N. D. Kondrat’ev

CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE PLAN FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATIONAL ECONOMY

The third issue of Planovoe khoziaistvo for 1927 carried a number of articles presenting the basic data of the perspective Five-Year Plan for the development of the national economy of the USSR.¹ The perspective-plan materials that have been published are still far from complete, which prevents our properly assaying the full scope of the enormous job which Gosplan has done or all the methods and foundations underlying the conception being proposed. It is likely that Gosplan will in the very near future publish fuller material on the making of the plan, and it is to be assumed that several puzzling questions engendered by a reading of the published articles will then be cleared up.² Nevertheless, the basic theses of the perspective plan being put forward by Gosplan are already clear. And on the other hand the matters involved in this conception are so vital that it seems advisable to dwell on them without waiting for the more detailed material to come out.

This article is therefore devoted to an analysis of Gosplan’s constructs.³ We do not intend, however, to enter into an exhaustive analysis of them here. It is hardly questionable that for the immediate future the principal problem in the development of our economy is the relationship of industry and agriculture, the relationship of town and countryside, and, accordingly, of the working class and peasantry. The fundamental and dominant importance of this problem was most explicitly underscored both in Gosplan Chairman G. M. Krzhizhanovskii’s opening speech at the recent Congress of Presidiums of the Gosplans and in the extensive debate on the perspective plan at the Congress.

In view of this fact, we intend in this article to touch primari-ly-aside from some methodological questions-on those elements of Gosplan’s conception that have an immediate bearing on the problem of the relationship of industry and agriculture. Since of all the published Gosplan material the most general article is the one by S. G. Strumilin, we shall hereafter refer chiefly to it, bringing in other material only to the extent necessary.⁴

I. To make the following critical comments as clear as possible, it would seem essential to dwell first on several methodological points of departure.

First of all, what is the essential nature of the perspective plan as understood by the plan’s authors, and in particular by S. G. Strumilin? His opinion on this question cannot be said to be entirely clear. In any case it is equivocal. He actually says: “So that while every plan represents a certain combination of elements of prediction of what is objectively inevitable and projection of what is advisable from the standpoint of our subjective social and class aspirations, in the yearly plans it is prediction that has the paramount role, while in the long-term plans it is prescription.’’

Thus S. G. Strumilin maintains that our plans inevitably comprise elements of prediction on the one hand, and of the projection of assignments or directives on the other. But why is either of these groups of elements inevitably inherent in the plan? To answer this calls for understanding the relationship in which the said elements stand to one another. S. G. Strumilin goes on to say: “These assignments must, of course, be ...sufficiently realistic, which is why they have to be coordinated with each other, in all their parts-linked like a chain in their interdependence-and brought strictly into line with the country’s available resources and the real potentials for its development.” It is clear, therefore, that in the author’s opinion our assignments or directives may not be entirely arbitrary, that they must be fairly well meshed with one another and strictly correlated with the country’s real resources and real potentials for development.

But what does it mean to correlate our assignments with the country’s real resources and real potentials for development? S. G. Strumilin does not go into this question. But it can have only one answer. Our assignments relate to the future. They point out the direction in which our conscious efforts and measures are to proceed. These efforts and measures for the realization of targets can accomplish a great deal. All the same, however, they are not omnipotent. They will be proceeding in the concrete objective setting of the future, a setting in which purely spontaneous processes will have enormous significance. And their actual results will be determined by the coordination of our actions with the influence of the objective environment in which these efforts and measures will be proceeding. This being the case, our assignments will be realistic only if they specifically reflect the actual results which we may achieve through efforts proceeding in a concrete objective setting. Under what circumstances can we reflect these results in our plan assignments? Obviously, we can do so only if, in formulating the assignments, we not only remember our objectives but take into account as fully as possible: (1) the objective pattern of economic conditions; (2) the probable trends of their development; (3) our probable resources and opportunities for influencing the course of economic development; and finally, (4) the probable results of our influencing it. But what does it mean to take into account the probable trends of unchanging conditions, our probable resources and opportunities for influencing the course of economic development, and, finally, the probable result of influencing it? It means that we must not only have knowledge of the present in these areas; we must also have a certain amount of forecasting, for only if we do can we speak of the probable trends of our economic development, of our probable opportunities for influencing it, and of the probable results of thus influencing it. This makes it plain that our plan assignments, if they are to be realistic (and that is the only kind of assignment worth talking about seriously), really are organically bound up with elements of prediction, and presuppose it.⁵

And if S. G. Strumilin really does think that our assignments should, as he says, be realistic, then he clearly has no grounds for objecting to the conclusions we have drawn.

