Novye Issledovaniâ Tuvy (Jun 2020)
Studies in economics under Tuvan Autonomous Oblast’ (1945–1961)
Abstract
The article takes a general look at the development of the science of economics during the period of Tuvan Autonomous Oblast’ (1944-1961). For studies in economics written during these two decades of Tuvan history, it was characteristic that problems of economic development were simultaneously treated from an economic and historical standpoints, hence most authors in this field were historians. In the 1950s, for instance, some of them were arguing that collective farms work better than individual arat households by generalizing about the process of sedentarization. Studies on the economy of agriculture were of purely applied character and aimed to define specialized priorities both of the region and each of its rayons. Among the issues thus raised were those of processing local resources, cooperation between small individual enterprises, power resources of the region, and integrating its economy to the Soviet nationwide industries. Scholars of financial life in the oblast’ emphasized the huge contribution USSR made into the financial sector of Tuva, as well its internal and external trade. Just as any sphere of public life within a Soviet-time region, studies in economics were conducted in a centralized and planned fashion, and carried a stamp of the ideology of the time. However, some of the works featured economic forecasts and explanations of how the economy of the region should develop by means of exploiting its natural resources, given the plans of building a railway to link Tuva to the mainland. Some of these ideas can still be found relevant. These first studies in economics found their continuation in the earliest dissertations on the economy of Tuva defended by those seeking a Candidate degree in a number of Russia’s research hubs in the 1960s.
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