Russia marks anniversary of its best tank

[Kurfürst]

It would appear that

Pz.Kpfw.Panther 117,100 Reichmarks, for early, without weapons (KwK 42 unit price adds another 12 000 RM), so 130 000 RM top for a complete vehicle.

T-34 (in 1943) costs between 141822 (factory 183) and 209 300 (factory 112) rubles, say 176 000 rubles. Whether armament etc price is included is unknown.

The M4 Sherman, depending on variant had a unit cost 45 000 - 50 000 $, or anywhere between 100 and 200 thousend Reichsmarks.

Now all we need is a currency conversion between Rubels and Reichsmarks.

Labour hours would be a better comparison, provided they are on equal footing (is it only assembly time for the vehicle, or the labours hours for sub components - engine, gun, materials - included? etc.), but the problem with the thread you provided that a, it gives any sort of labour figure for the T-34, from 3000 hours to 25 000 hours, and b, neither posters gave details of their sources, and what their figures would include.

 

[Milosh]

Just to add to the discussion.

 

[Vincenzo]

In the soviet system the prices in rubles of tanks it's pratically w/o significance.

 

[Soren]

Total German armoured losses (armoured cars tractors included) was 48,140.

Total Soviet losses were 96,500 tanks and 37,600 other armoured vehicles, which gives a total of 134,100 armoured losses.

So in total:

Soviet tank losses during WW2 in Europe were: 96,500
German tank losses during WW2 in Europe Africa were: 33,146
British tank losses during WW2 in Europe Africa were: 15,844
US tank losses during WW2 in Europe Africa were: 8,199

 

[m kenny]

Total German armoured losses (armoured cars tractors included) was 48,140.

Total Soviet losses were 96,500 tanks and 37,600 other armoured vehicles, which gives a total of 134,100 armoured losses.

Total German losses of tanks/SPG and armoured vehicles (excluding 'tractors) was over 52,000.

 

[Soren]

According to Hahn total German tank losses were 33,146, thats including SPG's. Including armoured cars SPW's the number reaches 48,140. This is the total German armoured loss. So 33,146 tanks lost is around 17,000 less than were produced, which must have gone all round the world, I know Syria got a lot of PzIV's after the war, and the Russians took a lot of German tanks as-well. The Brits US took many back over to themselves as-well, but mostly for evaluation purposes. The Swedes got some too. In short a lot of German tanks left over by the Germans were given out to various countries after the war. Austria Switzerland got some Hetzers also.

Also during the war Hungary, Bulgaria Italy both recieved a good number of tanks from the Germans, and these wouldn't have been listed in the German loss figures.

I have also seen pictures with lots of German tanks stacked together after the war. So I am wondering how many tanks the Germans had left by 1945, and how many had simply disappeared. There were however no doubt more tanks available in 1945 than there were trained crew to operate them.

So maybe ~17,000 tanks of all types, SPGs etc etc were left after the war, but not all situated in Germany ofcourse.

 

[parsifal]

In todays money., 1 Russian ruble equals $ 0.03 USD. If there are roughly 2.5 RM to the dollar, and the exchange rate for rubles to dollars is about the same, then the conversion is about 0.08 RM per rouble, thats a conversion rate of 12. That means, on your own figures that a T-34 in some state of readiness is about 1/9 to 1/10 the cost of a Panther. There was no real conversion rate applicable during the war, at least not one that I am aware of, but it would have been in the general vicinity of the quoted exchange rate

Whilst i agree with Vincenzo, that a straight conversion of Roubles to westen currencies is not very accurate, in general terms this does demonstrate just how cheaply the T-34 could be built for.

A far better way of gauging the cost of Soviet armemtns is to look at the Industrial indices of the two countries....bottom line is this. Germany enjoyed a considerable advantage in basic industrial potential over the USSR, but which was made even more pronounced by the effects of the occupied teritories and the foreign suppliers like Sweden and Spain. Despite this, the Germans could not compete in terms of finished products (ie military hardware) even when fully mobilized (1942 to 1945)and under very good economic management (ie Speer). Some of the reason for that relatively low output is the high cost of items under construction. Admittedly the Nazi sytems for controlling industrial output were innefficient and wasteful, but that still has to be included in the unit costs. The use of slave labour is a shallow expedient that contains hidden costs that actually push up the costs of production (sabotage, low outputs pe square metre of factory space, high failure rates that in turn require returns to the line for repair which in turn cause disruptions to output, low levels of expertise in t he factories, no pride of workmanship,etc etc ).

