USSR: ROLE OF THE STATE PLANNING COMMITTEE (GOSPLAN)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP86T00608R000600020031-1
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 3, 2003
• Sequence Number: 31
• Publication Date: April 23, 1975
• Content Type: REPORT

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Role of the State Planninct
Committee (Gosplan)
Information requested by Alan
Greenspan
STAT
STA
STA
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USSR: Role of the State Planning Committee (Cos tan)
The State Planning Committee (Gosplan) is the highest-
ranking economic planning organization in the USSR. It is
responsible for (a) drawing up annual and five-year plans,
which cover the several thousand most im rtant products
of the Soviet economy, and (b) monitoring the implementation
of the plans. Gosplan employs roughly 50,000 people, includ-
ing economists, industrial and technical specialists,
statisticians, and computer experts. It has offices in the
capitals of each of the 15 union republics.
Relation to Council of Ministers
Ministers, the highest governmental body, :headed by Premier
Aleksey N. Kosygin. The Chairman of Gosplan, Nikolay
Baybakov, is also a Deputy Chairman of the Council of
Members of the Council of Ministers Bead the various
economic ministries -- agriculture, construction, machine-
building, light industry, etc. -- whose activities Gosplan
shapes within the national economic plan.I.Gosplan gets
its instructions from the (;puncil of Ministers on the general
. I,
goals of the economy and on major specific targets. In turn,
the Council of Ministers is instructed onefundamental
economic allocation issues (e.g., a stepperi-up agricultural
investment program) by the top decision-making body in the
Soviet system, the Politburo of the Central Committee
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of the CPSU (Communist Party Soviet Union). Gosplan thus
plays a technical and administrative, not; a policy-making,
role. F
Planning at Apex
Gosplan is part of the machinery atthe apex of the
Soviet "command economy", Its functionE,,lreplace to a large
extent the market functions of Western-type economies. It
effectively employs the absolute authority of the Soviet
state in imposing the economic policy and'decisions of the
central leadership. At the same time, the ministries,
enterprises, collective farms, and even individuals within
the system make millions of lesser economic decisions that
are (a) part of the process of breaking down and implementing
the central decisions and bending them toward local conditions
and vested interests, or (b) the result of Gosplan's
being able to deal with only a fraction of the myriad
decisions necessary in a complex economy, half the size of
the US economy.
In putting together national plans and monitoring
the results, Gosplan faces a complicatedtask of slicing
-- by
productive sector, which co3responds roughly
to the ministerial orga-iz;ation of economic activity;
-- by geographic area, which corresponds to the
political divisions of the USSR and touches on the sensitive
issues of how resources are allocated among the various
ethnic regions;
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-- by and use, which corresponds to the policy
issues of the rate of increase in living standards
and the pace of military development;
-- by physical flows, which corresponds to the
problems of planning "majerial balances" 6r "input-output"
relationships; and
-- by financial counterpart, which!involves the
planning of cash flows, ruble budgets, and bank credits
(in the Soviet system, the planning of physical production
dominates financial planning, both in priority and timing).
Review of Role
Gosplan, which has been the central planning agency
since the late 1920s, has undergone numerius reorganizations
that have altered the scope and method of; work but not its
fundamental responsibilities. Currently,!Gospian's planning
role is the subject of considerable debate. At the December
1973 Party Plenum, the quality of Gosplan;'s work was attacked.
Some Soviet economists have since suggested that Gosplan be
relieved of its annual planning responsibilities so that it
can concentrate solely on long-range planning. Primary
planning responsibility would then shift to the individual
ministries and to enterprises, All sides;-in the debate
support increased computer;Gzation and more automated manage-
ment of planning. GosplanNs supporters argue that computer-
ization can improve the present system, while the critics
claim that more advanced computers will permit better
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STAT
every five years.'
planning by enterprises thereby losseningj, the need for
centralized plans.
Note on Lebe'di'n'sk'iy
As Deputy Chairman of Gosplan and Di -actor of the
I
Main Computer Center, Nikglay Lebedinskiy;is particularly
interested in the applications of computer technology to
national economic planning. In a February 1974 article in
Kommunist, Lebedinskiy discussed the varibus proposals
that planning procedures be made more flexible and contin-
uous; e.g., one proposal calls for a new five-year plan to
be drawn up every',year and to extend a year beyond the last
one. Like most senior Gosplan officials,;Lebedinskiy strong-
ly opposes the idea of sliding five-year plans on the
grounds that it clashes with the annual directive planning.
He is in favor, however, of letting enterprises use
sliding five-year-plans "as a guideline" n some aspects
of their work. He also advocates sliding fifteen-year
plans, in which a new fifteen-year plan would be formulated
23 April 1975
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