| | PROBLEMS OF MODERN ECONOMICS, N 1 (77), 2021 | | To 100 years of GOELRO plan and Gosplan of the USSR | | Gazizullin Nail F. Chair of Economic Theory and History of Economic Thought, St. Petersburg State Economic University, PhD (Economics), Professor, Honored Scholar of the Republic of Tatarstan Blagikh Ivan A. Assistant Professor, Department of Management Technology and Innovations, National Research University ITMO (Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics), PhD (Economics), Professor
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| On February 21, 1920, the State Commission for Electrification (GOELRO) was established in Russia. Formally, it aimed at developing measures to overcome the fuel crisis on the basis of electric energy, yet the State Plan (Gosplan) the Commission presented was much broader than that: essentially, they developed the first prospective plan of the country’s economic development. On the basis of GOELRO Commission developments, Gosplan was founded on February 22, 1921. Planned economy became not only the basic method of constructing socialism in the USSR, but turned into an international project. After WWII the five-year planning, developed originally in the Soviet Russia, was used by roughly half of the world countries as a tool of reconstructing their economies. Nowadays it is implemented by the countries that follow the path of socialism construction, such as China, Vietnam, Cuba, People’s Republic of China and other countries of non-capitalist orientation.
The historical paradox consists in the fact that the Soviet Union, while being a pioneer in the development of methodology, mechanisms and tools of economic planning and its effective implementation, lost the accumulated knowledge and practice of state economic planning after its collapse. In the early years of perestroika, many authoritative economists, including the Nobel Prize laureate V.V. Leontiev, spoke about the necessity of informed balanced combination of market reforms and state economic planning. Yet history does not have a subjunctive mood. Presently, when even the official state rhetoric emphasizes the need of holistic understanding of Russian history, including its Soviet period, one should not disregard the global achievements of the latter. The young generation of the Russians, and especially economic scholars, should know about successes of the Soviet economy, such as: sovereign monetary system, internal national sources of tremendous economic investment, systems renovation of the basic production funds, development of agricultural complexes, the system of social guarantees, the systems of health care and education accessible to all layers of populations, etc. The article focuses on these phenomena based on the factual materials related to the history of GOELRO and Gosplan of the USSR. | Key words: Soviet Russia, GOELRO plan, Gosplan of the USSR, planning of the national economy | Pages: 6 - 13 |
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