The cost of a Sherman was actually $33500, delivered stateside, according to the contracts signed between the US government and the Chrysler corporation.

The RM12000 cost is the cost of a towed 75 mm AT gun, but I am not sure this is transferable to a Panther tank. Not completely sure, but I think the cost exclusive of armament means, no turret. I have a number of sources that state the cost of a Panther, fully equipped, run in and delivered was RM180K, whilst a Tiger finished and delivered to a similar standard, was RM 312K.

The Germans conversely produced cheap and very effective small arms, their MG 42s and SMG production was world class. Complex machines like Tanks, using unskilled labour, with high end technologies like German tank designs of the late war period was bound to lead to massive cost blowouts. The beauty of the Russian designs is, however that whilst they possessed adequate capability, they were just dirt cheap and very easy to construct...just the thing for Russian industry of the time, and more than adequate to defeat the limited numbers of german tanks that could be turned out to face them.

 

[riacrato]

Hi parsifal
Imo, comparing monetary costs under total war conditions is meaningless no matter how you put it. For military goods they are even very debatable under peacetime conditions. The company I am working for sells engines way below market price to military customers for a variety of reasons among them contractual obligations.

To act as if occupied resources can be transformed 1:1, especially if you refer not to raw materials but complex workforce and secondary products, is faulty as well. I guess we should count Iraqi resources to that of the US now.

Finally, taking a highly aggregated statistic such as an index and derive conclusions from that to a single variable (unit costs), especially if you portray them as definitive as you do, is misleading at best.

All they can do is give a rough indication. The figure itself is problematic especially under wartime conditions. Any index given for Germany from 1941-45 and for Russia in the forced industrialization period is subject to debate itself. The industrial situation is too volatile to be measured by indices that were tailored to peacetime conditions. Effects like bombing of factories and moreover the logistical system, the draft of qualified workforce and replacement by kids, women and old men (even than not 1:1 numerical parity with peacetime workforce) are even today not really understood. The method you take for deriving your conclusion ('German industrial index is x times that of the Russian, Russian output in category i is y times that of the German, therefor German products in category i is z times as expensive') is way too simplistic to capture the complexity.

The only useful comparison would be man hours and amount of critical raw materials at any given point in the war. With the first (to some degree also the second) number(s) you will again have the problem of cost degression that will have fully kicked in for the T-34 by the time the Pz V is still in prototype stage, leading to an 'unfair' evaluation with regards to design potential (nevertheless valid for comparison).

I agree the Soviet tank designs were perfect for their industrial system. I have a hard time believing you can just apply these systems at will. Can you say that because a German tank factory built in the 30s could churn out 20 Pz 4s per month it could also churn out 40 T34s per month because the latter was half the cost according to your calculation based on comparing indices?

 

[Juha]

Hello Soren
Yes, Germany exported tanks, but numbers were under 10% of the number you suggested. 1224 tanks, StuGs and Marders were exported to Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Finland and Slovakia. Those incl Pz35(t)s and Pz38(t)s, many of which were manufactured before occupation of Czech. Those which went to Switzerland were sold by Czechoslovakia after WWII, some of which were completed after the war. Germany never exported AFVs to Syria during WWII, those which ended there after the war were either from someone's warbooty or some of those exported during the war to over mentioned countries and sold later to Syria. And before the war Germany exported some PzIs to China and to Spain. IIRC the number exported to China was 100 or 200.

On the other hand Germany lost numerous ex-French and ex-Italian tanks and StuGs and those must be added to Germany's losses.

Juha

 

[parsifal]

Hi parsifal
Imo, comparing monetary costs under total war conditions is meaningless no matter how you put it. For military goods they are even very debatable under peacetime conditions. The company I am working for sells engines way below market price to military customers for a variety of reasons among them contractual obligations.

To act as if occupied resources can be transformed 1:1, especially if you refer not to raw materials but complex workforce and secondary products, is faulty as well. I guess we should count Iraqi resources to that of the US now.

Finally, taking a highly aggregated statistic such as an index and derive conclusions from that to a single variable (unit costs), especially if you portray them as definitive as you do, is misleading at best.

