Foucault studied the change in the governmental practices of European countries under the influence of Enlightenment. The transition from intuitive actions of power to the rational ways of governing developed the need for experts as a group of people with professional knowledge. Our article focuses on experts as the key element of this concept. The article argues that the symmetry between governmental needs and the experts’ qualifications is the crucial factor in the application of new accounting techniques. We investigate an attempt to introduce an accounting innovation in the royal estate during the reign of Russian Empress Catherine II. The failure of this innovation can be attributed to the lack of skilled experts in public sector accounting. The authors came to this conclusion through analysis of the archival sources, including the account books of the Moscow Palace Office, which has not been widely academically discussed from that point of view before.

In the 1930s, active industrialization of the economy in the (United Soviet Socialist Republic) USSR was impossible without using modern management techniques and accounting methods. To increase the manageability of industrial enterprises, attempts to introduce standard costing imported from the (United States) US were undertaken. Previously called progressive and useful, after the policy of the Communist Party changed, standard costing was identified as a calculative technique that did not correspond to the goals of the socialist state. Soviet researchers formulated the principles of normative cost accounting, based on standard costing. The method of this new version was greatly simplified and lost its analytical focus. The paper investigates the influence of state policy on the transformation of standard costing methodology during the construction of the Socialist economy. The authors contribute to previous literature by focusing on the periodic press, professional societies, and educational institutions being used as tools of political power to put pressure on accounting theory and practice.

This paper reports the results from the study of the account books (1622-1700) of the Moscow Print Yard, the largest Russian state manufactory in the 17th century. This case confirms the existence of sophisticated calculative techniques in pre-industrial societies and adds an argument in the debate about origins of the cost accounting. Management of the Russian state owned monopoly enterprise used the original cost technique not for efficiency reasons but only for pricing and control of material, labour and financial resources. We also investigate the influence of the organizational changes at the Moscow Print Yard on the evolution of its bookkeeping practice for eighty years. The cause of calculative practice development was intuitive reaction of enterprise management to changing political and economic circumstances. The methods of product costing, pricing, expense recognition and production control are examined within the political, economic, and social context of Russia at the time. The 17th century was the epoch of the formation of the Russian state and the awareness of the state power as the driver for governing of a public life. The paper argues that the political attitudes of the state determined the organizational changes at the state manufactory and transformation of traditional bookkeeping practice to the new type of administrative activity – cost accounting.

For a long time, the public organizations kept the records using the cameral accounting. Then the evolution of public sector accounting methodology passed several stages in the search for new possibilities of the accounting information systems. From the 18 th century the scientists developed the idea of using the double entry bookkeeping (DEB) in the public sector accounting. A synthesis of the two systems (commercial and cameral) would enable to measure the financial position and financial results of public organization and to compare the planned and actual financial results at the same time. The high level of the theoretical studies did not match always the same quality of the accounting practice in all public institutions.The paper describes the case of the educational unit of Novo-Alexandria Institute of Agriculture and Forestry -the experimental estate Konskaya Volya during 1893-1905 years. This case is a negative example of the practical accounting activities and does not correspond to the evolution of theoretical ideas in the public sector accounting. The authors examine the reasons for the slow dissemination of innovative methods of accounting in public institutions in Russia in the late 19 th century.

No abstract