al interests will probably continue to be the princi- 

 pal method of regulating technical progress in the 

 Soviet Union." 87 



As regards the most important S&T problems in par- 

 ticular, deficiencies in decision making and adminis- 

 tration persist despite recent efforts to wrap these 

 processes in more modern clothes. To be sure, some 

 progress has been made in conceptualization of what 

 should be the parameters of a basic S&T problem. The 

 initial list, hastily formulated in 1965, displayed a 

 5000 percent difference in the cost range between the 

 least and the most expensive problems, suggesting 

 substantial weaknesses in defining the criteria of 

 choice for including a particular topic on the prior- 

 ity list. 88 Nonetheless, there are still no uniform 

 criteria or adequate procedures for screening this 

 class of problem, and it remains a general catchall 

 category. Not all really important problems are put 

 on the list, and some topics are included at the sug- 

 gestion and under pressure of ministries and depart- 

 ments although they are, in fact, not of major impor- 

 tance. Not all the basic problems are interbranch or 

 of national significance. 8 9 



Finally, special mention must be made of the role 

 of "inertia" in the selection and retention of Soviet 

 R&D programs. Investments already made and projects 

 in progress predetermine to a large extent the con- 

 tent of future plans. They constrain the options and 

 possibilities of planners to undertake new starts. 

 The task of preparing the five-year plan has been li- 

 kened by one Soviet observer to the problem of trying 

 to buy new furniture for an apartment when one-third 

 of the pieces are already there and another third is 

 on order. 90 Indeed, almost two-thirds of the current 

 200 top priority S&T programs have been carried over 

 from the Ninth Plan.^l The basic problems in the 

 Ninth Plan, in turn, were mostly continuations of 

 projects that were begun in the Eighth Plan when the 

 list of basic S&T problems was first established. 



This continuity in Soviet planning is characteris- 

 tic more generally of a fundamentally conservative 



126 



