance and Reality in Economic Development. White Plains, NY: International Arts and Sciences Press, 1971.Google Scholar
Johnson, Simon, and Temin, Peter. “The Macroeconomics of NEP.” Economic History Review 46, no. 4 (1993): 750–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khlevnyuk, Oleg. “The Objectives of the Great Terror, 1937-38.” In Soviet History, 1917-1953: Essays in Honour of R. W. Davies, edited by Cooper, J.M., Perrie, Maureen, and Rees, E.A., 158–76. New York: St. Martin's, 1995.Google Scholar
Lih, Lars T.Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Litoshenko, L.N.Sotsializatsiia zemli v Rossii. Novosibirsk: Sibirskii khronograph, 2001.Google Scholar
Maksudov, Sergei.Poteri naseleniia SSSR. Benson: Chalidze Publications, 1989.Google Scholar
Malle, Silvana.The Economic Organization of War Communism, 1918-1921. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martín Aceña, Pablo. “La economía de la guerra civil: perspectiva general y comparada.” In La Economía de la Guerra Civil, edited by Martín Aceña, Pablo and Martínez Ruiz, Elena, 13–52. Madrid: Marcial Pons, 2006.Google Scholar
Nove, Alec.An Economic History of the USSR, 1917-1991. Third edition. London: Penguin, 1992.Google Scholar
Nutter, G. Warren. “The Effects of Economic Growth on Sino-Soviet Strategy.” In National Security: Political, Military, and Economic Strategies in the Decade Ahead, edited by Abshire, David and Allen, Richard V., 149–68. New York: Praeger, 1963.Google Scholar
Ó Gráda, Cormac.“Making Famine History.” Journal of Economic Literature 45, no. 1 (2007): 5–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poletaev, A.V. “Ekonomicheskie krizisy v Rossii v XX veke (statisticheskoe issledovanie).” In Istoki. Voprosy istorii narodnogo khoziaistva i ekonomicheskoi mysli. Vol. 3, edited by Kuz'monov, Ia.I., 186–256. Moscow: Higher Economic School, 1998.Google Scholar
Prokopovich, S.N.Voina i narodnoe khoziaistvo. Moscow: Delo, 1917.Google Scholar
Putin, Vladimir.“The State of Russia: A Way to an Effective State.” The State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, 8 July 2000. Moscow: Novosti. http://www.un.int/russia/pressrel/2000/00_07_00.htm.Google Scholar
Ransom, Roger L. “Economics of the Civil War.” EH.Net Encyclopedia. edited by Whaples, Robert. 2001. http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/ransom.civil.war.us.Google Scholar
Sidorov, A.L.Ekonomicheskoe polozhenie Rossii v godi pervoi mirovoj voini. Moscow, 1973.Google Scholar
Sifman, R.I. “Dinamika chislennosti naseleniia Rossii za 1897-1914 gg.” In Brachnost’, rozhdaemost’ i smertnost’ v Rossii i SSSR, edited by Vishnevskii, A.G., 62–82. Moscow: Statistika, 1977. Available online at http://demoscope.ru/weekly/knigi/polka/gold_fund05.html.Google Scholar
Simonov, Nikolai S.“Strengthen the Defence of the Land of the Soviets: The 1927 War Alarm and Its Consequences.” Europe-Asia Studies 48, no. 8 (1996): 1355–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sokolov, Andrei. “Before Stalinism: The Early 1920s.” In Guns and Rubles: The Defense Industry in the Stalinist State, edited by Harrison, Mark, 31–49. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuckler, David, King, Lawrence, and McKee, Martin. “Did Mass Privatisation Really Increase Post-Communist Mortality? - Authors’ Reply.” The Lancet 375 (January 30, 2010), 372–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuckler, David, King, Lawrence, and McKee, Martin. “Mass Privatisation and the Post-Communist Mortality Crisis: A Cross-National Analysis.” The Lancet no. 373 (January 31, 2009): 399–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wenzhao, Tao. “Zhongri zhanzheng yu taipingyang zhanzheng” (The Sino- Japanese War and the Pacific War). In Zhongri lishi gongtong yanjiu baogaoshu, zhongfang baogaoshu (Chinese Report in the Joint Report of the Joint Japanese-Chinese Historical Research Project). edited by Zhongri gongtong lishi yanjiu zhongfang weiyuanhui (The Chinese Committee of Sino-Japanese Joint Historical Research Committee). Beijing, 2010. Available online at http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/area/china/pdfs/rekishi_kk_c.pdf.Google Scholar
United Nations (UN). International Migration Report 2002. UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs: New York, 2002.Google Scholar
United Nations (UN). System of National Accounts 2008. New York: European Commission-International Monetary Fund-Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-United Nations-World Bank, 2009.Google Scholar
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Desiat’ let perekhodnogo perioda. Regional'nyi monitoringovyi doklad no. 8. Florence: Innocenti Research Centre, 2001.Google Scholar
Vainshtein, A.L.Narodnoe bogatstvo i narodnokhoziaistvennoe nakoplenie predrevoliutsionnoi Rossii. Moscow, 1960.Google Scholar
Varzar, V.E. “Indeks fizicheskogo ob'ema potrebleniia v SSSR” (first published 1929). In Kriticheskii analiz burzhuaznykh statisticheskikh publikatsii, edited by Maslov, P.P., 448–62. Moscow: Akademii nauk SSSR, 1955.Google Scholar
Vyshnevskii, Anatolii, ed. Demograficheskaia modernizatsiia Rossii: 1900-2000. Moscow: Novoe izdatel'stvo, 2006.Google Scholar
Wheatcroft, S.G. “Agriculture.” In From Tsarism to the New Economic Policy: Continuity and Change in the Economy of the USSR, edited by Davies, R.W., 79–103. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheatcroft, S.G.“Soviet Statistics of Nutrition and Mortality During Times of Famine: 1917-1922 and 1931-1933.” Cahiers du monde russe 38, no. 4 (1997): 525–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheatcroft, S.G., and Davies, R.W.. “Agriculture.” In The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913-1945, edited by Davies, R.W., Harrison, Mark, and Wheatcroft, S.G., 106–30. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Wheatcroft, S.G., Davies, R.W., and Cooper, J.M.. “Soviet Industrialization Reconsidered: Some Preliminary Conclusions About Economic Development Between 1926 and 1941.” Economic History Review 39, no. 2 (1986): 264–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

SUPPLEMENTARY DATA

An Appendix, including a review of previous estimates, supplementary data, and further discussion, with Tables A1 to A39, is available at http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/publications/abstract.htm?id=2.