Qualification of an Industrial Enterprise

(tsenz promyshlennogo predpriiatiia), a list of criteria on the basis of which an enterprise is counted as an independent economic organization during a census or a running statistical observation. In studying the principal sources of factory and plant statistics, V. I. Lenin pointed out the need for establishing precise criteria for defining the concept of “factory” and “plant” (the presence of a steam engine or a complement of 16 or more workers without an engine). Such criteria formed the basis for the qualification of an industrial enterprise and were used in prerevolutionary statistics and the statistics of the early years of Soviet power. (See alsoCENSUS OF INDUSTRY.)

In the USSR, as the planned economy grew stronger, every enterprise covered by the economic plan was included in censuses. In the mid-1930’s the division of industry into qualified and nonqualified enterprises was replaced with the categories of large-scale and small-scale enterprises. Since the early 1960’s industrial enterprises operating with an independent accounting balance and subsidiary enterprises have also been included in census reporting.