Features of the Organization of Economic Research in the 1920s (on the Example of Yekaterinburg / Sverdlovsk)

Abstract

The potential of Yekaterinburg / Sverdlovsk made it possible to expect creation of a local center for the training of qualified economists in the 1920s and emergence of a special institution with specialists capable of analyzing regional economic problems at a high theoretical level. However, despite the obvious need for economists (practitioners and theorists) and for conducting economic research, this did not happen due to a number of ideological and political restrictions. Mistrust of old specialists, the adoption of Marxism political economy as an ideological dogma, the crisis of higher education, fear of possible party sedition in regional economic research centers led to a natural result - a lag in economic research, poor industrialization of the necessary personnel, and miscalculations in economic planning. Uralplan, UOLE, regional studies organizations engaged in regional economic research were destroyed, which slowed down the development of economic science in Sverdlovsk for several decades.