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USSR: Measures of Economic Growth and Development, 1950-80

Central Intelligence Agency · 1982-12-08 · 399 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Joint Committee Print, dated December 8, 1982, gathers studies that the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. It gives estimates of Soviet gross national product for 1950 to 1980, with indexes of industrial production, agricultural production and consumption, and explains the methods and data behind them. The foreword says official Soviet statistics inflate growth and that the CIA measures offer a more accurate picture. The document contains no UFO material.

  • p. 18 …Power, United Nations International Comparisons Project, Phase I (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) ICP…
  • p. 19 …Oleg 1-Ioeffding, Soviet National Income and Product in 1928, Columbia University Press, New York, 1954…
  • p. 21 …In theory, the Soviets " Basic Principles of the System of Balances of the National Economy, United…
  • p. 50 …Lawrence Grose, Real Output Measurement in the United States National Income and Product Accounts, US Department…
  • p. 166 …The subsidies on housing, recreation, and the press were allocated to the housing, recreation, and other…
  • p. 181 …Duke University Press, 1972), pp. 155-194; with Wade Robertson, “Industrial Production in the USSR," Soviet…
  • p. 183 …tons, square meters, units of production, or some other convention- al measure. Examples of this type…
  • p. 210 …For example, the production of commodities pub- lished in physical units includes intraplant turnover, but the…
  • p. 222 …bulbs Units Narkhoz Machine tools sector ml Meta? cutting machine tools Rubles Narkhoz Forge presses sector…
  • p. 249 …Hardt, eds., Soviet Economic Statistics, Durham, N.C., Duke University Press, 1972 Treml and Hardt U…
  • p. 261 …Khrushchev stat- ed that “figures for average yield (of grain) which you read in the press…
  • p. 308 …central press. 8 Because the official data have again been made available to the United States…
  • p. 320 …Power, United Nations International Comparisons Project, Phase I (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975) ICP…
  • p. 321 …2 For details, see United Nations, Comparisons ofthe System of National Accounts and the System of…
  • p. 328 …Judging from a mass of anecdotal evidence from the Soviet press concerning the poor quality of…
  • p. 342 …Although the average size of a dwelling unit increased between 1950 and 1978-by 17 percent…
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
Table 3
Industry: 1970 Value Added at Factor Cost by Branch
1970 Value Added by Share of Industry Group Share of Industry
Branch at Factor Cost (percent) b (percent) C
(billion rubles) =
Industrial Materials 59.113 100.0 49.7
Ferrous metals 8.793 14.9 7.4
Nonferrous metals 4.810 8.1 4.0
Fuel 12.070 20.4 10.1
Electric power 8.308 14.1 7.0
Chemicals 7.756 13.1 6.5
Wood, pulp, and paper 9.388 15.9 7.9
Construction materials 7.988 13.5 6.7
Machinery 38.528 100.0 32.4
Consumer nondurables 21.404 100.0 18.0
Light industry 9.761 45.6 8.2
Processed food 11.643 54.4 9.8
Subtotal 119.045
Other industry 3.564
Total industry 122.609
3 JEC, GNP, I 950-80. See table E-4. The groups—industrial
materials and consumer nondurables—are sums of the branches
directly below them.
1’ Each value added in column 2 divided by the appropriate group
total.
C Value added in each branch and group divided by the subtotal for
all industry. The effect of dividing by the subtotal is to allocate other
industry proportionally among all of the branches.
The Index of Total Industrial Output
The calculation of indexes for the three major indus-
try groups and for total industry can be summarized
briefly. Since these indexes are used in estimating
Soviet GNP within the framework of the GNP ac-
counts maintained by the Office of Economic Re-
search, we use the branch value added at factor cost
in 1970 as weights instead of weights derived from
input-output tables. The purpose of using factor cost
instead of established prices for measuring value
added is to count the true resource costs of produc-
tion. The chief differences from an established price
valuation are that factor cost subtracts taxes, adds
subsidies, and imputes the costs of productive factors
not appropriately accounted for by Soviet procedures,
such as charges on fixed capital and working capital.”
" See CIA, USSR: Gross National Product Accounts, I970, pp. 1,
20, 85.
Table 3 shows these weights and the relative impor-
tance of each branch. The group and aggregate
indexes are obtained by converting each branch index
to a value-added basis and then summing the ele-
ments within each group and all industry.
Soviet Industrial Growth, 1950-80
Having described the methodology of the production
index, we present the indexes and review some of the
key developments in Soviet industry since 1950.
Revised SPIOER Indexes
The revised SPIOER indexes for the period 1950-80
are given in table 4 and the annual rates of growth in
table 5. The average annual rates of growth for
various quinquenniums are further summarized in
table 6. The indexes for the individual input-output
190
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 399 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.