Apparently this is not quite the case, however. The point is that this conception of his described above, in which the plan inevitably comprises elements both of prediction and of assignments or directives, is very soon crowded out by another, basically different, conception.

On very nearly the same pages of his article, and sometimes mately enough for real needs. Furthermore, any problem in the art of building can be solved in several ways: “There may always be another engineer who comes along with a new design that offers an even tidier and more efficient solution to the same problem.” It depends on his creative gifts. S. G. Strumilin holds that in plan-making, or, as he puts it, social engineering, we have something analogous. A problem in planned economic construction can also have more than one solution. Here, too many problems appear, in strict theoretical terms, to be insoluble, but in practical terms are solved quite satisfactorily if we, like engineers, adopt methods for the “engineering of new social patterns....” In this same context S. G. Strumilin goes on to say: “Our purpose in drafting plans is not to speculate idly and prophesy about what will happen in five or ten years, but first and foremost to frame a definite set of economic assignments in the sphere of socialist construction” (ibid.). But these assignments of ours are “all the same...only targets, not forecasts” (ibid.). Thus, having acknowledged that any plan embodies not only the projection of a target but prediction as well, he is carried away by the analogies between the construction of plans and engineering and on literally the same pages draws a definite line between plan targets and prediction and squarely opposes them to each other. It is perfectly plain that this is quite a different way of interpreting the plan from the approach he himself had formulated earlier. What are the implications of this other way of interpreting the plan?

S. G. Strumilin is to a certain extent right in drawing an analogy between planned construction and construction engineering. But only to a certain extent. It is true that different engineers may solve the same construction problem differently. But no matter how they solve it, the difference between their solutions will in every case have to do merely with methods of combining the elements-building materials and funds-that will be needed for accomplishing the construction. Moreover, the engineer does not himself have to solve the problem of whether the building materials and monetary resources will be available, and if so in what volume: these magnitudes he takes as either given or predetermined. It is this that is missing in planned economic construction. In planned construction we must solve the problems not only of the very best way of combining the available economic elements but of the dimensions and forms in which we shall have or can ensure these elements at the present time and in the future (for example, accumulation, market capacity, etc.). We cannot take these elements in our framework as given or predetermined; nor do we have the right to do so. We have to determine them in the light of the total situation. But without an understanding of actual conditions and without prognosis we are not in a position to determine them. This is why, if we want our assignments or our designs for a new future to be really and truly realistic, we cannot dissociate them from forecasting.

And if S. G. Strumilin, carried away by the analogy with engineering, does proclaim this kind of breach, if he calls for “engineers methods” to be used in plan-making, it means that he is oversimplifying the plan-making problem; that he is prepared to regard as given or as predetermined elements which can in no wise be regarded as such and which have to be determined. It means that he is cutting the thread between his projections and reality. From this it is but a step, and a small one at that, to the framing of plans that are completely arbitrary.

The foregoing makes it clear that this other interpretation of the plan, which gives prominence only to the factor of targets in the plans, the factor of projection, and opposes it to prediction, can easily become a reason for flagging interest in the practicability, the feasibility, of these targets and projections. It is evident from the foregoing that S. G. Strumilin’s thinking on the essential nature of the plan formulations does actually run along two different lines, as it were. But he is not satisfied with this, and shortly makes an effort to get back to a single line. Indeed, right after the statement cited above, i.e., that our assignments are “all the same...only targets, not forecasts,” we find him saying: “As construction proceeds we shall at any time be able, if need be, to alter tactics to meet the situation at the particular moment, and to change certain parts of the assignments. That is why in forecasting we by no means guarantee hundred-per-cent fulfillment of our perspective plans according to a set calendar schedule.” Thus, in this last statement the author is clearly referring to the targets simply as forecasts, i.e., is saying even more than is called for. Be that as it may, he here eliminates the breach between targets and forecasts and thereby reverts to his original position on the plan’s essential nature. He is at the same time right, of course, that though we speak of forecasting in the plans, we cannot guarantee its hundred-per-cent accuracy.

On the one hand, then, it is seemingly clear that the plan is a system of targets, but that this system itself rests on a degree of prediction of what the course of developments will be, given our deliberate efforts to influence them.

