Creating a Socialist Society and Quantification in the USSR

Abstract

When it came to power, the Bolshevik government based the legitimacy of its action on the scientific nature of its decisions, figures being a core element. Political decisions were to be based on science, for the well-being of everyone and the fulfilment of the communist plan to create a new society and human being. Statistics, an information and decision-support tool, became now also an instrument of power to prove the soundness of state action. This raised severe tensions and repression, between statisticians following recommendations of international statistics congresses, and the new government. For the duty of statisticians was to formulate a new theory of statistics and new methods and tools. Characterizing some of these, the chapter carves out the specific nature of the Soviet Union.