Office of the Historian

861.50/5–2648

The Chargé in the Soviet Union (Durbrow) to the Secretary of State

restricted
No. 442
Moscow, May 26, 1948.

The Chargé d’Affaires ad interim has the honor to transmit herewith translated excerpts from the foreword to the new Journal of the Institute of Economics of the U.S.S.R., “Questions of Economics”. This journal replaces the former “World Economics and World Politics” which was edited by E. Varga.1

[The composition of the editorial board of the new journal is here omitted. Konstantin Vasilyevich Ostrovityanov replaced Varga as editor in chief.]

The continued presence of Varga, although demoted from Chief Editor to member of the board, is indicative of his importance in the field of Soviet economics. It appears that he must enjoy the support of a very influential segment of the government to have maintained any official status in the face of such strong criticism and attack.2

[Page 876]

The foreword to the new journal, excerpts of which are attached, indicates that all of the so-called defects of “World Economics and World Politics” will be eliminated from “Questions of Economics”. Henceforth Soviet economic thought will conform to the approved politico-economic line.3

  1. Yevgeny (Eugene) Samoylovich Varga was a Hungarian-born famous Soviet economist, Academician, and Director of the Institute of World Economics and World Politics in the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union until October 1947.↩
  2. Concerning the attack upon Varga’s views beginning in 1947, led especially by Andrey Aleksandrovich Zhdanov, a leading communist theoretician and high party official, see telegram 3304 from Moscow on December 1, Foreign Relations, 1947, vol. iv, p. 624, and footnote 1.↩

  3. The foreword, not printed, stated in part on the subject:

    “The journal ‘Questions of Economies’ is a theoretical organ explaining the problems of Soviet economics and the economics of foreign countries.

    “Despite the frequent instructions of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) and of Comrade Stalin personally, the economists’ scientific activity continues to lag behind the requirements placed upon it by the party and the Soviet Government. …

    “The journal sets as its task to cooperate in every way in the liquidation of the deficiencies on the basis of creative work and of the wide discussion of actual theoretical problems of economic science.”

    ↩