On the other hand, it is no less clear that S. G. Strumilin is prepared to project the new socio-economic future purely on an engineering basis, to formulate a system of plan targets that have nothing to do with “speculation and prophecy about what will happen,” i.e., when all is said and done, to sidestep the problem of substantiating the workability of his conceptions. Whereas within the scope of the author’s introductory remarks in the article it is hard to decide which line dominates his thinking, and we are prepared to say that whereas his original, i.e. correct line prevails in the end, we must admit that later on, when he proceeds to the actual formulation of plan, it is the second, the “engineering,” line that comes to be dominant in his understanding of the plan.

II. The question that now arises in this: What are the over-all tasks and over-all criteria that we must bear in mind in drawing up the perspective plans and formulating the system of targets whose nature we have just been clarifying? The author answers this question in the following manner: “The task to be accomplished in drafting the perspective plan for the national economy of the USSR may at present be formulated, in the most general terms, as: the redistribution of society’s available productive forces, including both the manpower and material resources of the country, in such a way as to ensure optimum, crisis-free expansion of these productive forces at the fastest possible pace, for the purpose of maximizing satisfaction of the current needs of the working masses and advancing them as rapidly as possible toward a society completely reconstructed on the foundations of socialism and communism.”

In this statement the author has given us quite a precise formulation of the over-all task to be accomplished in drafting a perspective plan, thereby providing us with most explicit criteria that must be satisfied by perspective plans-including in the first instance, obviously, the plan that he himself has drawn up. According to the formula cited, this plan must ensure: first, crisis-free expansion of the economy’s productive forces; second, their development at the quickest possible pace; third, maximum satisfaction of the current needs of the masses; and, fourth, the most rapid possible approach to a society reconstructed on the foundations of socialism and communism. To make our criticism immanently germane to the author’s conceptions, we shall hereafter use these particular criteria in assessing the draft plan proposed by Gosplan.

Assuming that the over-all task to be accomplished in drafting the perspective plan is as just outlined, what sort of redistribution of productive forces does S. G. Strumilin regard as most expedient and feasible for the next five years? He considers that redistribution of productive forces to be most expedient which would assure the best prospect of industrializing the country in the near future. There can be no objection, of course, to the goal of industrialization as such. The industrialization of a country-and this is borne out historically-is the essential prerequisite for raising the productivity of the entire economy and the living standard of the masses. The undeniably progressive significance of industrialization should especially be emphasized in countries with agrarian overpopulation-with which the USSR may to some extent be classed-since the industrialization of countries like these is the primary means of remedying their agrarian overpopulation. In our case the significance of industrialization also derives from the peculiarities of our social system and of our situation in the world.

What counts in drafting the plan, however, is not proclaiming one or another goal but, as S. G. Strumilin himself rightly points out, giving it concrete expression....

III. ...All the perspective plans in the draft being proposed by Gosplan are given in exact figures. Figures are given showing not only output in five years’ time, but accumulation, investments, market capacity, overpopulation, paper emissions, etc., many of them being not just five year totals but yearly figures as well.

There can be no objection in principle, of course, to numerical data for the perspective plans But it stands to reason that such data have significance, are useful, and should be presented, only i, the, have definite economic locations, /they real,’, are of adequate economic validity, and if the proper method has been used in their validation. In the absence of these conditions, an orderly series of figures remains but a series of figures, nothing more. And if, in the absence of these conditions, we attach any greater importance to figures, we run the risk of “statistical fetishism,” which can prove very costly to the practical planning that in any way attempts to use the perspective-plan figures as a guide.

Approaching Gosplan’s formulations from this point of view, we must definitely recognize that with few exceptions the published materials tell us almost nothing at all of the methods and reasoning by which the targets for the future were described with the specific figures cited in the plan, and not with some other figures. Thus, they give us no reason why industrial output is going to grow by 69.3 per cent and agricultural by 24.1 per cent, why accumulation will increase 93 per cent while the productivity of industrial labor rises by 49per cent, etc. True, some of the derivative figures in the plan are easily understood from other, key figures. For instance, it is easy to understand why, given the rates assumed for the growth of output, national income, and population, per capita income will be precisely as shown in the plan, and not some other figure. The point is, however, that the key figures themselves, from which the derived calculations come, were calculated on bases that are not clear. The published material decrees these figures rather than substantiating them.