All they can do is give a rough indication. The figure itself is problematic especially under wartime conditions. Any index given for Germany from 1941-45 and for Russia in the forced industrialization period is subject to debate itself. The industrial situation is too volatile to be measured by indices that were tailored to peacetime conditions. Effects like bombing of factories and moreover the logistical system, the draft of qualified workforce and replacement by kids, women and old men (even than not 1:1 numerical parity with peacetime workforce) are even today not really understood. The method you take for deriving your conclusion ('German industrial index is x times that of the Russian, Russian output in category i is y times that of the German, therefor German products in category i is z times as expensive') is way too simplistic to capture the complexity.

The only useful comparison would be man hours and amount of critical raw materials at any given point in the war. With the first (to some degree also the second) number(s) you will again have the problem of cost degression that will have fully kicked in for the T-34 by the time the Pz V is still in prototype stage, leading to an 'unfair' evaluation with regards to design potential (nevertheless valid for comparison).

I agree the Soviet tank designs were perfect for their industrial system. I have a hard time believing you can just apply these systems at will. Can you say that because a German tank factory built in the 30s could churn out 20 Pz 4s per month it could also churn out 40 T34s per month because the latter was half the cost according to your calculation based on comparing indices?

All valid points, I agree, you can never achieve a truly satisfactory comparison, the best that can be done with the information that we seem to have to work with is to use what are called surrogate measures, to estimate the relative costs of the items concerned. Thats why figures like steel outputs, factory space, manhours and unit costs are in the end only surrogates (substitutes) for the true oncost of the items we are comparing. Whilst to rely on monetary costs alone is dangerous, I think you being too dismissive of its value, it is a valid indicator of cost, but one needs to be careful with drawing too many conclusions from that one piece of data. But when this information is used in conjunction with other indicators, and those other indicators also show a similar trend of low production costs, the weight of evidence starts to definately suggest that indeed the t-34 was far cheaper than its opponents

However, this much we do know. Germany had an industrial index at least as great as the Soviets pre-war, and by the end of 1941, it was at least 30% greater , due to the overrunning of much of European Russia. That is not my observation, it is evident in the generally accepted industrial indexes like steel and coal production. In th period 1942-5 the Germans fully mobilized their economy and did not mismanage it in the way they had 1939-41. The economic effects of the occupied territories, whilst not directly transferrable as you say, nevertheless had an effect (for example I seem to recall athat fully 30% of the vehicle park for Barbarossa was from vehicles of foreign manufacture). It would be a brave man indeed to try and argue that Germany lacked the potential to completely eclipse the USSR in industrial output. Yet in terms of actual output of hardware, the Germans were completely out-produced. The reasons for this were complex and multi-dimensional, but I am sure that at least some of this was the low cost of production for Soviet items, versus the high cost of German items. Bombing only ever had a limited effect on production, until 1944, though the indirect effects of bombing were felt more quickly (eg the re-direction of aircraft production to fighters, and the recall of assets to the defene of germany)

The dollar costs of individual unts is, i admit a crude and inaccurate way of measuring the true cost, but it is one of the factors that need to be looked at when determinng military outputs. And it cannot be denied that their is a massive difference in the apparent costs of German military equipment, to that equipment used to equip Soviet forces (eg the T-34 versus the Panther). This is not intended to be an excervise in anti-germanic propaganda, or proSoviet propaganda for that matter, simply to understand why German miliatry outputs were so low when compared to those of her opponents. in the case of the Soviets, it should have ben them who were outclassed in the military output.....

If the Germans had started producing T-34s, I doubt they could have produced them a efficiently as the Soviets. however, the low standards of finish applied to the T-34 and the general lack of finesse leads to believe that the germans could have considerably increased their overall output of tanks. Speer certainly strongly advocated the adoption of a simpler, more easily produced tank park throughout his tenure...

 

[Kurfürst]

Total German losses of tanks/SPG and armoured vehicles (excluding 'tractors) was over 52,000.

and

I make German tank and SPG losses as 50,000.

Care to provide a source for this? It seems self-contradictory, and based on a simple assumption that all German tanks and SPGs were lost by the end of the war. Which seems inaccurate anyway, for the number I've seen on Panzerworld indicate that the Heer still possessed around 10 000 tanks and SPGs by the end of 1944..

That and the fact that it appears that Hahn (who I have a very high opinion of) states that total German tank and SPG losses were 33,146 during the war, a far more believable figure.

