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Not quite. There had been two currencies in the USSR, "cash" and "cashless" (нал and безнал). Retail consumers ("physical persons") could only use cash and inst

Not quite. There had been two currencies in the USSR, "cash" and "cashless" (нал and безнал). Retail consumers ("physical persons") could only use cash and institutional consumers ("juridical persons") only cashless. There had not been an easy exchange between the two by design. As the result, all consumer goods production ("group B") was flying blindly under the directions from the central planning. The government's own production ("group A") did have market-like feedback loops since it was running on the same currency and few people complained about this area's performance. Consumer goods were in total ruin by the 1970s. People used word "deficit" to refer to anything desirable. And no, it has not been a common word or its usage in Russian before the advances in planned economy.

vkazanov 9y ago
As a Russian, and as a Russian interested in economical history of both the Russian Empire and the USSR, I have to notice that before the communists the Empire had serious famine problems [1], and had no serious modern (19-th centure style modern) economy, which did not allow for effective product exchange between regions. For example, the Empire was exporting a lot of grain, but still had regional hungers every 5-10 years. "Deficit" literally means "lack of something", and hunger is definitely a lack of food. Food supply problems in the region were only solved by late 30s (if one skips war-related problem of 40s), when painful - like, really painful - communist reforms and modernization settled down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia...
- pandaman 9y ago
  >"Deficit" literally means "lack of something", and hunger is definitely a lack of food. Sure. Yet, being a Russian myself also familiar with the history, I cannot recall people using that word to describe "hunger". In Russian of 1970s-1980s the word "deficit" was used to refer to the goods not a lack of them, see this example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKWQ2UxXSLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKWQ2UxXSLY As for you remarks about RI's economy - I am not sure what you mean. In your own link there is no reference of an economy-related famine. Famines used to be caused by weather and wars all around the world.
  - vkazanov 9y ago
    Weather acceptable as a famine cause is a clear sign of bad economy, don't you think so?

vkazanov 9y ago

As a Russian, and as a Russian interested in economical history of both the Russian Empire and the USSR, I have to notice that before the communists the Empire had serious famine problems [1], and had no serious modern (19-th centure style modern) economy, which did not allow for effective product exchange between regions. For example, the Empire was exporting a lot of grain, but still had regional hungers every 5-10 years. "Deficit" literally means "lack of something", and hunger is definitely a lack of food. Food supply problems in the region were only solved by late 30s (if one skips war-related problem of 40s), when painful - like, really painful - communist reforms and modernization settled down. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia_and_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droughts_and_famines_in_Russia...

pandaman 9y ago
>"Deficit" literally means "lack of something", and hunger is definitely a lack of food. Sure. Yet, being a Russian myself also familiar with the history, I cannot recall people using that word to describe "hunger". In Russian of 1970s-1980s the word "deficit" was used to refer to the goods not a lack of them, see this example : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKWQ2UxXSLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKWQ2UxXSLY As for you remarks about RI's economy - I am not sure what you mean. In your own link there is no reference of an economy-related famine. Famines used to be caused by weather and wars all around the world.
- vkazanov 9y ago
  Weather acceptable as a famine cause is a clear sign of bad economy, don't you think so?