ABSTRACT
The development of the USSR at the beginning of the 1980s was marked by an unparalleled decline in the growth of economic resources, namely labor, raw materials, fuels, and capital investment. A basic feature of Soviet industry is the preponderance of raw-material extracting and primary industries, which account for around one-half of total industrial production and absorb about two-thirds of all industrial investment. The dominance of raw material extracting and primary industries is continually increasing and gives Soviet industrial production a distinctly primitive profile. The theory and practice of accounting for expenditures on Soviet industrial production does not make it possible to calculate the degree to which a price increase for machinery is justified by an increase in productive capacity or qualitative improvement. Even under normal circumstances, however, an increase in investment is by no means an indispensable condition for the economy to emerge from stagnation.
