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 the pile and the actual weight of one cubic meter of output. Requirements for weighing vegetables are relaxed at the peak of the harvest, and the quantity of vegetables is measured according to the number of units, bunches, or basketsfull brought from the field. Later, these are converted to kilograms according to the actual weight of a sample of the produce.” According to one Soviet source, on vegetable farms where harvested area is large and hundreds of workers are involved, it is impossible to carry out even this measuring of vegetable output. The first accurate weighing is done only when the vegetables are sold.” Deliberate falsification of output statistics is another source of inaccuracy that is very difficult to evaluate. There is ample evidence from Soviet sources suggest- ing that in the Khrushchev era ambitious agricultural campaigns and unrealistic output targets led many officials to inflate output statistics. Soviet officials claim that falsification is less now than before the 1961 decree that imposed prison sentences for falsifi- cation of data.“ Although we tend to believe that instances of deliberate falsification are probably less frequent now than in earlier periods, references to statistical malpractice occur periodically. Farms still have incentives to understate one year’s production in order to reduce plan obligations in the following year or to obtain permission to curtail production of an unprofitable commodity. In 1978 a resolution of the Georgian Central Committee cited frequent cases of padding, underreporting, and other gross “distor- tions” in overall statistical reporting in the republic. Over 3,800 statistical checks were conducted by state statistical organizations; almost one third of the re- cords inspected were found to have some type of deliberate misrepresentation.” The First Secretary of the Tadzhik SSR recently criticized state and party organs in the republic for insufficient implementation of the 1961 resolution against fraudulent reporting. He cited false reporting of statistics on sown area, production, sales, number of cattle, animal disease rates, and other statistics.“ " M. Z. Pizengol‘ts, Biakhgalterskiy uchet v seI'skom khozyaystve, Moscow, 1974, pp. 111-112. ” Uchet i finansy v kolkhozakh i sovkhozakh-, no. 10, 1979, p. 16. " Fletcher Pope, Collecting Agricultural Statistics in the Soviet Union, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Report No. 112, November 1975, p. 15. ” Zarya vostoka, 4 June 1978, p. 1. Not all of the instances cited refer to agricultural reporting. " Kommunist Tadzhikistana, 27 March 1979, p. 2. Involvement of several ministries in statistics on mar- keted commodities may offer some constraints to falsification of those data. Present accounting practice particularly provides opportunities for false reporting of commodities which remain on the farm after sales or are produced solely for farm use, such as animal feed. In 1979, both the Georgian Central Committee and the First Secretary of Azerbaydzhan publicly denounced falsely inflated reports of fodder produc- tion in their republics.” Milk production can be inflated by claiming that nonexistent output was fed to livestock. Farms have been known to purchase output from individuals or on collective farm markets and to credit the amount to farm production.” Error in and falsification of agricultural statistics probably vary greatly among regions and from year to year. Because references to the subject are scarce and the extent to which it occurs cannot be determined, the impact on output statistics cannot be quantified. We can only conclude that falsification probably causes some upward bias in the level of output figures and that the degree of bias may not be the same for every year. As a result, the net effect over time, in the context of a trend value, remains unclear. C. Lack of Consistency Over Time Since 1950 a number of Soviet agricultural statistics series have undergone definitional changes without corresponding adjustments to published data. Be- tween 1939 and 1953 Soviet grain crops were meas- ured in terms of so-called “biological" output per hectare. These were estimates based on samples of the crop as the ripe grain stood in the field and did not take into account losses of grain prior to and during ” Zarya vostoka, l June I979, p. 1 and Bakinskiy rabochiy, 25 July 1979, p. 1. “ Even procurement statistics have been doctored, although these have always been considered more reliable than output statistics (J.W. Willett,’“The Recent Record in Agricultural Production," Dimensions of Soviet Economic Power, US Congress, Joint Eco- nomic Committee, Washington, D.C., 1962, pp. 96-98). Instances of collusion among farm officials, state procurement agents, and inspection officials have been reported (Zakupki seI’skokhozyayst- vennykh produktov, no. 2, 1978). Farms, for example, have been credited with fictitious deliveries of agricultural products to pro- curement agencies. Zakupki se! Zrkokhozyaystvennykh productov, no. 10, 1975, reports such fraudulent transactions in the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Belorussia. 263 Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 r
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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.