Let me rephrase: I’d rather live in Russia in 1934 than in Russia in 1904.
So? I’d rather live in 1984 Yugoslavia than 1954 America.
Technology matters. Economic growth matters. Given a large enough time gap Haiti today might be preferable to Japan in some past period.
Opportunity costs however are unfortunately mostly invisible. The relevant comparison you should be making is your best estimate of what 1934 Tsarist or at the very least non-Bolshevik Russia would be compared to the 1934 USSR. While we can’t do experiments we can look around the world for patters, not only did parliamentary capitalist democracies like West Germany seemed to outperform command economies, resulting in large disparities of living standards, but quasi-Fascist and authoritarian regimes that didn’t go for a planned economy did so as well (Franco’s Spain, Modern China, Singapore, 1980s South Korea, ect.).
Also let me ask you if you would prefer living in the Ukrainian SSR of 1930s or the Ukraine of 1900s? At the very least that disaster seems unlikely to have occurred under non-Bolshevik rule.
While we can’t do experiments we can look around the world for patters, not only did parliamentary capitalist democracies like West Germany seem to outperform command economies, resulting in large disparities of living standards, but quasi-Fascist and authoritarian regimes that didn’t go for a planned economy did so as well (Franco’s Spain, Modern China, Singapore, 1980s South Korea, ect.).
I found a document with some comparative historical GDP per capita data.
The following countries had a GDP per capita (measured in 1990 dollars) between $1000 and $2000 in 1913:
Country, 1913 GDP per capita, 1950 GDP per capita, growth factor (1950 gdp / 1913 gdp) Greece, 1621, 1951, 1.20 Portugal, 1354, 2132, 1.57 Bulgaria, 1498, 1651, 1.10 USSR, 1488, 2834, 1.90 Yugoslavia, 1029, 1546, 1.50 Colombia, 1236, 2089, 1.69 Venezuela, 1104, 7424, 6.72 (wow) Mexico, 1467, 2085, 1.42 Peru, 1037, 2263, 2.18 Japan, 1334, 1873, 1.40 Philippines, 1418, 1293, 0.91 South Africa, 1451, 2251, 1.55
So it looks like the U.S.S.R. didn’t do all that badly economically, considering that it was starting from a point that was, as Stalin put it, fifty years behind “the advanced countries”. (I don’t know how good the reference class I chose was; if you have objections, you’re probably right.)
I certainly agree that the Bolsheviks ended up with an absolutely horrible human rights record, though. There had been a history of famines in Russia caused by droughts and by wars, but yes, that particular disaster was indeed the direct result of Soviet policies.
I would be interested to know how you measure GDP in a place that didn’t have a market economy. Any Soviet economic figures from 1950 would be in Rubles. The official exchange rate was a bureaucratic fiction not tied to any market assessment of value. So how do you compare Rubles to dollars?
The linked-to data tables don’t have a lot of notes about their sources.
There are many clever ways to try to get a grip on a GDP; one method used these days in Africa and for North Korea (as well as to estimate corruption in official figures) is to measure energy usage or if that is too hard to estimate, simple night light emission via satellite. I believe the CIA used many different metrics in its various estimation.
So? I’d rather live in 1984 Yugoslavia than 1954 America.
Technology matters. Economic growth matters. Given a large enough time gap Haiti today might be preferable to Japan in some past period.
Opportunity costs however are unfortunately mostly invisible. The relevant comparison you should be making is your best estimate of what 1934 Tsarist or at the very least non-Bolshevik Russia would be compared to the 1934 USSR. While we can’t do experiments we can look around the world for patters, not only did parliamentary capitalist democracies like West Germany seemed to outperform command economies, resulting in large disparities of living standards, but quasi-Fascist and authoritarian regimes that didn’t go for a planned economy did so as well (Franco’s Spain, Modern China, Singapore, 1980s South Korea, ect.).
Also let me ask you if you would prefer living in the Ukrainian SSR of 1930s or the Ukraine of 1900s? At the very least that disaster seems unlikely to have occurred under non-Bolshevik rule.
I found a document with some comparative historical GDP per capita data.
The following countries had a GDP per capita (measured in 1990 dollars) between $1000 and $2000 in 1913:
Country, 1913 GDP per capita, 1950 GDP per capita, growth factor (1950 gdp / 1913 gdp)
Greece, 1621, 1951, 1.20
Portugal, 1354, 2132, 1.57
Bulgaria, 1498, 1651, 1.10
USSR, 1488, 2834, 1.90
Yugoslavia, 1029, 1546, 1.50
Colombia, 1236, 2089, 1.69
Venezuela, 1104, 7424, 6.72 (wow)
Mexico, 1467, 2085, 1.42
Peru, 1037, 2263, 2.18
Japan, 1334, 1873, 1.40
Philippines, 1418, 1293, 0.91
South Africa, 1451, 2251, 1.55
So it looks like the U.S.S.R. didn’t do all that badly economically, considering that it was starting from a point that was, as Stalin put it, fifty years behind “the advanced countries”. (I don’t know how good the reference class I chose was; if you have objections, you’re probably right.)
Incidentally, Venezuela’s rapid growth in GDP per capita during this period seems to be the result of successfully exploiting oil reserves.
I certainly agree that the Bolsheviks ended up with an absolutely horrible human rights record, though. There had been a history of famines in Russia caused by droughts and by wars, but yes, that particular disaster was indeed the direct result of Soviet policies.
I would be interested to know how you measure GDP in a place that didn’t have a market economy. Any Soviet economic figures from 1950 would be in Rubles. The official exchange rate was a bureaucratic fiction not tied to any market assessment of value. So how do you compare Rubles to dollars?
The linked-to data tables don’t have a lot of notes about their sources.
There are many clever ways to try to get a grip on a GDP; one method used these days in Africa and for North Korea (as well as to estimate corruption in official figures) is to measure energy usage or if that is too hard to estimate, simple night light emission via satellite. I believe the CIA used many different metrics in its various estimation.
Apparently, it’s hard.
I don’t know where Angus Maddison got his data either, but he was apparently the leading expert on this sort of thing...