ABSTRACT
The essence of administrative planning is that central authority determines the economic targets of the industrial system and the means of achievement of those targets. The directive planning system was born of the first Five Year Plan, in the years 1928–1932. The implication is of course that the planning system could be looser and more flexible, and perhaps, as a consequence, more efficient. The objective problems of the planning system concern the matching of multiple plans, the measurement of plan fulfilment, the costs of the system and the relationship of producers’ and customers’ needs. Having taken a general overview of the Soviet economic system, against the background and with a view to greater depth of understanding, to look at some of the principal efforts at reform that have occurred in the post-Stalin era. The best-known proponent of reform in the early post-Stalin period was the economist Liberman, who put forward his ideas for change in the period 1956-1965.
