Changes in Quality of Economic Planning in the Late USSR: Technological and Institutional Dynamics

Introduction. Studying the Soviet economic performance is important in searching for arguments in the ongoing debate on the possibilities of routine and strategic planning application for economic development of the Russian Federation. The purpose of the article is to identify the dynamics of the planning quality of the Soviet economy in the framework of the institutional approach to economic history. Materials and Methods. The author constructed a data set filled with available information on key growth indicators (national income, production volume and labor productivity, capital investment) targeted in five-year and annual plans, which passed their way from initial drafts proposed by academic economists and employees of the State Planning Commission to approved legal documents, and to the further implementation, presented in branch (industry, agriculture, retail) and spatial (union republics) breakdown. The archival data on the growing activity of the State Planning Commission for revising the approved planned indicators is of our primary contribution. Results. The author highlights the factors underlying the deviations for key planned aggregated indicators that arose at various stages of their preparation, adoption and revision, between their approved figures and actual performance. The results of the data analysis basically confirmed our hypothesis that the technological improvement of the planning process was largely offset by the deterioration of institutional interactions between its subjects. Discussion and Conclusion. While there were signs of an increase in the role of scientists in the process of drafting five-year plans from the second half of the 1950s to the mid-1970s, then from the second half of the 1970s we find less and less evidence that they played a meaningful role in the short and medium term planning processes. On the other hand, our analysis revealed a significantly higher level of fulfillment in annual breakdown compared to five-year one. This confirms the view that just annual plans performed more operational functions, as compared to the motivational ones, in managing the Soviet economy.

Interview with Professor Chaitanya Mishra

Professor Chaitanya Mishra teaches Sociology to MPhil/PhD students at Tribhuvan University (TU), Nepal. His research focuses on macrosociology, politics, social change, and social stratification. He is an author/co-author, and co-editor of 10 books and about 250 articles. He believes that all sciences should contribute to public education, and frequently contributes to public debates through the media. He started his career in 1978 as a researcher at the Institute of Nepal and Asian Studies, TU. In 1981, he was appointed the founder Chair of the Central Department of Sociology/Anthropology, TU. He has written on the development of sociological knowledge in Nepal, its disciplinary growth, empirical and theoretical orientations, as well as strategies that could be adopted to meet contemporary disciplinary challenges. His contributions have led to theoretical debates on the issues of development or underdevelopment of Nepali society as well as the nature and causes of economic and political divisions and alternative trajectory of change. Professor Mishra served as a member of Nepal’s National Planning Commission (1994-95), founding president of Nepal Sociological Association (2017-18), Fulbright Visiting Professor and Hubert Humphrey Professor of Sociology at Macalester College (2015-16), and founding Executive Chair of the Policy Research Institute (2018-19) of the Government of Nepal.

Dekonstrukcja wolnego zawodu w systemie totalitarnym na przykładzie regulacji prawnej wykonywania zawodu rzecznika patentowego w Polsce w okresie stalinowskim

In Poland before the Second World War, the profession of patent attorney was categorised as one of the so-called liberal professions. Its legal status and rules of practice were compared to the solicitor profession. A patent attorney practiced his profession personally, independently, and autonomously. In order to exercise his profession, he ran an independent patent attorney’s office. In the second half of the 1940s, with the communists taking power in Poland, a radical transformation of the social, political, economic, and legal system of the state along the lines of Stalin’s Soviet Union began. Any social, political, or economic activities characterised by independence and autonomy were thus in axiological contradiction with the ideology of the planned totalitarian state. The Act on the Establishment of the College of Patent Attorneys passed on 20 December 1949 completely abolished the structure of the patent attorney profession as a free profession, exercised in its own name and on its own account. From that moment on, the patent attorney became a civil servant performing their professional activities under strict hierarchical subordination to his superiors. There was no guarantee of their intellectual independence or professional autonomy. The practice of the patent attorney profession was subject to public law. The Patent Attorneys College was in fact another state office. It was organisationally and financially linked to the Patent Office — an administrative body granting legal protection to objects of industrial and commercial property, collecting and making available patent documentation and literature. The president of the Patent Office supervised the Patent Attorneys College. Both the Patent Attorneys College and the Patent Office were supervised by the State Economic Planning Commission. The State Commission for Economic Planning was a kind of super-ministry, tasked with a Soviet-style mission of closely supervising and controlling the entire centralised economy of the Polish state. The chairman of the State Economic Planning Commission also had key powers to influence patent attorneys. It was he who determined the subject of their professional examination, he who appointed a person meeting the statutory requirements to the position of a patent attorney. He could also exempt a candidate for the profession from meeting the requirements as well as appoint the president of the Patent Attorneys College. The Act of 20 December 1949 was repealed with the end of the Stalinist period in Poland. In 1958, the profession of patent attorney was briefly reinstated as a free profession. After that, until the end of the existence of the socialist state called the Polish People’s Republic, patent attorneys performed their profession as employees within the meaning of the labour law. It was not until the fall of communism in Poland that the profession of a patent attorney was re-established as a liberal profession under the provisions of the Act on Patent Attorneys of 9 January 1993.

मानवी विकास आणि सरकारी धोरण

UNDP first published the Human Development Report in 1990 in collaboration with economist Mehboob Haque, who is credited as the promoter of the VKP Index. The most important aspects of the CPI index are longevity, healthy living, educational attainment and quality of life, among others. Political independence, human rights testimony and self-respect are the various elements. That is. 1) Life expectancy at birth. 2) Level of education. (Rate of adult education, rate of primary, secondary, higher education) 3) The standard of living. (Lack of per capita based on NAC) The VKP index is averaged based on the maximum and minimum values of these three elements. According to the report, India was ranked 126th in the CPI index in 2006. In 2008, Maxine Olson, India's Representative to India, and Motek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, published the Human Development Report in Delhi, which ranked India 128th and 619th. Compared to 2006, India has slipped two places. The National Human Development Report is published by the Government of India with the assistance of the Planning Commission. The Human Development Report was published in 2001. The Planning Commission, while preparing the National Human Development Report, relied on new indicators different from the NPC's VP indicators.