This may meet with the objection that the published materials do contain some statements indicating the method and reasoning employed in making up the plan. Thus we find in them statements repudiating the method of extrapolating on the basis of established static and dynamic coefficients. We also have the assertion that the method of successive approximation was used in the plan’s formulation, and that the first approximations of the perspective plans for individual branches of the economy were drafted on the basis of specialists’ expert estimates of the potentials for the development of these branches. What we do not know from the materials, however, is the stages of successive approximation through which the plan passed in the making. We are given only one approximation, the one published, and no method of successive approximation is evident from it. Furthermore, it is in principle unclear and questionable why successive approximation in formulating the plan should here be elevated to the status of a special method. The fact that a variant of the plan is drafted, then refined, once again refined, etc., does not, after all, constitute a method; that lies in the techniques used to draft the first variant, in the techniques on the basis of which it is. then refined, etc.-and the materials have not a word to say about these techniques.

This is just why we do not actually know the method of the plan’s drafting or the techniques of its subsequent refinement. Nor do we know the principles by which the experts were guided in setting the perspective plans for development of the separate branches of the economy. Of course, the method of expert estimates gives considerable scope to those making them. Still, even experts are guided by certain principles in making their estimates. And of these principles there is no hint whatever in the materials.

As far as the separate branches of the economy are concerned, all that we find in the published materials that can be cited as an attempt to validate the proposed perspective plans essentially boils down to formal statements indicating the factors that were taken into account in formulating assignments for these branches. But statements of this kind are not enough.

S. G. Strumilin says, for instance, that the drafting of the [over-all] perspective plan was initiated with the setting of the perspective plan for industry: determination of the rate of growth for consumer goods production was made contingent on the volume of capital investment and that investment contingent on the increase in the capacity of the consumer market.

Thus we have been given a general formal statement indicating the factors with which the rate of growth for consumer goods production was ostensibly brought into line. According to this statement, to determine that rate of growth would call for data on the volume of investment in these branches (aw\ consequently, on the volume of accumulation necessary) and on the capacity of the market for consumer goods. The fact is that the published materials do contain figures on probable accumulation; but on the other hand, we find no data whatever in them to substantiate the very possibility of this accumulation. As to the market capacity, an estimate for it is given but, again, quite without substantiation. Clearly, this capacity is determined, in its turn, by the growth of cities and of the urban population, by the rise in the living standards of the urban and rural population, and by the growth of its consumer demand for industrially produced articles. But the growth of cities, the rise in the living standards of the population, etc., are determined by the rate at which production expands, and industrial production in particular, as well as by other factors. If, therefore, in seeking substantiation of the growth rate for consumer goods production we follow these purely formal leads given us by the author, we either run into figures that are altogether unsubstantiated (viz.. accumulation), or find ourselves in a vicious circle, since we come to realize that the growth rate to be assumed for consumer goods production is at least partially determined by that growth rate itself.

An even clearer vicious circle of this sort emerges when we turn to the reasoning behind the rate assumed for the production of capital goods. We find the following statement on this question: “the estimated capacity of the market for the output of enterprises engaged in the reproduction of working capital and especially fixed capital must, in the interest of industry’s crisis-free expansion, be given in advance, on the basis of rather accurate calculation, and must be fully consistent with the calculated resources for capital investment.” In this case, then, it is the extent of capital investment and the estimated capacity of the market that are pointed to as the factors explaining the rate assumed. But as indicated above, the estimated volume of accumulation, and therefore of investment, is entirely unsubstantiated. Where the capacity of the market is concerned, it turns out that for the output of capital goods “the market is primarily industry itself.” In other words, here the sought-for growth rate of industrial production is primarily determined by that sought-for rate itself.

As for the perspective plan for agricultural development, S. G. Strumilin has this to say about its formulation: “The very existence of a plan for industry in a measure predetermines the perspective plan for agriculture.” In any case it is his opinion that “once we have the plan for industry, we know” what the prospects are for increased output of the technical crops, crops that take big labor outlays. The following should be said about this. In the first place, since the factors determining the growth rate for industry itself had not previously been concretely elucidated, a growth rate for the output of technical crops that is determined by the growth rate for industry is obviously lacking in any validity. And in the second place, do we really know the rate at which the output of these crops will grow if we are given the rate of industry’s growth? At least some of these crops provide products for export. What has happened to this export? Lost sight of, presumably? Nothing is said of it, at any rate, when the factors determining the growth of technical crop output are specified. How this attitude to the problem of exports has been reflected in the plan as a whole, we shall see below.

