of the Council of Ministers. State committees, in 

 turn, monitor execution of important tasks (e.g., the 

 GKNT) or a functional area of the establishment plan, 

 such as supply (Gossnab) . In addition, Gosbank has 

 an important role in overseeing the financial flows 

 which are planned to correspond to physical flows, 

 and the CPSU exercises a general oversight function. 



Within the performing establishment, program con- 

 trol techniques incorporated in various plans facil- 

 itate conduct of the R&D project. We noted, for ex- 

 ample, that thematic plans of research institutes and 

 design bureaus are based on "calendar plans;" for- 

 mulated on a project basis, these subdivide the work 

 into stages, designate responsible individuals, and 

 schedule completion dates. Recently, a more formal 

 research management technique has been developed: 

 "network planning and control." In broad terms, a 

 network model is any construct which is "dynamic, 

 informational, and reflective of the process of per- 

 forming a complex of tasks directed to the achieve- 

 ment of a single goal."-'-" In practice, this can mean 

 little more than such tools as grid schedules and 

 Gantt charts for diagramming activities in sequence 

 and for monitoring time, cost, and quality parame- 

 ters. However, it also includes Soviet development 

 and application in the early 1960s of more sophisti- 

 cated techniques which resemble PERT and critical 

 path methods. 1^ 



In the mid-1970s, network methods are said to have 

 gotten their "second wind," according to Dr. Yu. I. 

 Maksimov. Three factors have stimulated this recent 

 growth: (1) the introduction of management informa- 

 tion systems that provide the necessary information, 

 norms, and technology for their application; (2) in- 

 creased utilization of multistage econometric models 

 linking the stages of planning, design, and produc- 

 tion; and (3) the development of analytical aids and 

 computer programs for calculating and optimizing not 

 only specific network charts but also alternative 

 stochastic network models. Examples of more sophis- 

 ticated network techniques along the lines of CPM 

 and PERT that surfaced in the 1970s for complex in- 



186 



