THE BASIC UNITS 



At the base of the Soviet S&T establishment is a 

 vast array of organizations that actually conduct 

 research, development, and innovation activities. 

 Below we list and briefly describe these basic units 

 which include the research institute, design bureau, 

 higher educational institution, enterprise, and as- 

 sociation. As noted earlier, examples of each are 

 found under the respective hierarchical subsystems 

 although the organizations concerned mainly with pro- 

 duction, the enterprise and association, are almost 

 exclusively the province of industrial ministries. 

 For each of these basic units a simplified chart of 

 the internal organization is provided. At this 

 point, we do not elaborate on their R&D planning and 

 management functions, in part because this is dis- 

 cussed later in the study and in part because the 

 organizations are mainly concerned with the conduct 

 of R&D and not the formulation of policy. 



In general, the organization of Soviet R&D is a 

 network of highly specialized establishments, each 

 concentrating only on a specific stage or stages of 

 the research-to-production process. Furthermore, 

 functional performers have also traditionally been 

 separate from each other both organizationally and 

 geographically . 



With the growth in complexity of Soviet science 

 and technology, however, conventional patterns and 

 underlying principles have been undergoing change, 

 both by default and by design. Institutional evo- 

 lution has resulted in a variety of structures. To- 

 day there are over 100 designations of scientific 

 organizations in the USSR. However, the correspon- 

 dence between designation and function is generally 

 poor. One American authority observes: 



The nomenclature of scientific organiza- 

 tions has become for the most part a hodge- 

 podge rather than an indication of func- 

 tional type. Today numerous scientific 



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