Documents / FOIA release
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.
“Fuller”2 pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 Table 5 (continued) Soviet Industrial Production: Annual Rates of Growth Percent 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 Industrial materials 6.8 5.7 4.8 5.5 5.3 5.7 3.6 2.9 2.8 1.0 2.5 Ferrous metals 5.5 3.8 3.3 4.0 4.2 4.4 2.7 0.7 2.2 0 —.3 Nonferrous metals 5.6 7.0 5.3 6.1 6.2 4.7 3.1 3.1 3.3 3.0 0.8 Fuels 5.5 4.8 4.7 4.9 4.9 5.9 3.7 4.2 3.1 3.0 2.3 Electric power 7.6 8.1 7.1 6.8 6.7 6.6 6.9 3.6 4.7 2.9 4.5 Chemicals and 11.3 8.1 6.7 9.0 9.5 petrochemicals 9.7 4.8 5.2 3.6 0.2 5.2 Wood, pulp, and 4.9 2.8 2.0 2.7 1.8 P313" 3.6 -0.1 0.5 —0.5 -2.9 2.8 Construction 8.5 6.7 5.2 6.0 4.7 materials 4.5 3.5 1.9 2.4 0.3 1.0 Total machinery 7.7 8.1 6.9 8.3 8.5 7.7 5.5 5.6 5.6 5.6 4.4 Including: Producer durables 8.5 10.1 7.2 8.8 8.8 8.2 6.4 6.5 6.3 6.0 3.8 Consumer 10.2 12.6 13.8 13.0 durables 10.4 8.7 6.2 7.2 8.4 4.4 3.8 Consumer non- 6.0 3.4 2.1 1.7 5.5 durables 4.1 1.2 3.3 0.6 2.6 0.1 Light industry 5.9 4.5 0.7 2.8 2.7 2.9 4.2 2.5 2.6 1.8 2.0 Processed food 6.0 2.6 3.3 0.8 7.9 5.1 -1.1 4.0 -1.1 3.2 -1.4 Total industry 7.0 6.1 5.0 5.8 6.5 6.2 3.9 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.9 production remained fairly stable at around 6 percent, although it trended slightly downward. During this period of apparent industrial consolidation, machinery production continued to drive overall industrial growth. Growth in industrial materials and consumer nondurables was generally slower and showed a stron- ger downward slide. While all signs suggest that the growth of industrial production slowed considerably after the 1950s, the extent and suddenness of the decline in the indexes may be deceptive. One likely cause of the sudden slowdown is the decline in the workweek from 46 to 41 hours by 1960. Thus, even with a 4.4-percent increase in industrial employment in 1960, labor inputs increased only 0.5 percent.” Considering that 3° Steven Rapawy, Estimates and Projections of the Labor Force and Civilian Employment in the U.S.S.R. 1950 to I 990, Foreign Economic Report Number 10, (Washington: U.S. Department of Commerce, September 1976), p. 43. The data presented were revised and updated in February 1980. the Soviets historically have achieved growth by the infusion of new inputs, it is not surprising that growth slowed. A lesser possibility, is that statistical reporting practices may have tightened after the 1950s to reduce the inflation of reported output in later report- ing periods." The current phase of industrial slowdown began in the mid-1970s when growth of machinery production started to falter and machinery production could no longer offset the gradual slowdown in the growth of materials and nondurables. This slowdown reflects the slowing growth in the industrial labor force, a con- tinuing failure to assimilate new production capacity " For a discussion of the padding of Soviet output statistics, see Gregory Grossman, Soviet Statistics of Physical Output of Indus- trial Commodities, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), and Alec Nove, “A Note on the Availability and Reliability of Soviet Statistics,” in Morris Bornstein and Daniel R. Fusfeld, ed., The Soviet Economy: A Book of Readings (fourth edition; I-Iomewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1974), pp. 237-245. 194 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 above. 399 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.