Evaluation of National Wealth: Soviet History and Post-Soviet Practice
In the Soviet times, the national wealth measurement and the fixed assets valuation had a number of features that theoretically proceeded from Karl Marx’s Labor Theory of Value and were practically determined by the state character of production, accounting and planning development. In terms of completeness and objectivity of statistical indicators, the Soviet history of fixed assets valuation was extremely heterogeneous. Three time periods are clearly distinguished in history: the most successful (early and prewar); the war and postwar period of extremely low quality statistics; the thaw and the later Soviet period, characterized by systematic long-term accumulation of statistical errors. Despite the fact that distorted indicators of available fixed assets and their dynamics were characteristic of the entire Soviet period, the Soviet statistics had brilliant theoretical insights and valuable methodological experience in solving accounting problems. However, the experience turned out to be unclaimed in the context of reforming Russian statistics and its transition to international standards in the second half of the 1990s. Searching for solutions of statistical problems exclusively in foreign geography and ignoring the national history became one of the reasons for negative statistical continuity. The modern Russian statistics of national wealth is still not notable for completeness and reliability of declared indicators. An in-depth study of the Soviet experience and its possible use in modern conditions might help remedy the situation.