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.
“Gross”60+ pages
Approved for Release: 2019/07/19 C05210421 Table 4 Comparison of Official and Estimated Grain Output, 1950-62 a Grain Production b Excess of (million metric tons) Officially Reported Output Official Data Estimated Over Estimated Production' (percent) l@___..._.__8L___..._. .__. .. . .?§ ___;“_~7.___.7 1951 19 I so -1.2 .l.?§_2... ..__...._.9l_ ._. _92_... °-° ___ 1953 g s2 __ s_3_ — 1_.v2H_~_Z___g i§5Z§fQll§i. Ti 81*.-- —.1~1 19.5.5 .. 491 , 103- 3-9 1.?.L§§......-@.- ..-._-i__-_..-.1.1-.3_**-. 12:£_,._49§_.-. . .-_ 109 _-.-..5-L 1958 W 141 125____gv_“___12.8 1951......-__1z§...... . - 190 ,__2_@,.<>_ -. av”... - -. l.14-_*Z1s>9.--.--_. - 1.?91..._- . .._.-_.__J_ ____..-_as 5 ;o.o_ ___g 1962 14s 115 28.7 3 CIA/RR ER 64-33, Production ofGrain in the USSR, October 1964, p. l6. b These statistics include the grain equivalent of corn harvested in an immature stage which is no longer included in Soviet statistics on grain production. moisture content of 22 percent.“ Moisture content of other bunker weight grains varies widely, depending on harvesting conditions as well as degree of ripeness. No aggregated data on moisture content at the time of harvest are published. Meat statistics have become more inclusive over time. Between the 1920s and 1940s the definition of meat was expanded from beef, veal, pork, and mutton to include poultry, rabbit, and fat from all types of animals. By l954, edible offal had been added to the "° F.G. Dolgushevskiy and A. G. Khristich, SeI'skokh0zyaystven- naya statistika s osnovami ekonomicheskoy statistiki, Moscow, I976, p. 94. Reporting corn in a standard 22 percent moisture content is similar to a bunker weight concept inasmuch as 22 percent is the upper limit of moisture at which husked ears can be stored in slatted cribs where they will dry by spring to the 14-15 percent moisture needed for safe warm-weather storage. definition of meat." Approximately in I956. the defi- nition of meat was expanded again to include horse, camel, and other minor meats.“ Published data are available from 1950 covering the broader definition of output. In 1965, the USSR revised its method of reporting the size of livestock herds. While this did not result in definitional changes, it may have caused statistics for subsequent years to be less accurate than earlier ones. Prior to I965, the annual census of livestock on l January was taken by enumerators who visited social- ized farms during the first weeks of January. ln 1965 the livestock census was discontinued. Herd numbers for 1 January are now derived from the monthly and quarterly livestock reports submitted by these farms to the Central Statistical Administration. The change in procedure was ascribed to the improved quality of farm bookkeeping and to the increasing share of livestock in the socialized sector. Numbers of pri- vately owned livestock on l January are taken from accounting records of rural councils.” As in the pre- 1965 period, local statistical offices spotcheck private sector livestock reporting by surveying l0 to 15 percent of households with privately owned holdings. D. Comparability with Western Statistics Soviet agricultural output statistics are often not directly comparable with those used to measure agri- cultural output in the West. Coverage is frequently broader and the quality of the Soviet product is often lower than that of Western counterparts. This lack of comparability clearly affects comparisons of levels of output and can complicate comparisons of growth in agricultural output over time. International compari- sons overstate the relative position of the USSR unless " Offal is defined in footnote l0. “ for a complete discussion of these statistical revisions, see Nancy Nimitz, Soviet Statistics of Meat and Milk Output: A Note on Their Comparability Over Time, RM 2326, the Rand Corp., February, I959. "° Rural councils (soviets) are the local administrative agencies of the central government. Certain agricultural matters are included in their administrative responsibility for local trade and irfdustry. 265 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.