Kenneth O. Elvik, Editor
IOWA STATE UNlVERSlTY
V. A. Mazdorov, History of Accounting Evolution in USSR (1917-1972), (Istoriya razvitiya bukhgalterskogo ycheta v CCCP), Moscow: Finance Publishers, 1972, 320 pp. (published in Russian).
Reviewed by Yoshiro Kimizuka, Denkitsushin University and Akira Mori, Meiji University
Studies in accounting history attract the concerns of researchers in the USSR. We have found nearly a dozen examples in the literature published from 1958 to 1977, but this book is the first one entitled accounting history. It outlines the process of accounting evolution, a bypath of economic history, and can be divided into 5 parts.
(1) Russian accounting (ch. 1, before 1917). Russia was an undeveloped capitalist state before the Revolution. Double entry book keeping spread itself gradually in the 18th century for purposes of bank credit, taxation, and prevention of fraudulent bankruptcy, along with the growth of industry, as we have in other countries.
(2) Revolution and restoration (ch. 2-4, 1917-1929). Drastic in flation, caused by World War I and wars against the White Army along with foreign intervention, disordered accounting for several years after the Revolution in 1917. Accounting was further aggravated by some prejudice, despite Lenin’s instruction. Decreased production was recovered in 1926 and the First Five-Year Plan for industrialization needed a diffusion of cost accounting. Accoun
tants attended the world congress in 1929 and observed foreign practice and calculators.
(3) Construction of socialist institutions (ch. 5-6, 1930-1940). Socialism became firmly established and socialistic ownership (state enterprises and cooperatives) formed the foundations of industry. Theoretical classification of accounts was publicized after a comment made by Strumilin, the noted economist, and “norm costing”, Soviet-typed standard cost accounting, was popularized. The foundation of Soviet accounting was fixed then.
(4) World War II and reconstruction (ch. 7-8, 1941-1950). The War (1941-1945) destroyed enormous assets and innumerable lives. Rough estimations of inventories, fixed assets, debts and credits were necessitated by demands of defense and dispersion of fa-cilities, the need for simpler calculation, the death of experienced accountants, etc. The authorization for the chiefs of accounting de-partments to check on their leaders in order to remove unfavorable habits remained even to some extent after the War.
(5) Advancement of socialism (ch. 9-12, 1951-1972). Accounting systems were made more precise but simpler to the extent possible, and accounting standards of materials, wages, fixed assets, forms, etc. were regulated successfully. “The New Economic System”, initiated by Liberman,1 changed the indicator of business activities from the total output into the amount sold and the rate of profit. Profit became a principal factor of bonuses in 1965. 777,000 specialists in such computation were trained at 106 schools from 1966 to 1970 and computers contributed to the modernization of accounting and saved much accounting labor. Accounting came to play a much more significant part in socialist society, as Marx and Lenin predicted.
In short, we know that Soviet accounting is a process of unpre-cedented structures, created by repeated trial and error and that the mechanism of both bookkeeping and costing does not differ funda-mentally in the USSR. However, characteristics of Soviet accounting based on socialist ownership must be understood, before one reads Mazdorov’s volume, the only one in this field at present. To our regret, Soviet books often go out of print and do not identify the author’s location, making it difficult to find them and thereby hindering us from cooperation in the academic world.
EDITOR’S NOTE
The Book Review editor has been fortunate to receive the follow¬ing illuminating commentary on historical research in Japanese ac¬counting from Professor Kojiro Nishikawa of Nihon University:
Accounting historians in Japan have been, heretofore, active mostly in the history of Western accounting, only a few have had an interest in Japanese accounting history. There are two areas of study in Japanese accounting history: indigenous methods of bookkeeping and Western bookkeeping introduced to Japan. The study of the former is especially rare because the tradi-tional usage of accounting evolved in the larger business houses in the Tokugawa era (1600-1867) as a secret of each family to be handed down from fathers to sons. No outside writers of treatises on bookkeeping appeared and nobody at¬tempted to formulate the reasoning or theory of it.
The first instance brought to the knowledge of academic circles before the World War II was “lzumo Bookkeeping,” found in 1936 by Y. Hirai and K. Yamashita of Kobe National University. After World War II, however, an interest in the historical development of old business firms increased and the research on the basis of actual data in account-books and business records has become active. In 1962, Eiichiro Ogura of Shiga National University published “Goshu Nakaike Choai-hoho” (Bookkeeping Methods of the Nakai Family), based on the actual books and records of business in drugs, dry goods, grain and so forth, for the one hundred and fifty years from 1734. This is the first outstanding book written on the indigen¬ous method of bookkeeping in Japan. Kawahara’s work on the “Edo” period is the second book in the same area of study.
Kazuo Kawahara, The Bookkeeping Methods of the Edo Era in Japan, Tokyo: Gyosei, Inc., 1977, pp. xxi, 437, y2800 (published in Japanese)