Finally, with regard to the staple cereal crops and animal husbandry, S. G. Strumilin has this to say: “owing to the extremely slow growth of the foreign and domestic consumer markets, and given extraordinarily backward farming techniques and a plowland area held within natural bounds, forecasting development in this area cannot be too difficult a matter.” It thus appears that the framing of perspective plans for these branches of agriculture simply does not offer any special difficulty. This is all the substantiation we have of the growth rate assumed for grain farming and stock-raising. True, it is further pointed out that their development will be influenced by capital investment. But just how influenced-about that we are left in the dark. How simple a question the development of grain farming and stock-raising appears to the author is evident from the mere fact that the data on the growth of farm output is not even given separately for these key branches in any of the published material. True, at the Congress of Presidiums of the Gosplans a table was distributed describing both the development of field-crop cultivation by branches and the growth in the number of livestock. But how this table was computed, what principles were laid down for arriving at the growth rates assumed in it-no further light was shed on this question either by the table or by N. M. Vishnevskii’s report on agriculture.

The propositions that we have examined essentially exhaust the parts of the Gosplan work where there are some remote and not very clear statements indicating the bases on which the published perspective plans were arrived at. The foregoing makes clear: first, that these statements are indeed formally declarative in character, containing as they do a formal inventory of the factors that were reckoned with in the shaping of perspective plans for the various sections of the national economy, while totally lacking in substantive analysis of these factors; second, that an attempt to take a close look at these factors leads us either to [other] factors that were themselves assumed without sufficient validation, or to a vicious circle.

In sum, as regards the perspective plans for the separate branches of the economy, the thesis advanced above-that the perspective plans-in-the-making have been put forward without serious substantiation-must therefore be considered correct. One wonders why the center of gravity in the making of the plan should so hastily have been shifted directly to numerical calculations, and why elements of validation should at the same time have been all but totally excluded. One would think it should have been the other way round, that at the outset the focus in the making of the plan should have been on formulating and analyzing our basic problems of economic development and on substantiating particular perspective plans, for the figures ought only to represent final concretization of the conclusions from this analysis. We do not know whether Gosplan has any solid reasons for the formulations it has proposed, and if it has, just what they are. For the moment, therefore, we do not know whether we are dealing here with a plain passion for numerical computation or simply with a case of Gosplan’s tardiness in publishing data to validate its draft....

We are well aware of the difficulty of substantiating the perspective plans for the economy’s development. We are no less well aware that to substantiate them with absolute rigor may not be possible at all. But this does not mean that the effort to substantiate them is hopeless and should not be made at all. It is just because substantiating their formulations is so difficult, just because no serious, workable plan can possibly be drafted otherwise, that we would be right in urging that the plan’s authors concentrate on that primarily.

We have already observed that the statements indicating the manner in which the plan was drawn up by branches lead to vicious circles. Though we reproached the plan-makers for these vicious circles, we are well aware that the reasons for them lie to some extent in economic reality itself, since all its elements are interlinked. This, however, does not relieve the plan-makers of the obligation to try to eliminate the vicious circles in their formulations. That is what makes drafting the economic plan so enormously difficult, but unless it is done a satisfactory plan cannot be drawn up at all, just as it cannot without a certain amount of forecasting.

This may meet with the objection that the plan-makers did try to eliminate the vicious circles; that the preceding critical remarks are all unfounded precisely because they take no notice of this attempt; and that these remarks bear on the question of validating perspective plans for separate branches of the economy, while in view of the interconnection of these branches such validation is not even possible. The perspective plans adopted for the branches are validated by ultimately being correlated on the basis of the method of balances, they will say; balance coordination should be seen as the method of eliminating the vicious circles referred to above and of ultimately validating the perspective plans. In his article S. G. Strumilin definitely states that the perspective plans for the various branches of the economy were correlated by the method of balances.

Unfortunately, we do not share that absolute faith in balance coordination which marks many among us. In and of itself the method of balances, when applied to the perspective plans-and only if applied correctly-guarantees one thing only: namely, that the rates of development projected for the individual branches will be consistent with one another. But there is no guarantee whatever that the model of the future economy which is projected by means of the method of balances will be at all practicable and not arbitrary. Formally, arithmetically, a great many such models can be constructed. But the questions of which model may be realistic, and which of the realistic models is at the same time the very best one-these are questions that the method of balances cannot answer. To answer them calls, once again, for analyzing the reasons why a particular model of the economy is realizable, and not some other model.

