ABSTRACT
Soviet economic growth, in the period since 1960, has been a mixture of achievements and failures. There have been several major achievements. The aggregate output of the Soviet Union over the period 1960-82 has grown at an average of 3.9 percent a year, with industrial output growing at an average annual rate of 5.2 percent. The living standards of the Soviet population have risen, with per capita consumption increasing at an average annual rate of 2.6 percent. While Soviet economic growth has been trending downward since the end of World War II, this downward trend rather sharply intensified in the period after 1975, which has led to the use of the term "economic crisis" in some Western analyses. Several sectors have been identified by the Soviet leadership as requiring increased investment, primarily energy, rail transportation, and agriculture. Yet the planned increases for aggregate investment for the period 1981-85 are quite small.
