Soviet GDP?

[Blanquist]

I'm trying to find world list of gdp for say 1960 and where the ussr ranks..

was the ussr the worlds second biggest economy post ww2 and then only overtaken by japan in the 1980's?

i think i say that ussr gdp was around 2.5 trillion before the breakup and us was 5 trillion?

did that make the ussr the worlds 3rd largest economy?

[ComradeOm]

It's difficult enough comparing growth rates within the Soviet Union (http://www.revleft.com/vb/did-soviet-union-t170943/index.html?p=2432421), an international comparison is difficult and subjective in the extreme. There are probably estimates out there but nothing that I'd trust or take as gospel. Different measures, pricing systems and basic economic models make any such comparison little more than guesswork

But yes, on a very rough level Japan can be said to have overtaken the USSR in the late 1970s or early 1980s. By 1991 the Soviet economy was approximately one third to one half the size of that of the US. Roughly

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

GDP on its own is a crap measurement of an economy's size. It is only useful as a tool alongside GDP growth, GDP per capita, per capita growth trends, the spread of wealth, where the wealth is produced (i.e in agriculture, industry or services, financial creation, military spending, healthcare, education etc.) and who controls the wealth.

Only then do you start to get a picture of the 'size' and health of an economy. GDP on its own is too crude and static really to be an accurate portrayal of economic size or success.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The Soviet bloc used gross and especially net material product, not Western conventions for macroeconomic measurement.

[ComradeOm]

Which is the problem. GDP/GNP* is actually fine if you want to make a cursory comparison as to economic size. It won't give you much nuance or detail on the economy but for a snapshot 'Economy X is bigger than Economy Y' it works as well as any indicator

The problem is that the Soviets didn't take measurements in these terms so any attempt to compare on a GDP/GNP basis involves translating the Soviet statistics into Western standards. Which opens a whole can of worms, not least because of the quality of Soviet economic data itself

*Interchangeable in the case of the USSR

[Die Neue Zeit]

Actually, my contention is that GDP is woefully inaccurate. It doesn't distinguish between productive and unproductive labour (all "consumption" is lumped together, all government spending is lumped together, etc.).