ideology fed the propensity for central planning. 

 Throughout Russian history, science and education, 

 with only a few exceptions, had been subject to cen- 

 tral, state control. Private initiative was resented 

 by the rulers of imperial Russia in any field, includ- 

 ing science and learning. In any case, the Soviet 

 Union became in the 1920s the first nation in history 

 to attempt to formulate a policy towards science and 

 technology as a whole . It began conducting statisti- 

 cal and organizational surveys of scientific person- 

 nel and institutions a decade before other countries, 

 including the United States. 



Despite all the talk about science planning and 

 policy during the twenties, however, little action 

 was actually taken in this direction. The first na- 

 tional conference on planning of scientific research 

 did not meet until 1931. A member of the Communist 

 Party was not elected to the Academy of Sciences un- 

 til 1929, and only in the thirties did the scientific 

 affairs of the Academy begin to reflect Party desires. 

 Actually, the innovative posture of the government in 

 this policy sphere in the 1920s gave way to a sterile 

 approach under Stalin. From the early 1930s until 

 Stalin's death little was done about the formulation 

 of science policy and the planning of science. Though 

 research organizations, like all Soviet institutions, 

 drew up annual plans, these were not meaningful. Ser- 

 ious attention began to be given to the planning and 

 management of R&D only after the mid-1950s. By then, 

 the USSR, the initial pioneer in national science 

 planning, lagged behind a. number of Western industri- 

 al nations in this area. 



Similarly, the search for one central coordinating 

 agency to oversee the development of science and tech- 

 nology was gradually abandoned by the mid-1930s. No 

 Commissariat of Science was ever created. Instead, 

 responsibility for R&D planning and management rested 

 for the next 20 years primarily with the industrial 

 commissariats and later ministries as well as several 

 central departments. Much like the American pattern, 

 the Soviet R&D effort was structurally and adminis- 

 tratively fragmented among multiple mission-oriented 



