p Nikolai Baibakov,
Vice-Chairman, USSR Council of Ministers,
Chairman, USSR State Planning Committee

p In the economy of the USSR planned development is the key to progress of the productive forces, to utilisation of the achievements of the current scientific and technological revolution and to the advance, on this basis, of the material and cultural standards of the Soviet people.

p The founders of Marxism gave theoretical proof that only the victory of socialist revolution and the establishment of social ownership of the means of production make it possible to create a planned economy, to develop social production according to a single preconceived plan. Lenin developed and concretised all aspects of this proposition and indicated the practical ways of translating it into reality. Since the victory of the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the creation of a planning mechanism for state guidance of the economy has been a major factor in the advancement of socialist society.

p Lenin regarded the planning of the national economy as a function of the Soviet state, of the Communist Party, which heads the building of the new society. He stated at the Eighth All-Russia Congress of Soviets that the political programme of the Party should be supplemented by a programme of economic development, by “a plan of work aimed at restoring our entire economy and raising it to the level of up-to-date technical development".  [75•1 

p Lenin conclusively showed that the need for state 76 guidance of the economy stems from the very nature of social property, based as it is on large-scale machine industry demanding unity and proportionality in the development of all sectors. Proceeding from this premise, he formulated the principles of planning and socialist management of the economy which have fully preserved their importance to this day and serve as guidelines for the economic policy of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, which creatively applies Lenin’s great legacy in the new historical conditions.

p Here it is relevant to note the principles which determine the tremendous part played by planning in the development of the Soviet economy. These are:

p first, combining the labour of millions of people and the economic resources for accomplishing major economic and political tasks, the centralisation of large-scale production throughout the country;

p second, ensuring the proportional development of the national economy at high rates;

p third, the ability to determine correctly the prospects and sequence of tasks, orientation on the latest scientific and technological achievements, on advanced know-how;

p fourth, the most efficient use of society’s material, manpower and financial resources, the ability to find the main link of a plan at any given moment.

The Communist Party and the Soviet Government, guided by these principles, consistently define the main economic and political tasks of the five-year and annual plans, and employ the country’s economic resources accordingly for building communism.