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 allowance of 10 percent was made for processing and distribution costs of state procured products, and the average retail prices so estimated were then raised by 30 percent to bring them to the assumed “equilibri- um” price. The final result is to reduce consumption in kind by 5.6 billion rubles (12.7 compared with 18.3). Military subsistence is assumed to be correctly valued in terms of the consumers utility standard, since the original prices are a combination of retail and CFM prices, more or less. The effects of the two hypothetical adjustments to 1970 valuations cancel out, leaving the value of the goods component of consumption unchanged. Relative prices for housing and some household ser- vices in 1970 clearly did not correspond to the result that would have obtained in an open market. Urban housing was rationed and rents heavily‘ subsidized; the basic rental rate was the same as in 1928. Prices for utilities, public transport, communications and other services also had remained fixed for many years. Following Bergson’s approach, we revalue housing and household services in 1970, so that their price is related to that for goods in the ratio that prevailed in the United States in 1976. We use the ruble/dollar ratios given in the paper by Schroeder and Edwards." The result is to more than treble the value of these services, raising it from 21.6 billion rubles to 68.4 billion rubles. Education and health services, mainly government provided and valued at current cost, are re-valued at factor cost, thus increasing their level from 23.0 billion rubles to 27.2 billion rubles. The impact of all these revaluations is shown below: A‘1.l“5E‘E‘1l’I'°_°5 ._--_ Percent Billion Percent Rubles Billion Rubles l?§!a.l’“S11°9lTFi°°$ Good? . . _ Household 21.6 S(?l'Y1C€S 7'8.9__m 166.5 63.5 10.2 68.4 26.1 Education & 23.0 10.9 27.2 10.4 health Total 211.1 ""*T06.i1 "*76&.o"**i0B.0 T When the indexes are reweighted with adjusted price weights, the average annual growth of consumption during 1951-80 is 5.2 percent instead of 4.9 percent. The index is speeded up a little because of the much 2' Gertrude E. Schroeder and Imogene Edwards, op. cit., p. 73. larger weights given to the most rapidly expanding categories—household services, most notably trans- portation, communications and utilities. The structure of Soviet consumption in adjusted prices more closely resembles that of developed market economies, such as Italy, than does the structure in established prices; in those prices, the ratio of goods to all services resembles that of India. It could be argued that in 1970 excess de- mand for housing was relatively much greater than that for household services; indeed, excess demand for such services as public transportation, communications and utilities was not especially evident (i.e., by queues and waiting lists). To consider the effect of this possibility, the above calculation was carried out with a revaluation only for housing among the household services. The result was to slow the index of total consumption somewhat—from an average annual growth of 4.9 percent to 4.5 percent during 1951-80. Comparison With Other Indexes Official Soviet Measures As already noted, the Soviet government does not publish an index of real per capita consumption that can properly be compared with measures available for Western countries. For a number of years before 1976, the government published periodic data on total “personal consumption” and “material expenditures of institutions serving the population” in current rubles. The only published deflator related to final consumption is an index of retail prices in state and cooperative outlets. The index which shows almost no change in the price level since 1955, has been judged seriously unreliable.“ Indexes of collective farm mar- ket prices in the USSR as a whole have not been published since 1968, although an aggregate index can be calculated indirectly from regularly published data. The Soviet consumption data refer to consumption as a component of national income (net material prod- uct), omitting labor in all services but including some depreciation on housing and on the capital stock in the services sector. For 1961-1975, the only period for which a comparable series in available, the Soviet measure of total consumption per capita deflated by “ See articles by Gertrude E. Schroeder and Morris Bornstein in Treml and Hardt, pp. 307-312, 370-376. 333 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.