THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY STRAINS EVIDENT AS KREMLIN DEBATES 15-YEAR PLAN

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33261, 26 June 1973, Page 14

THE RUSSIAN ECONOMY STRAINS EVIDENT AS KREMLIN DEBATES 15-YEAR PLAN

(By

VICTOR ZORZA)

The Kremlin debate on the national plan which will determine the shape of things to come as far ahead as the year 1990 is causing new strains among the Soviet leaders.

Complaints in the Moscow press that certain “economists oppose key aspects of the plan are an indication that the politicians themselves are divided on the matter. The drawing up of the Soviet five-year plans in the past has almost invariably been accompanied by conflicts between the various Kremlin lobbies.

There was always a painful choice to be made between guns and butter, and between many other competing demands. This time the decisions have to be made not just for five years, but for a 15-year plan starting in 1976. ’The struggle between the factions is therefore sure to be even fiercer than in the past. It will certainly dominate Soviet politics for the next few years, although the outside world is not likely to be told much about it, except for the occasional “Pravda” attack on wrong-headed “economists.” Brezhnev’s warning

The party secretary, Mr Brezhnev, has publicly warned his associates, in remarks ostensibly addressed to the planners, against allowing wishful thinking to play a part in determining the 15-year plan targets. To allow this, he said, would not just be pointless, “but even dangerous”—a strong warning which suggests that Brezhnev already has to contend with factions whose demands he regards as exaggerated and unrealistic. But the danger lies not only in the attempts of competing lobbies, such as the military and civilian, to grab a

I greater share of the country’s i resources. The Ukraine’s | partv boss, Mr Pyotr Shelest, has ’ already been purged for asserting “nationalistic” Ukrainian claims to a greater role in the share-out. Now “Pravda” has followed this up with an attack on “economists” who complain about the very nature of the 15-year plan. The conservative “opposition” on whose behalf they speaks maintains that the 15year plan now being drawn up lacks the hard, firm outline, with clear targets, of a kind that has ensured the attainment of Soviet goals in the past. They see it as a wishy - washy “programme” rather than an obligatory plan, more a forecast of what might happen than a directive to ensure that it will happen. They regard this as a departure from “socialist” principles, as a take-over by “systems analysts” who will follow the most expedient rather than the most “socialist” route. Maths for politics What the opposition is saying, in effect, is that Mr Brezhnev is giving up ideology for expediency—which is also what some Of Mr Nixon’s critics have been saying about his policies. The opposition does not attack Mr Brezhnev directly, but it criticises the “mathematicaleconomic methods” which are being used to determine the shape of the new plan and its objectives. It complains that the planners favoured by Mr Brezhnev are so concerned to devise the most efficient plans, to get optimal results, that they disregard the ideological objectives of communism, substituting mathematics for politics. It is the kind of complaint that was made against the

systems analysts of the former Secretary of Defence. Mr McNamara, at the Penta gon, when thev were accused [of pursuing efticiencv at the jcost of defence, to the detriment of the larger interests of the United States. In Moscow the argument is not i just about defence, but about the systems analysts’ management of the whole national economy and. indeed, of the political system.

None of this is said is so many words, but it may be deduced from the offending articles in the economic journals criticised by “Pravda.” In reply, “Pravda" reminds the opposition that [Mr Brezhnev himself has said that mathematical economic modelling and systems analysis has “greatly enriched” Soviet planning. It therefore condemns Soviet writers who try "to discredit the systems approach.” Scope for profit Nor do al) Soviet liberals welcome this single-minded pursuit of a super-efficient Communist state. They would prefer to see more scope tn 'the Soviet economy for the profit motive and for competition rather than for the computerised economic models which the systems analysts advocate as the most efficient way of running the country.

As one participant in the Soviet debate argued, if the state wants people to do certain things, it ought to create the material conditions which will induce them to act accordingly, rather than ordering them to act as the planner determines. Otherwise, he wrote, “the attempt to creat push-button socialism will come up against an insurmountable obstacle —the human being.” (c) 1973 Victor Zorza.