State Budget of USSR in 1950s — 80s: Dynamics and Structure of Income

Abstract

The dynamics and structure of the revenue side of the state budget of the USSR in the period from 1950 to 1989 are considered on the basis of official statistical collections published by the Ministry of Finance of the USSR. It is stated that the dynamics of the revenues of the state budget of the USSR during the entire studied period was positive. There was a constant increase in income, which had an average annual value of about 6,5 % in relation to the previous year, which made it possible to increase the budget by more than one third in almost every five-year period. It is indicated that in just the period under study, the revenue side of the state budget in-creased by 11,6 times. The author comes to the conclusion that the historical dynamics of the distribution of incomes between the budgets of different levels testifies to the growing tendency towards the decentralization of the Soviet economy. It was revealed that this trend looks less unambiguous if we trace the change in the share of revenues of the republican and local budgets in the structure of the USSR state budget. It is shown that the most important deterrent to the decentralization of the Soviet economy was budget regulation, which allowed the state, on the one hand, to withdraw to the budget most of the profits of the socialist economy, and on the other, to keep the budgetary resources of local authorities under control.

Keywords

• state budget of the ussr
• the budgetary system of the ussr
• government revenues
• tax system
• soviet economy in the 1950s and 80s