Until the late 1960s, economic criteria did not 

 figure prominently in Soviet R&D decision making. 

 Scientists and engineers were generally not sensitive 

 to parameters of "cost" and to constraints on re- 

 sources. Their dominant attitude, as expressed in 

 the Academy's main journal, was that "there is no un- 

 equivocal criterion for the resources that should be 

 allocated to science. All of us must try to obtain 

 the greatest amount of resources possible."'-'- Once 

 when commenting upon the difficulties the leadership 

 faced in drawing up the first list of basic S&T prob- 

 lems, Academician Kirillin, Chairman of the GKNT, ob- 

 served that scientists did not always help policyma- 

 kers resolve the problems of choice. They willingly 

 gave positive endorsements and sometimes were indeci- 

 sive about a particular problem. But almost never 

 did they render negative opinions. '2 



Similarly, the economic benefit or return of pro- 

 posed R&D was not always considered, much less cal- 

 culated, in the selection process. In 1968, for ex- 

 ample, the branch plan for the development of new 

 technology prepared by the Ministry of Instrument Ma- 

 king, Automation Equipment, and Control Systems in- 

 cluded estimates of the economic return for only six 

 percent of its applied research work, for about 30 

 percent of the undertakings devoted to the creation 

 of management information systems, and for about 60 

 percent of the projects dealing with the development 

 of new instruments and means of automation. The 

 absence of calculations of economic return is ex- 

 plained in large part by the fact that they were not 

 obligatory at this time. "Without estimates of eco- 

 nomic return," E. V. Kosov notes, "It is impossible 

 to evaluate and compare the activity of organizations 

 working in the field of science and technology."'^ 



Suffice it to say that since the late 1960s Krem- 

 lin authorities have mandated that all R&D projects 

 in the plan must be supported by calculations of eco- 

 nomic return redounding to the users of the new tech- 

 nology and to the economy as a whole. The main aim 

 of this requirement is to weed out nonpaying, imprac- 

 tical R&D, to promote technological innovation, and 



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