ABSTRACT
The official plan fulfillment report for 1986 showed a clear improvement in all the main indicators of Soviet economic growth. Western analysts accepted that the official Soviet presentation of major national and sectoral output totals reported in rubles could be misleading, but agreed that industrial product figures reported in tons, cubic meters, and kilowatt-hours, had usually been reliable–at least concerning their rates of change over time. In 1986, the Soviet Central Statistical Administration switched, in its quarterly reports, from reporting the national income utilized, to reporting the national income produced; the plan target for 1987 was also given for the latter. More important for the future, perhaps, was the whole approach to economic policy-making adopted by the new leadership. The report threw some intriguing sidelights on Gorbachev's economic policies and their public presentation which suggested that the approach had hitherto been traditional, with no real departure from the previous pattern.
