1 - INTRODUCTION

Summary

The Central Administration for National Economic Records of the USSR has now completed the very big job of compiling a balance of the USSR national economy for the years 1928–30.

If we leave aside the well-known work by the Central Statistical Administration in 1926, which was unsuccessful, the present work on the balance of the national economy constitutes the first experiment in the practical application of Marxist–Leninist methodology to the study of reproduction as a whole – in the given case, reproduction in the USSR.

We cannot consider the present work as fully finished either methodologically or as a concrete study of reproduction. However, this is only a first attempt, which was made extremely complicated not only by the absence of concrete statistical material but also by the unelaborated state of many theoretical problems of the economy of the transition period. This circumstance is closely connected with the fact that many problems concerning the balance of the national economy still remain insufficiently worked out even now.

For all the reasons mentioned, the present work does not claim to be exhaustive in its elaboration either of concrete economic results or of methodological problems. It is quite obvious that both these economic results and the theoretical premises and practical methods for constructing the balance of the economy must be subjected to detailed discussion.