Great War, Civil War, and Recovery: Russia’s National Income, 1913 to 1928

Abstract

The last remaining gap in the national accounts of Russia and the USSR in the twentieth century, 1913 to 1928, includes the Great War, the Civil War, and postwar recovery. Filling this gap, we find that the Russian economy did somewhat better in the Great War than was previously thought; in the Civil War it did correspondingly worse; war losses persisted into peacetime, and were not fully restored under the New Economic Policy. We compare this experience across regions and over time. The Great War and Civil War produced the deepest economic trauma of Russia’s troubled twentieth century.

Keywords: Civil War, GDP, Russia, Soviet Union, World War I

JEL Classification: E20, N14, N44, O52