Abstract
Most studies of the history of Soviet financial and credit policy stress the important changes which took place in the role of the People’s Commissariat of Finance (Narkomfin or NKFin) in the management of the national economy at the beginning of the 1930s.1 We know a great deal about the financial system of the 1930s and about its major institutional shifts. The official journal of NKFin Finansy i sotsialisticheskoe khozyaistvo (‘Finance and the socialist economy’), which was in 1934 renamed V pomoshch’ finrabotnika (‘For the help of a financial worker’), published articles about state finance, including official documents and instructions of NKFin. NKFin’s activities were discussed annually by the Congress of Soviets in its deliberations concerning the state budget for the next year. The people’s commissar (narkom) of finance USSR delivered a major report on the utilisation of the state budget and on the draft of the budget for the next year. In addition NKFin annually collected a tax system both rural and urban. The extent to which NKFin influenced policy, however, has not been subject to analysis.
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Notes
Istoriya sotsialisticheskoi ekonomiki, vol. 4 (Moscow, 1984); R.W. Davies, The Soviet Budgetary System (Cambridge, 1958);
E. Zaleski, Stalinist Planning for Economic Growth, 1933–1952 (London, 1980).
R.W. Davies, Mark Harrison and S.G. Wheatcroft (eds) The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994) pp. 15–16.
See for example M. Atlas, Kreditnaya reforma v SSSR (Moscow, 1952);
V.P. D’yachenko, Istoriya finansov SSSR, 1917–1950 (Moscow, 1978) ch. v.
R.W. Davies, Crisis and Progress in the Soviet Economy, 1931–1933 (Basingstoke, 1996), pp. 110–12.
According to Molotov, the political orientations of the Second Five-Year Plan were discussed at night at Molotov’s dacha with Kuibyshev and Mezhlauk. The main outlines of the plan were presented in Molotov’s report to XVII party conference. The main outlines of the plan were presented in Molotov’s report to XVII party conference. ‘Stalin came to read, then he summoned us, and made amendments.’ F. Chuev, Sto sorok besed c Molotovym (Moscow, 1990) p. 262.
K. Abolin, ‘Rabotu po goskhodam-na politicheskuyu vysotu’, Finansy i sotsialisticheskoe khozyaistvo, 1933, no. 1–2, p. 23.
K. Abolin, op. cit., Finansy i sotsialisticheskoe khozyaistvo, 1933, no. 1–2, p. 23.
V.Ya. Chubar’, Problems of the workers of the finance system in 1938 (Moscow, 1938).
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© 1997 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Tsakunov, S. (1997). The People’s Commissariat of Finance. In: Rees, E.A. (eds) Decision-making in the Stalinist Command Economy, 1932–37. Studies in Russian and East European History and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25295-4_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25295-4_4
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