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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. 183 …Biases in the Basic Data” for a fuller treatment of the new-product pricing phenomenon. It…
  • p. 253 …waste as it affects each category; a fuller discussion of the waste prob- lem can be…
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421
Technical Crops. Our sample, shown in the following
tabulation, includes oilseeds, sugarbeets, cotton, to-
bacco, makhorka, fiber flax, and tea. Cotton alone
accounts for almost half of the value of technical crop
production. Sugarbeets, sunflower seed, and fiber flax
account for almost all of the remaining half. These
shares have not changed appreciably over time.
Million Rubles Percent
Sunflower seed 1057.0 12.0
Soybeans 156.5 1.8
Other oil crops 90.0 1.0
1856.0 21.1
3823.9 43.5
475.6 5.4
17.5 0.2
1068.9 12.1
256.3 2.9
8801.7 100.0
Sugarbeets
Cotton
Ebacco
Makhorka
Fiber flax
Tea
Total
plants, on socialized farms, and by private sector
households.” We account separately for beef and veal,
mutton and kid, pork, poultry, and other meat. Other
meat includes rabbits, horses, deer, camels, and game,
and amounted to 3 percent of the value of meat output
in 1970. The shares of individual types of meat in total
output have changed somewhat. The share of poultry
has doubled from 6 percent in 1950 to 13 percent in
1979, while mutton dropped from 14 percent to 4
percent. The share of beef dropped from 47 percent to
35 percent between 1950 and 1955 and slowly recov-
ered to 47 percent in 1979. Shares of pork demon-
strated the reverse trend, climbing from 31 percent to
42 percent between 1950 and 1955 and then declining
to 33 percent in 1979. Since 1950, however, beef, veal,
and pork have accounted for at least three-quarters of
the value of total output. The following tabulation
shows the distribution of meat output in 1970:
Among oilseeds, we count separately only sunflower
seed and soybeans. Together, these account for 93
percent of total oilseed output? Other crops grown
exclusively for oilseeds but not listed separately in-
clude castor beans, flaxseed, mustard seed, and at
least 1 1 other minor oilseeds. A waste discount of 8.0
percent is applied to sunflower seed output. In addi-
tion, oilseeds are produced as a joint product with
cotton and hemp. Cottonseed is included in cotton
production which is measured as raw, unginned cotton
including seeds. Hemp and associated seed, a minor
crop, is not included.
Meat. Meat output in our index is measured at
slaughter weight and includes meat on the bone, all
raw fats, and edible offal derived from livestock and
poultry slaughtered in goverment-operated packing
° Earlier versions of this index accounted separately for flaxseed,
castor beans, and mustard seed in addition to sunflower seed and
soybeans. In revising the index for this paper, it was established
that continuous time series of official data for these other oilseeds
were not available. Our category “other oil crops” is a residual
derived by subtracting sunflower seed and soybean production from
Soviet data on output of all oil crops.
Million Rubles Percent
13234.4 46.0 _
10230.8 35.5% i
1827.6 6.3
2536.1 8.8
968.8 3.4
28797.7 100.0
Beef and veal
Pork
Mutton and kid
Poultry
Other meat
Total
Other Livestock Products. Milk, eggs, wool, honey,
and silk cocoons are other livestock products in the
index. All are shown in table 1. Gross meat and milk
production, however, roughly accounted for 80 per-
cent of gross output of livestock products in 1970.
This share was almost 90 percent in 1950, and has
risen since 1970 to 84 percent in 1976-79. Milk output
includes all milk from cows, sheep, goats, and mares.
An estimate of whole milk fed to livestock is deducted
in deriving net livestock production. Also excluded
from net output are eggs used for hatching.
‘° Edible offal includes the internal organs of the animal: lungs,
liver, heart, kidneys, stomach, and others. It also includes the head,
brains, feet, and other parts that are used for food in the USSR.
Soviet statistics formerly grouped these products in four categories.
Sometime during the 1960s, these were collapsed to two.
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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.