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 index of discounts proposed by Arcadius Kahan. " This results in discounts of official statistics that resemble the discounts implied by the comparisons in Table 4 of official and estimated output statistics. The index of discounts is also consistent with the belief of another writer that pre-1954 crop statistics are under- stated and that the years 1954-57 require smaller discounts than subsequent years.“ As Table 5 shows, with the exception of 1956, discounts derived in this manner are smaller for 1954-57 than for most other years in the series. Kahan uses a 6 percent discount for 1954, 7 percent for 1955 and 1957, and l0 percent for 1956, 1958, and 1959. These discounts suggest drier conditions in 1954, 1955, and 1957 than in 1956, 1958, and 1959, and are supported by a recent Soviet article on comparative precipitation levels in the major grain areas of the USSR." The article lists the incidence of dry years in five major grain areas: European Russia, Ukraine, the “Volga Valley,” Western Siberia and Altay kray, and Northern and Central Kazakhstan. During the l95Qs,over §O percent of area sown to grain was in the European USSR, the Ukraine, and parts of the Volga Valley. In all three major regions, 1954 and 1957 are listed as “dry years”; 1955 is listed as dry in the Volga Valley. On the other hand, 1956, 1958, and 1959 are lis_ted as wet in two of the three major-grain areas of the 1950s, indicating the need for larger waste allowances. The second factor in the grain discount is the adjust- ment for crop size. Grain crops that are larger than average strain Soviet capacity to harvest, transport, clean, and dry the grain, especially when a large crop- coincides with rainy weather at harvest time. We assume waste is larger under these conditions than when small harvests and dry weather coincide, as in 1975. To adjust the discount for crop size, we derive °‘ See Kahan’s article “Soviet Statistics of Agricultural Output,” Soviet Agricultural and Peasant Affairs, (Roy Laird, ed.), Univer- sity of Kansas Press, Lawrence, Kansas, 1963. ”" Luba O. Richter, “Commentary” (on Arcadius Kahan’s article), Ibid, p. 165. " Yu. L. Rauner, Izvestiya akademii nauk SSSR, no. 6, 1976, pp. 37-54. the percentage difference between the actual crop as reported in Soviet sources, and the crop that would have resulted under average conditions.“ We use half of this percentage difference to adjust the weather-related discount. In this manner we account for that portion of the grain crop lost because of inadequate harvesting and processing capacity. In 1973, for example 2.0 percent is added to the weather- related discount to account for these losses. In 1975, on the other hand, the crop was small enough to be handled by existing capacity. In addition, the weather was dry. Thus, 1.2 percent is subtracted from the weather-related discount to account for minimum losses in that year. Table 5 shows the composition of the grain discount. VI. Deductions for Seed and Livestock Feed To measure agricultural output available for sale and home consumption, gross agricultural production should be reduced by the quantities of output used for seeding crops, feeding livestock, and for hatching poultry. The C-IA index makes deductions for grain, potatoes, vegetables, and whole milk fed to livestock, eggs used for hatching, and quantities of grain and potatoes used for seed. Sunflower seed used for seed is not deducted because, according to seed norms, less than l percent of the crop is used for seed. Appendix C reports the methodological details and source refer- ences for these estimates. ln the following discussion of seed and feed use, we are concerned with the implications of the estimates and their reliability. The trends in feed and seed use as a share of gross output are shown in table 6. Annual averages are used instead of data for individual years to smooth the year-to-year fluctuations in harvest size. The table shows seed use declining as a share of gross crop "‘ Grain crops that would have resulted under average conditions (trend) are derived by first subtracting the moisture discount from gross grain output and dividing by sown area to derive "clean" yields. These yield figures are regressed against time to derive clean yields that would have been obtained under average conditions. Clean yields are multiplied by sown area and by l.l l to derive an “average” gross harvest with a normal waste content of l l percent. 269 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.