If we are to measure combat effectiveness of the units, it must be based on their combat or combat related losses.

 

[Juha]

Hello Kurfürst
not bothering to dig out my copies of Hahn's books, up to where his loss figures go, during the last few months of war Germany lost almost all of its AFVs, I don't recall mass surrenders of armoured vehicles save those in Norway and Denmark. For ex those Pzdivs which fought their way from East to surrender to Allies had very few tanks left.

Juha

 

[Kurfürst]

In todays money., 1 Russian ruble equals $ 0.03 USD. If there are roughly 2.5 RM to the dollar, and the exchange rate for rubles to dollars is about the same, then the conversion is about 0.08 RM per rouble, thats a conversion rate of 12. That means, on your own figures that a T-34 in some state of readiness is about 1/9 to 1/10 the cost of a Panther.

You can't compare based on today's conversion rates....

According to Axishistory poster, the (fixed) conversion rate was 1 US dollar = 5,3 Rubel during WW2. That would translate to something like 32 000 USD for a T-34, assuming 170k Rubel price tag.

The conversion rate between the USD and the RM is a different matter, I have seen anything from 2.5 to 4:1. That would mean that the 130 000 RM unit price for an armed Panther would cost anywhere between 32 500 and 52 000 USD, practically the same as the T-34 (32k USD) or the M4 Sherman (figures ranging from $33500 ie. Chrysler to 55-64 000 USD, i.e. M4A6 as per Panzerworld).

Certainly there was nothing like many times the cost difference involved between these tanks. The Panther may have been somewhat more expansive, given its bigger size, more complex gun etc., but it was not significant. A telling figure is that in-house, where figures were certainly comparable, the Germans calculated the costs in both man hours and RM of the Panther being only about 20% greater than the much smaller and simplier Panzer III.

A far better way of gauging the cost of Soviet armemtns is to look at the Industrial indices of the two countries....bottom line is this. Germany enjoyed a considerable advantage in basic industrial potential over the USSR, but which was made even more pronounced by the effects of the occupied teritories and the foreign suppliers like Sweden and Spain. Despite this, the Germans could not compete in terms of finished products (ie military hardware) even when fully mobilized (1942 to 1945)and under very good economic management (ie Speer).

As other have noted, the pitfalls are far too numerous to make any valid conclusion. The German industry was not mobilized until 1943; the outputs and priorities were decided differently on the strategic level, and the products are not comparable (ie. you can compare tank production, but how do you factor in say radar production or submarine/naval production, an area where the Soviets were near non-existent..?)

The use of slave labour is a shallow expedient that contains hidden costs that actually push up the costs of production (sabotage, low outputs pe square metre of factory space, high failure rates that in turn require returns to the line for repair which in turn cause disruptions to output, low levels of expertise in t he factories, no pride of workmanship,etc etc ).

Except that the much vaunted 'slave-labourers' were not much used in active production. I can grab a peasant women in Ukraine, give him a blowtorch and then whip her until she fells, she still won't weld hull elements together. She may help moving parts and stuff around, and sweep the floor in the factory, but she still doesn't do any active production.

The cost of a Sherman was actually $33500, delivered stateside, according to the contracts signed between the US government and the Chrysler corporation.

As always, it depends on the factory contracted, the type being built and which order batch we are talking about.

Product prices

The RM12000 cost is the cost of a towed 75 mm AT gun, but I am not sure this is transferable to a Panther tank.

I looked up both PW and Spielberger (probably the source of PW) and it states the 12 000 RM cost is for the 7.5cm KwK 42, ie. the gun used in the Panther.

The beauty of the Russian designs is, however that whilst they possessed adequate capability, they were just dirt cheap and very easy to construct...just the thing for Russian industry of the time, and more than adequate to defeat the limited numbers of german tanks that could be turned out to face them.

I am in complete agreement with that.

 

[m kenny]

I've seen on Panzerworld indicate that the Heer still possessed around 10 000 tanks and SPGs by the end of 1944.

As of 30 Dec 1945 tank/Stug totals were 8,000. No SP info.

 

[Juha]

Hello Kenny
M-H figures
Bestand 1. Feb 45 6.191 Pz of which 5.577 "frontfähigen", 6.501 StuGs StuHs StuPzs and JgPzs, of which 6.277 "frontfähigen" and 670 Pak/Sfl. Summe all 13.362 of which 12.524 "frontfähigen".

