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Soviet Union [USSR] Industrial Research and Design
The Soviet Union has long recognized the importance of its
domestic research and development system to make its industry
competitive. Soviet research and development relies on a complex
system of institutes, design bureaus, and individual plant research
facilities to provide industry with advanced equipment and
methodology
(see Soviet Union USSR - Research, Development, and Production Organizations
, ch. 16). A result of the system's complexity has
been poor coordination both among research organizations and
between research organizations and other industrial organizations.
Bottlenecks existed because much research was classified and
because Soviet information distribution systems, e.g., computers
and copying machines, lagged far behind the West.
A barrier between theoretical and applied research also
hindered the contribution of the scientific research institutes
(nauchno-issledovatel'skie instituty--NIIs) to industry.
Institutes under the
Academy of Sciences (see Glossary), which
emphasized theoretical research, often did not contribute their
findings directly for practical application, and an institutional
distrust has existed between scientists and industrial technicians.
Newer organizational structures, such as scientific production
associations, (nauchno-proizvodstvennye ob''edineniia--NPOs)
have combined research, design, and production facilities so that
technical improvements will move into the production phase faster.
This goal was an important part of perestroika in the late
1980s. It was especially critical in the machine-building industry,
for which a central goal of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan was to
shorten installation time of new industrial machines once they were
designed.
Soviet industrial planning was aimed at being competitive with
the West in both civilian and military industry. After years of
lagging growth, by the mid-1980s authorities had recognized that
the traditional Stalinist industrial system made such goals
unreachable. But improvement of that system was problematic for
several reasons. New emphasis on the civilian sector could not be
allowed to jeopardize military production; research and development
was never connected efficiently with industrial operations; the
huge industrial bureaucracy contained vested interests at all
levels; and personal responsibility and initiative were concepts
alien to the decades-old Stalinist system. The most optimistic
Western forecasters predicted gradual improvements in some areas,
as opposed to the dramatic, irreversible changes suggested by the
Soviet industrial doctrine of the late 1980s.
Data as of May 1989
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