Attempting to satisfy their political masters in a target-driven culture, Soviet managers had to
optimize on many margins simultaneously. One of these was the margin of truthfulness. False
accounting for the value of production was apparently widespread in some branches of the
economy and at some periods of time. A feature of accounting fraud was that cases commonly
involved the aggravating element of conspiracy. The paper provides new evidence on the nature
and extent of accounting fraud; the scale and optimal size of conspiratorial networks; the
authorities’ willingness to penalize it and the political and social factors that secured leniency;
and inefficiency in the socialist market where managers competed for political credit