Verluste Summe Mai 1941 bis Jan 45 18.966 pzs, 7.231 StuGs StuHs StuPzs and JgPzs and 2.265 Pak/Sfl

Juha

ADDITION: The loss figures probably lacked the Pz35(t)s lost by 6th PzD from June 41 to March 42 because there was no Pz35(t) losses shown, a note also states that Pz35(t) "waren ab 1941 nicht mehr im Feldheer vorhanden." 6th Pz had on 22.6.41 155 Pz35(t) and got at least 2 replacements and lost all its Pz35(t)s before it was withdrawn to West in Spring 42.

 

[syscom3]

Its obvious that the T34 was less effective against the Panther, its only true opponant. But it could it hold its own when in battle when visibility dropped to the point where it didnt matter how good the Panthers 75mm was, as the T34's gun (75mm or 85mm, doesnt matter) was within its effective range.

But in the critical year of 1942, it was far superior to whatever the Germans had. In 1943, It was still better than whatever the Germans could field in quantity. And since those were the two years that decided the fate of the war in Europe, then we can say it was the best tank at the right time, for when it counted.

Soren, answer my question: If the vaunted Panther couldnt operate due to terrain or weather conditions, but a lesser design from your adversary is operating and attacking your army, which is the superior one?

 

[Glider]

Juha which weapon did I mention first? The AA gun or the Pak36??

I mentioned the Pak36 because I had the Aberdeen test results for that gun, and if that gun was dangerous at 1,000m then you can be sure the 3.7cm AA gun was as-well!

Another question for you Soren. If the T34/85 was in service from 1944, how did the 37mm AA guns knock them out with ammunition that hadn't been produced in any numbers since 1942 and as far as I can see there is no evidence that this ammunition was ever fired from the AA guns. The only reference I can find is for an AP shell.

 

[parsifal]

Official exchange rates are very misleading in the case of the the Soviets, since it was illegal to take currency out of the country without government approval, and the Soviet currency was not on the gold standard until after Stalin (if I recall correctly. The sviets grossly inflated the value of their own currency for reasons known only to them. The real exchange rate (if you could call it that), was about $0.05 per Rouble during the war, which explains why the Soviet citizens were always happy to deal in USD over their own domestic currency. This is a situation that continues to this day....local p[eople do not believe in the value of the currency even today.

I agree that none of these standards are accurate in themselves. However they are valid surrogate measures, and whilst it might be valid to dismiss one or two of them as aberrations and not representative, it becomes a bit implausible to mount that argument when all the surrogate indicators point in the opposite direction. Economics is a science, but it becomes imprecise, and somewhat based on guesswork when incomplete information is all there is to go on.

We can argue all day long about the accuracy of these figures, but this wont get us any closer to understaning why Germany, with an Industrial index much greater than the Soviets prewar, on the basis of nearly all the accepted indicators, was far more powerful that the USSR, but in terms of actual outputs delivered was far less efficient.

Some have argued that the Germans were engaging some of their industrial potential in other fields, such as electronics and naval construction. Radar I think is a valid point, but then it is not widely known that the Soviets constructed and maintained over 2000 ground station radars of their own, based on Allied technologies. Also, the Soviets outproduced the Germans in tems of surface ships during the war, and were only slightly behind in submarine production. They also built huge river flotillas in the thousands, which the germans did not. My opinion is that all these swirling reasons for the dissipation of GTerman industrial potential can be met by equally strange dispersal of effort in the Soviet camp....why would the Soviets need nearly 500 submarines for example

Geran oncosts are in my opinion high because of the low production runs, the high costs of the technology that was put into them, and because the German auto industry from pre-war days had always concentrated on quality, and were inexperienced in mas production techniques. Throughout the interwar period, German car ownership rates remained very low for a developed western nation. I think it very significant that huge proportions of the soft skinned vehicle parks were from foreign manufacture, and that the German output of soft skinned vehicles....about 300000, was so badly dwarfed by the USA (over 2000000).

Another area of weakness for the German Industrial complex was the very regime itself. Whereas in the US the competitive tender process was just that, so that the contract price arrived at between the General Board and Chrysler of $33500 per unit, was transferrable to most of the other contracts such as GMs arrangements, the same cannot be said in the case of German industry. (Chryslers contract, incidentally was responsible for something like 30% of the Sherm,an deliveries during the war, at what is today known as the TACAM plant.....its a huge complex). In the case the competitive tender process was often corrupted by the regime, and there were often compensatory contracts issued to competing designs which, inreality served only to make the process even less efficient.

