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Soviet Union [USSR] The Industrial Planning System
Industrial policy statements were issued by the CPSU at
party congresses (see Glossary). A typical statement came from the
Twenty-Seventh Party Congress in 1986: "In accelerating scientific
and technical progress, a leading role is assigned to machine
building, which must be raised to the highest technical level in
the shortest possible time." In reaching such broad goals, the top
planning level was the Council of Ministers, which represented the
all-union ministries included in the seven industrial complexes.
The council's decisions were passed to the State Planning Committee
(Gosudarstvennyi planovyi komitet--Gosplan), which formulated
specific programs to realize broad party goals. Then programs moved
down through the bureaucracy to individual
enterprises (see Glossary), and recommendations and changes
were made along the way.
The programs then reversed direction, returning to the Council of
Ministers for final approval. The final planning form was the
five-year plan, a concept originated by Stalin in 1928
(see Soviet Union USSR - The Twelfth Five-Year Plan, 1986-90
, ch. 11;
table 30, Appendix A).
After the First Five-Year Plan, planning was completely
centralized in the all-union ministries. In day-to-day operations,
this system consistently delayed interministry cooperation in such
matters as equipment delivery and construction planning. An example
was electric power plant construction. Planners relied on timely
delivery of turbines from a machine plant, whose planners in turn
relied on timely delivery of semifinished rolled and shaped metal
pieces from a metallurgical
combine (see Glossary). Any change in
specifications or quantities required approval by all the
ministries and intermediate planning bodies in the power, machine,
and metallurgical industries--a formidable task under the best of
circumstances.
Data as of May 1989
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