Inflation of the investment ruble in the USSR

The essence of inflation is to reduce the purchasing power of money. As for capital investments (investment ruble), this process manifests itself in an increase in the cost of products of the investment complex (engineering and construction), which is not compensated by a corresponding increase in their quality.

The historical aspect of economic research on investment ruble inflation, its economic consequences and specific causes, possible options for managing inflation, alternative methods and results of its measurement are discussed below.

For decades, the problems of inflation in our economic science have been one of the taboo topics, and they have been the arena of ideological struggle. According to prevailing dogmas, inflation was seen as a typical disease of the market economy, a product of the anarchy of the capitalist mode of production, impossible in a planned economy. This theoretical view was based on the practice of centralized pricing, the long-term maintenance of prices for essential goods at an unchanged level.

The factors generating hidden price increases and inflation were not so obvious, in particular, strong centralized pressure on the growth rate of production volumes in its value dimension, chronic scarcity inherent in the national economy, and increased demand for virtually free government investments compared to their supply. The result of the latter was a systematic excess of capital investments in comparison with the capacities of construction organizations and the possibilities of timely provision of construction sites with high-quality equipment, which could not but lead to the development of inflationary processes. In these circumstances, the need to study inflation under socialism has become especially urgent.

However, the administrative and command system actively opposed this. Back in the 50s and 60s, A. Bergson, a prominent American Sovietologist, and a number of his colleagues conducted theoretical and statistical studies of the real growth rates of fixed assets in the USSR national economy, taking into account the processes of appreciation and inflation. Since the conclusions of American scientists questioned such an important (according to the views of the time) advantage of socialism as high economic growth rates, the publications of Sovietologists ended up in special libraries and did not receive due resonance either in planning practice or in scientific circles. In the late 60s, B. Mikhailevsky, N. Fedorenko, and S. Shatalin first drew the attention of the USSR State Planning Committee to the development of inflationary processes. This appeal was categorically rejected. The most famous porn site Noodle Magazine - Uncensored porn.