Panther tanks were not RM130K, the stated cost does not include armement, which means, I now believe, they were delivered without turrets. The cost of a turret was not RM 12.5K. That is the cost of the gun. The turret assembly and its fitting shot the cost of the Panther all the way up RM180K per unit.

Lastly there is some debate about the exchange rate of the RM. From 1934 until the end of 1941, it hovered at about 2.489 or 2.5, and then from 1942 to the end of the war was totally off the western exchange rates. Exchange rates between Germany and the occupied territories were peged artificailly low in favour of Germany, so that trade terms were heavily weighted in favour of Germany in that period. This seems to have affected the exchange rate adopted of the new currency in 1946, since the new DM emerged with an exchange rate of about 3.3. Properly manage currency is a measure of the nations welath and potential, so while we cant be sure about the exchange rates in the 42-5 period, it seems to me reasonable to assert its was hovering somewhere in the area of 2-5 to 3-0.

None of this is controversial or seriously disputed in academic circles. You have to keep getting back to the fundamental issues driving this....German AFV production was low, its industrial potential was high, but it had significant problems. This all suggest s very clearly that in those sectors where the Germans lacked a great deal of expertise, they were going to do badly in those areas. Given the absolute necessity of AFVs to the war, and the relative inexperience of German industry in vehicle mass production techniques (this is not questioning the technical espertise of the designs), alomng with thos other handicaps I mentioned, I am at a loss as to why people still dont think that German production costs for these items were high....



Germany did excel in production terchniques during the war, particulalry for small arms, but they were never strong on the full implementation of vehicle manufacture mass pro duction techniques, including armoured vehicles, and this drove the unit costs for such items through the roof. This was not helped by the decreasing skills base in the workforce (I mentioned the influx of forced labour, 8 millio of them, which was refuted....I dont accept that, but what is undenaible was the drain of highly skilled tradesman, like toolm,akers, from the workforce to the army particulalry after 1942. Up to that point certain trades were exempt in Germany from military service, but after 1942, this became less and less the case. My own stepfather was a toolmaker, and was called to the colours in 1942, along with a large number of other tradesmen working at the plant he was employed in. He says they were all replaced by foreign tradesman, and the plant prompltly suffered a near 30% loss in productivity as a result

 

[Juha]

Hello Glider
In defence of Soren, BK 3.7cm was airborne version of 3.7cm Flak 18, and LW had developed a very powerful APCR ammo for it, it's problem was that its penetration power sharply reduced when the hit angle increased/decreased from perpendicular (depends how one gives the hit angle). So if a battery of 3.7cm Flak guns had those special shots it might have been possible that while the upper side armour was impenetrable a bit substandard turret side armour might have been penetrable from 600m, a bit so and so but maybe. Because of this behaviour of the APCR ammo, Ju 87G pilots tried to achieve as close as possible perpendicular hits when attacking Soviet armour..

On German total losses, I would say appr 42.000 panzers, StuG,s StuHs, StuPzs, JgPzs and Pak/Sfls based on M-H's figures, when one takes into account those lost before May 41, those produced during the last couple months of the war and those lost in the last 3+ months of the war unless someone can give info on mass surrenders of AFVs somewhere in Reich in May 45.

Juha

ADDITION: Because SU-76s was also used as SP artllery, IMHO we should add to German losses their SP artillery vehicles, Wespes, Hummels and those build on war booty chassis, say 2.000 losses. That still leaves over 350 SP guns to German hands at the end of the war. Plus appr 1.000 war booty tanks, StuGs etc officially used by WM, so altogerher some 45.000 German losses vs 96.500 Soviet losses + Allied losses in ETO and MTO. And of course to Germany's side clearly smaller losses of its allies.

 

[Vincenzo]

Only a "economic" note this is not only a exchange problem, the price system in soviet union it was not comparable (or not easy) with that in capitalist countries. it's true they called all roubles but all day money, accountancy money for factory, money for foreign trade were not same that in capitalist country. i'm enough old and i take a class (the alone that there was) of comparate economics system and a take the " a choice part" on soviet system for the class of industrial economics