The public lecture “ Economyof the USSR and the Great Patriotic War” was
given to the students by the Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor Valeryi
Zorkaltsev. The lecture was timed to the Day of Russian Science.
The lecturer considers that a big advantage of Russia is the fact that it is
a state, uniting a lot of indigenous peoples, so Russian gene pool is really
strong. Despite the fact that the country had lost a number of wars in 19
century and the beginning of the 20 century and lost best staff during the
revolution and became an economically backward state, which needed reforms, it
made a huge leap forward during the period of new economic policy.
Since 1939 the country began to create a new army and new types of weapon and
funds for the accumulation of products were created. Nevertheless the USSR lost
the first stage of the war due to huge organization shortcomings . Things, that
some countries did in 20 years, we did in 5. The country ranked second in the
world in terms of industrial production (after the USA), created an advanced
system of education, but ruined agriculture, despite the fact that Russia had
always been an agricultural country.
Such science as Statistics was introduced for the first time in our country,
a number of economic benefits appeared, economic growth rates increased.
Professor Zorkaltsev compared inflation trends in the early 20 –s of the
20-th century with inflation in the 90-th, using the example of monopoly trusts.
And while antitrust laws were adopted in the United States, they were limited to
price regulation in our country, and this was a big mistake. The lecture
elaborated in detail on structure of the employment by sectors of the economy in
percent.
Valeriy Ivanovich told students about advantages and disadvantages of planned
directive economy, collectivization and its mistakes. In his opinion, especially
then, in the 20-30s of the 20th century, progressive economic thought was ruined
in Russia. Instead of critical and objective analysis, we still prefer to give
incorrect embellished data.