Documents / FOIA release

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 8 Percent
Comparisons of Average Annual Growth in
SPIOER and Official Series
1951 -55 1956-60 1961-65 19657655
if 7881119187118-2588511’
"1976-so
Total industry
SPIOER
Official
10.2
13.1
8.3
10.4
5.9 3.4
7.5 4.4
6.6 6.3
8.6 8.4
Ferrous metals
SPIOER
Official
11.1
12.1
7.6
8.8
7.2 5.1 4.0
8.0 5.7 .
5" Q .->-
tg-.-
Fuels
SPIOER
Official
9.4
10.1
8.9
8.5
6.3 5.0
6.5 5.7
5.0 3.3
5.1 2.9
Electric power
SPIOER
Official
13.1
14.4
11.4
13.1
7.0 4.5
7.1 5.0
11.5 7.9
12.3 9.0
Chemicals and petrochemicals
SPIOER
Official
11.6
17.3
10.5
12.0
8.6 3.8
10.6 5.7
12.0 8.9
14.4 12.2
Wood, pulp, and paper
SPIOER
Official
7.4
8.3
5.8
7.8
2.6 2.9
Zéwwflizffm
5.0 5.5 5.2 A.
-o U._.
Construction materials
SPIOER
Official
15.7
17.6
14.7
17.6
5.4 5.7 5.4
9.1 8.6 7.5 1"?"
moo
Machinery
SPIOER
Official
9.6
16.7
7.9
14.2
7.4 6.9 7.9 5.4
12.4 11.7 11.6 8.2
Light industry
SPIOER 10.4 6.4
Official 12.3 6.9
2.6 7.2 2.7 2.6
2.6 8.6 4.6 3.4
Processed food
SPIOER 10.2 8.4
Official 10.0 7.9
3.9 0.7
5.4 1.5
6.8 5.9
7.2 5.9
trends of the official indexes with respect to relative
growth in different periods unless official series give a
totally distorted view of the pattern of growth over
time.
For example, a test for secular consistency might
compare growth in the fifties with that in the seven-
ties. A radical divergence between the SPIOER and
the official indexes with respect to the pattern of
Soviet development would throw considerable doubt
on the synthetic indexes. We expect that even though
the official indexes are biased, they nonetheless reflect
actual growth trends.
To perform this test, we first compute the average
annual rate of growth for 1951-80 and then several
multiyear periods within that span for both SPIOER
and the official series. These period growth rates are
indexed relative to the historical average for that
branch to then test both series for similar long-term
201
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.