Development of Financial and Taxation Mechanisms in Soviet Russia and in the USSR

Abstract

The authors consider the historical period of reforming the financial and taxation mechanisms of Soviet Russia and the USSR from 1917 to 1986. In 1985, M.S. Gorbachev came to power. He began reformation of the political system, the aims of which consisted in the process itself without any focus on a specific social and economic model for the state and society. Meanwhile, the epoch of the building of utopian communism in the USSR was over and in 1991, the USSR collapsed due to a number of fatal political mistakes made by Gorbachev and his associates, which led to a severe crisis. One of the most essential features of the reformed taxation system of the period is the fact of its being changed by the government to adapt it to the aims of the socioeconomic development of the peoples’ state of a new type, Soviet Russia and the USSR, through plan management of productive forces under conditions of state-owned means of production. It should be mentioned that the taxation system of Soviet Russia and the USSR guaranteed provision of financial and physical resources for the victory of the Red Army in the Civil War and in the war against the invaders. It also allowed the state to promptly industrialize the whole USSR, create the most advanced army in the world and win the Second World War, in the shortest time reconstruct economy and social sector destroyed by German occupiers and continue the accelerated socioeconomic development until the beginning of Gorbachev’s reformation. Thus, the above mentioned theoretical and practical aspects of the development of financial and taxation mechanisms of Soviet Russia and the USSR can be of practical use for scientists and practitioners not only in contemporary Russia but also in the other post-socialist countries when taking decisions of reforming financial and taxation systems.