POPOV, PAVEL ILICH

(1872–1950), author of the first "balance of the national economy," the forerunner of the tool of economic analysis now known as input-output.

Pavel Popov went to St. Petersburg in 1895 to enter the university, but once there he was diverted to participation in the revolutionary movement. He was arrested and spent the years 1896 to 1897 in prison. Exiled to Ufa gubernia, he began to study statistics and in 1909–1917 worked in the Tula zemstvo as a statistician. After the February Revolution he became head of the department of the agricultural census in the Ministry of Agriculture in the provisional government. After the Bolsheviks came to power in 1918, he became the first chairman of the Central Statistical Administration. He was an able organizer and, among other things, oversaw development of the first "balance" of inputs and outputs. He continued as chairman of the Central Statistical Administration until 1926, and then had a long, apparently untroubled, career in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic Gosplan until his death. During the early, statistical, stage of his career, he published some books and reports but apparently nothing after he became associated with Gosplan. Thus, apart from the input-output work, his contribution to Soviet economics was as an organizer rather than as an economic thinker or theorist.

See also: central statistical agency; gosplan

bibliography

Spulber, Nicolas. (1964). Foundations of Soviet Strategy for Economic Growth: Selected Soviet Essays, 1924–1930. Bloomington: Indiana University Press

Robert W. Campbell