We are not objecting to the fact that the proposed draft plan proclaims the need to employ the method of balances. But what we have just said makes it clear that this does not obviate the need we have commented on to analyze the bases on which the given model of the economy, and not some other model, was adopted as desirable and at the same time realistic. It is this substantiation that the published material fails to provide....

In the foregoing presentation we have not nearly exhausted the questions which the proposed draft plan raises. But even the examination of those that have been touched on, which seems to us the most important, allows us to draw some conclusions.

1. In the form in which the proposed plan has been presented, its constructs suffer from statistical formalism. Behind the numerical calculations, numerous and exceedingly bold and risky, no adequate economic substantiation is thus far to be seen.

2. But even taking the plan as such, and examining it “from within,” so to speak, one finds that despite the proclaimed principle of balance and “coordination” of all its elements, such “coordination” is in fact nonexistent. The projected dynamics of production, consumption, accumulation, export, etc., lack the necessary congruity with one another. Because of this, the growth rate for some of the elements listed precludes the rate assumed for others.

3. A particularly serious deficiency in the internal meshing of the dynamics of the several branches of the economy is revealed with respect to the comparative rates of development of agriculture and the other branches, which is due to erroneous diagnosis of the place and importance of agriculture.

4. Under the circumstances, if we think back to the tasks which S. G. Strumilin said a good plan should accomplish, and to the criteria for evaluating the proposed plan that derive from these tasks, we must recognize that accomplishment of this plan, even were that possible, would not ensure the optimum, crisis-free path of development for the economy’s productive forces or really maximum satisfaction of the current needs of the working masses, and hence would be unlikely to bring us notably closer to a basically reconstructed economy. On the contrary, accomplishment of the plan would inevitably result in greater economic difficulties.

5. The basic error committed in the drafting of the plan is that those who drew it up sought to accomplish the series of tasks indicated above (i.e., maximum, crisis-free expansion of productive forces, maximum satisfaction of current needs, etc.) simultaneously and in maximum degree without taking sufficient account of the fact that when these partial tasks are expressed in extreme terms they come into collision with one another. What had to be found was the very best combination of these tasks, which would at the same time be a perfectly realistic combination. Instead of a realistic combination of tasks we see in the plan a formal balancing of various estimates, which makes it, at first glance, outwardly well-proportioned. Internally, however, it is economically inconsistent.

“Kriticheskie zametki o plane razvitiia narodnogo khoziaistva,” Planovoe khoziaistvo, no. 4, 1927, pp. 1-34. (By way of discussion-editorial note of Planovoe khoziaistvo.)

1. We have in mind these articles: G. M. Krzhizhanovskii, “On the Drafting of the Perspective Five-Year Plan”; S. G. Strumilin, “Perspective Guide Lines for 1926/27-1930/31”; V. R. Chernyshev, “On the Question of Planning Methodology”; G. M. Krzhizhanovskii and A. A. Gorev, “The Perspective Electrification Plan for the Next Five Years”; I. A. Kalinnikov, “Basic Elements and Indices of Industrial Development for the Five Year Period of 1926/27-1930/31”; M. I. Bogolepov, “Perspective Financial Plan for the Five-Year Period of 1926/27-1930/31”; N. M. Vishnevskii “On the Question of Agricultural Development in the USSR”; S. V. Bernshtein-Kogan and I. K. Libin, “Basic Theses of the Perspective Transportation Plan for 1926/27-1930/31.”

2. When this article reached us, the printing of the volume of Central Commission materials (edited by S. G. Strumilin), which is devoted to the perspective plans for development of the economy of the USSR over the five-year period, was being completed. The volume has now appeared. (Editors of Planovoe khoziaistvo.)

3. Its author had a tremendous amount of assistance in writing it from Ya. P. Gerchuk, G. I. Mikhailov, and P. M. Antsiferov.

4. These other articles amplify the one by S. G. Strumilin. [This article is included in the present volume.—Ed.] It would therefore be natural to expect the calculations cited in them to be consistent with S. G. Strumilin’s. Unfortunately, this requirement is not always observed, which makes critical analysis of the constructs more difficult.

5. On this subject see our article “The Plan and Prediction,” Puti sel’ skogo khoziaistva (Paths of agriculture), no. 2, 1927.