Economics Institutes, Research

in the USSR, scientific institutions that conduct research in economics.

In Russia, the first specialized scientific institution that dealt with economic problems was the Commission for the Study of Natural Productive Forces, which was founded in 1915. After the Great October Socialist Revolution, economic problems of building socialism and of the world capitalist economy were studied at the Socialist Academy of Social Sciences, which was established in 1918 and renamed the Communist Academy in 1924. The Communist Academy included the Institute of World Economy and World Politics (founded 1925), the Agrarian Institute (1928), and the Institute of Economics (1930). Another institute of economics operated under the auspices of the Russian Association of Social Science Research Institutes (1924–30). In 1936, the economics institutes of the Communist Academy were placed under the jurisdiction of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (AN SSSR).

As a scientific-organizational center, the economics division of the AN SSSR, which was established in 1962, coordinates the study of the economic regularities of building socialism and communism and the investigation of problems pertaining to optimum national economic planning and management, the economic efficiency of social production, the construction of the material and technical basis for communism, the scientific and technological revolution, the location of productive forces, the economics of contemporary capitalism, the world socialist system and the developing countries, and economic competition between the two world systems.

The following economics institutes are attached to the economics division of the AN SSSR: the Institute of Economics, the Institute of World Economics and International Relations, the Institute of the Economics and Organization of Industrial Production (Novosibirsk, 1958), the Institute of Africa, the Institute of Economics of the World Socialist System, the Institute of Latin America, the Central Economic Mathematical Institute, the Institute of the Far East, the Institute of the USA and Canada (1968), the Institute of Social Economic Problems (Leningrad, 1974), and the Institute of Economics of the Urals Scientific Center of the AN SSSR (Sverdlovsk, 1974).

The economics division of the AN SSSR supervises the work of the economics departments of the Yakut and Buriat branches of the Siberian Division of the AN SSSR and the economics departments of the Dagestan, Komi, S. M. Kirov Kola, Bashkir, and Karelian branches of the AN SSSR. The Association of Soviet Economic Scientific Institutions, which was founded in 1957, operates under the auspices of the AN SSSR.

The following economics institutes are attached to the State Planning Committee of the USSR: the Scientific Research Economics Institute of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the Scientific Research Institute of Planning and Standards (1961), the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Cybernetics (1969), and the Council for the Study of Productive Forces (1930).

In the Union republics, scientific research economics institutes have been established by the state planning commissions, branch economics institutes have been organized by major ministries, and institutes of economics are attached to the academies of sciences of the republics. Such institutes have operated in Byelorussia since 1931, the Ukraine since 1936, Lithuania since 1941, Uzbekistan since 1943, Georgia since 1944, Tadzhikistan since 1946, Latvia since 1946, Estonia since 1946, Kazakhstan since 1952, Armenia since 1955, Kirghizia since 1956, Turkmenistan since 1957, Azerbaijan since 1958, and Moldavia since 1960. The International Institute of Economic Problems of the World Socialist System has been located in Moscow since 1971.

Economic problems are studied in special laboratories and in departments or subdepartments at higher educational institutions —that is, at institutes of the national economy, planning institutes, financial and economic institutes, and institutes of engineering economics—and at universities, higher schools, and academies. The most important departments and subdepartments that deal with economic problems are the subdepartments of political economy at the M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, the A. A. Zhdanov Leningrad State University, and the University of Kiev, as well as the departments of political economy at the Higher Party School and the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the CPSU.