International and domestic pressures have combined, 

 therefore, to make the accleration of S&T progress a 

 major issue of the 1970s and beyond. Just as he had 

 defined this to be the "key task" of economic policy 

 in 1971, Brezhnev also listed it first among the "key 

 problems" of the period of the Tenth Five Year Plan 

 (1976-1980). Indeed, the General Secretary affirmed, 

 "In our entire economic development perhaps no tasks 

 today are more urgent and more important . '"* 



There is also enhanced awareness in Moscow of the 

 need to raise the quality of R&D planning and manage- 

 ment. No longer can science policy afford to be built 

 on the basis of "subjective evaluations and wishes," 

 contends V. A. Trapeznikov, a first deputy chairman 

 of the GKNT. Gvishiani describes as a major task of 

 the day, "To put the development of science itself on 

 a strictly scientific basis." Dr. Semyon Mikulinsky, 

 a leading science policy expert, similarly stresses, 

 "The whole point is that science must be brought to 

 bear on the management of science itself. "5 



Accordingly, there has been a proliferation of 

 science policy studies and "research on research" in 

 the USSR during the last decade. Virtually the en- 

 tire social science research sector has been put to 

 work on the problems of acclerating S&T progress. The 

 main purpose of such studies, Gvishiani notes, is to 

 provide a strong "theoretical basis on which the fun- 

 damentals of science policy are worked out." Under- 

 lying the growth of the "science of science" movement 

 is an intrinsic belief in and professed need "to study 

 science as a controllable system and to attempt a more 

 thorough exploration of the interrelationship of dif- 

 ferent aspects of this system with a view to increas- 

 ing the efficiency with which it functions."" 



In line with the basic Soviet approach to science 

 and technology generally, the dominant emphasis in 

 both theoretical study and practical policy has been 

 on the need for a "systems approach." As Gennady Do- 

 brov explains, "More than half a century of experi- 

 ence in the formulation and implementation of Soviet 

 State science policy shows that one cannot expect to 



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