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Soviet Union [USSR] MACHINE BUILDING AND METAL WORKING
As the supplier of production machinery to all other branches
of heavy industry, the machine-building and metal-working industry
has stood at the center of modernization efforts, and its support
of the military has been especially critical
(see Soviet Union USSR - Industrial Organization
, this ch.). But because of the systemic problems
discussed earlier, in the late 1980s substantial inertia remained
in machine building. Progress in one program was often negated by
a bottleneck in another, and all industry felt the impact of this
uneven performance.
The Structure and Status of the Machine-Building and Metal- Working Complex
In 1987 the machine-building industrial complex, one of the
seven industrial complexes, included 300 branches and subbranches
and a network of 700 research and planning organizations.
Officially designated the machine- building and metal-working
complex (MBMW), it was the most inclusive and varied industrial
complex. Its three major types of product, were military hardware,
consumer durables, and industrial machinery and equipment. In 1989
eighteen ministries were included, manufacturing a wide range of
machinery; nine of the ministries chiefly produced military weapons
or matériel. Ministries within MBMW often split the jurisdiction
within a particular specialization. For example, although
instrument manufacture fell mainly under MBMW'S Ministry of
Instrument Making, its Ministry of the Aviation Industry and
Ministry of the Shipbuilding Industry controlled manufacture of the
instruments they used in their products. The contributions of MBMW
included machines for mining, agriculture, and road building;
equipment for conventional and nuclear power plants; oil and gas
drilling and pumping equipment; and metal-working machines for all
branches, including the military. In the mid-1980s, restructuring
in the machine industry was a central theme of perestroika
because most industries needed to update their machine stock.
Western studies in the 1980s showed that 40 to 60 percent of
industrial production was earmarked for military uses. In the
1980s, government policy encouraged industry to buy domestic
machinery to counter a frequent preference for more reliable
foreign equipment. (A 1985 study by MBMW's Ministry of Heavy
Machine Building said that 50 percent of that ministry's basic
products did not meet operational requirements.) In the late 1970s
and early 1980s, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) sent
half its machine exports to the Soviet Union. At the same time,
Soviet machine exports fell behind machine imports, after exports
had reached a peak in 1970.
Data as of May 1989
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