terms the new technology to be developed."" Five- 

 year and annual plans are the operational periods for 

 program selection and control, and the basic S&T prob- 

 lems that are included in the national economic plan 

 form the orientation for much of the R&D performed 

 in the Soviet Union, both because of their magnitude 

 and the high priority attached to their solution. In 

 the Eighth (1966-1970) and Ninth (1971-1975) Five- 

 Year Plans the basic problems reportedly consumed 

 about 40 percent of the allocations to science, while 

 in the Tenth Plan (1976-1980) they garnered about 25 

 percent of the official science budget. The number 

 of problems has also been reduced from nearly 250 to 

 around 200. The links between S&T forecasts, basic 

 directions, and basic problems as well as the lat- 

 ter' s subsequent breakdown into programs and pro- 

 jects are depicted in Figure 10-3. 



The list of basic S&T problems is prepared by the 

 State Committee for Science and Technology in collab- 

 oration with Gosplan and the Academy of Sciences. Ap- 

 parently only about 10 percent of the problems — the 

 most important — actually go to the Council of Minis- 

 ters (and most likely the Politburo) for approval at 

 the highest level, but this portion probably absorbs 

 more than half of all expenditures. The rest are 

 more likely then approved on the spot by the "Big 

 Four" central planning agencies. ->" The largest of 

 the work programs associated with these problems un- 

 dergo expert evaluation at the State Expert Commis- 

 sion of the USSR Gosplan. For individual programs, 

 the GKNT organizes the expert judgment. The basic 

 criteria for the selection of these problems of na- 

 tional priority are their interbranch importance, 

 their social significance, and the technical-economic 

 benefit to be derived from their solution. The list 

 of basic problems reportedly contains no military 

 projects. "0 



A basic S&T problem is defined as a complex of in- 

 terrelated tasks, the fulfillment of which plays an 

 important role in accelerating technological modern- 

 ization of the national economy as a whole. The "so- 

 lution" of a problem takes generally one of the fol- 



114 



