Excerpts on the History of Ministry of Economy and Forecasting of the USSR in 1991: The Last Year of the Empire

Abstract

The collapse of the USSR became an epoch-making event in Russian and world history. The commemorative practices of studying the economic history of the late USSR imply using the country's archival heritage as the most important segment of the social memory and the basis for scientific research. The goal of the article is to introduce into scientific use archival materials of the Ministry of Economy and Forecasting of the USSR, stored in the Russian State Archive of the Economy. The Ministry existed from April to December 1991 and was functionally positioned as the successor of the USSR State Planning Committee. The fonds of the Ministry, apart from the traditional organizational and administrative documents, includes a document block of obvious research interest: these are the responses prepared within the Ministry to the instructions of the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR. This archival material makes it possible to understand the view of the top leadership, represented by the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR, on the economic situation in the country, its current problems, options for correcting the problem situations that had arisen, the vision of perspective, in this case tactical, in this most difficult period of national history. With a certain degree of convention, it is possible to identify such thematic lines in the documentary array as the preparation and implementation of state programmes, the state of certain sectors of the economy, the activities of specific enterprises, the economic situation in the regions, the issues of import / export of products and technologies, the situation with the currency fund of the country, external lending issues, social themes, elements of a market economy, etc. The paper considers documentary primary sources on the first four subjects.