This article explores previously undisclosed and "unsettling" episodes in the early life of Nobel laureate Simon Kuznets, which significantly influenced his personal character and professional identity. Drawing on the author’s long-term correspondence with Kuznets' relatives and archival findings by historian Alexander Ilyin, the study sheds light on a major bank embezzlement committed by Kuznets’ father, Abram, in Pinsk in 1910, which led to his flight to America and the family's subsequent social displacement. The author analyzes the "between a rock and a hard place" situation the family faced: navigating state-sponsored discrimination in the Russian Empire and the precarious geopolitical shift following the Treaty of Riga (1921). The article reveals that Simon and Solomon Kuznets were forced to use forged passports and falsify biographical data to emigrate via Danzig, fearing both military service and Polish authorities' suspicion regarding their previous employment in Soviet trade union organizations (the Southern Bureau of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. The author culminates these findings by formulating the “Kuznets Paradox”: the man who institutionalized the absolute precision of national economic statistics began his American journey through the forced fabrication of his own records. Keywords: Simon Kuznets, Abram Kuznets, Solomon Kuznets, Georg Kuznets, Judith Stein, Ruth Kuznets Hauptman, Nobel Prize in Economics, history of economic thought, Stolin, Pinsk, Rivne, Kharkiv, Warsaw, Danzig, Treaty of Riga, Azov-Don Bank, biographical data fabrication, Kuznets Paradox.
Vladimir M . Moskovkin (Thu,) studied this question.