ABSTRACT
Soviet economic perceptions for many decades have strongly felt the pressure of their political counterparts. The overall approach of the USSR was heavily biased towards foreign-policy goals and objectives, leaving domestic economic priorities either subordinate to these goals and objectives or simply on the sidelines. For a long time the dominant Soviet perception was the one that society can be economically efficient but at the same time less socially just and secure, and vice versa. The detente of the 1970s did little to change the prevaliant Soviet economic perceptions. Moreover, the worsening of relations between the super-powers and their blocs in the early 1980s seemed to justify the position of those, who continued to argue for a closed, centrally planned economy as the only possible long-term alternative for Soviet economic development.
