Talk:Ministry of Finance (Soviet Union)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved per WP:NC-GAL section 1 point 3c, which I was unaware of at the time of proposal. Cyber cobra (talk) 04:06, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Ministry of Finance (Soviet Union) → Ministry of Finance of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics — Use full name instead of less natural parenthesized disambiguator suffix (i.e. "(Soviet Union)"); c.f. WP:NCDAB point #1. --Cyber cobra (talk) 08:51, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose The Soviet Union is much more common than "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics", and you don't need to list the full name, see Department of State (United States), the name isn't Department of State (United States of America), second more people will search for the Soviet Union than the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, seeing that the majority think that the Soviet Union was the country's fullname. --TIAYN (talk) 14:10, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Both titles contain the words "Soviet" and "Union", so this page would still be in the search results. Redirects could obviously also be made for the various permutations. --Cyber cobra (talk) 14:57, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Note that according to WP:NC-GAL, the US does not follow standard guidelines for naming government agencies. Arsenikk (talk)  15:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Support Employing an official name, where possible, is often better than one with a qualifier. USSR Ministry of Finance or Ministry of Finance of the USSR comes up far more often in reliable sources than Soviet Union Ministry of Finance. In fact, I only found 4 google book hits for "Soviet Union Ministry of Finance" whereas I found 1006 hits for "Ministry of Finance of the USSR" and 3006 hits for "USSR Ministry of Finance" [].--Labattblueboy (talk) 14:14, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The title isn't "Soviet Union Ministry of Finance?" And Ministry of Finance (country) is a normal way of setting it up, see Ministry of Finance (France), Ministry of Finance (Japan) and many others... Thats the normal naming convention here in wikipedia. --TIAYN (talk) 14:41, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I was simply demonstrating that, in this case, USSR was more commonly employed in the construct than Soviet Union.--Labattblueboy (talk) 21:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The point isn't searching for "Soviet Union Ministry of Finance", but that "Ministry of Finance (country)" is the common naming convention here on wikipedia, such as Ministry of Finance (Japan) and Ministry of Finance (Soviet Union). --TIAYN (talk) 21:12, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The unabbreviated short-form is preferred on Wikipedia ("Soviet Union" is preferred over both "USSR" and the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics") just like "United States" is preferred over both "USA" and the "United States of America" and "France" is preferred over the "Republic of France". Arsenikk (talk)  22:58, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
 * As stated earlier, I was simply demonstrating the fact that the current name does not pass the WP:COMMONNAME test and that other derivatives are significantly more common. I recognizable WP:NC-GAL but in this case I are more inclined to follow WP:COMMONNAME and support the nominator.--Labattblueboy (talk) 04:16, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose Naming conventions (government and legislation) (WP:NC-GAL) is clear on the rules, in which Foo (Jurisdiction) is the default. However, if there is an official name that makes it clear what jurisdiction is being referred to, then that is be preferred. However, quote: "Care shall be taken to avoid Something of Something of Jurisdictionname constructions." Since the proposal involves just such a creation, the current title is preferred. Arsenikk (talk)  15:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment: Why is Norway's finance ministry the only one on Wikipedia to have the standard "Country Ministry of Finance", while all others, including Sweden, have the standard Ministry of Finance (Country)? Ministry of Finance (Norway) does not even redirect to Norwegian Ministry of Finance. -- Eisfbnore  ( talk ) 10:08, 14 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose. I find TIAYN's and Arsenikk's arguments convincing. Herostratus (talk) 13:15, 15 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose If you look at the WP:COMMONNAME policy it will state that the articles should be named by common name, "Soviet Union" is much more common than "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" therefore I will have to oppose —Preceding unsigned comment added by Poohunter (talk • contribs) 01:53, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

A few random thoughts
I have a few random thoughts andquestions/suggestions for people working on this article and with access to the relevant sources:


 * From reading this article I could not understand what the relationship of the Ministry was with Gosbank of USSR. Did the Ministry formally oversee/control the bank? There is a sentence in the "Founding and early history" section which suggests that the answer is yes, but my feeling (admittedly uninformed) is that the Finance Ministry only controlled the State Bank of the USSR for a relatively short period, fairly early on.
 * The article says that the main function of the Ministry (presumably in the post New Economic Policy period) was to prepare and oversee the state budget of the USSR. However the meaning of a "state budget" in the USSR was completely different from the meaning that this term has in most western countries, and this point really needs to be explained. In the standard monetary economies "state budget" means state appropriations and state authorizations to various state agencies to spend money in particular way. This is probably what most readers unfamiliar with the Soviet system will assume. However, in the Soviet Union the term "state budget" had a very different meaning. As far as I understand, the monetary system was divided into two largely disjoint parts: the cash system, mostly dealing with consumer goods and salaries, which involved physical currency; and the non-cash accounting system used by state enterprises in their own bookkeeping, and for recording transactions with other enterprises and the state. The state budget really dealt with this second, non-cash, system only. State planning was primarily done in physical quantities, and the state budgets played a passive and secondary role. Again, my understanding is that the non-cash accounting of state enterprises was used largely as a soft post-factum control mechanism by the state in order to ensure compliance with the state plans and to (try to) spot imbalances in resource allocation. The key point is that the actual movement of material goods between various enterprises and agencies was not really controlled by the availability of (non-cash) money, but rather primarily by the state plan(s). If the plan said so, goods and materials were transferred between various enterprises and agencies, whether or not non-cash money was technically available. Similarly, salaries were always paid, regardless of the current state of non-cash budget of a particular enterprise. I admit that this is based on personal knowledge (I grew up in the Soviet Union and got my undergraduate education there, before moving to the U.S. to pursue a graduate degree) rather than on inspecting sources and I may be mistaken on some points. Still, I think that these issues do need to be discussed in the article to some degree, so that it conveys accurate information about what the Finance Ministry was actually doing. Nsk92 (talk) 12:08, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm working on it, may take some time to find out seeing that i don't know Russian that well, and because English-written sources rarely write about the MF. --TIAYN (talk) 22:33, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm still working on it! --TIAYN (talk) 08:42, 28 December 2010 (UTC)