Comprehensive Programme for Scientific and Technical Progress of the USSR, the concrete form of substantiation of the USSR’s long-term scientific and technological policy. In accordance with the resolution of the CPSU Central’ Committee and the USSR Council of Ministers "On the Improvement of Planning and Increasing the Impact of Economic Machinery on the Effectiveness of Production and the Quality of Work”, adopted in 1979, the Comprehensive Programme for Scientific and Technological Progress is now an integral part of long-term planning. It will be drawn up every five years for the subsequent 20 years (with special division into five-year periods) and presented to the USSR Council of Ministers and the USSR State Planning Committee two years before the beginning of each new five-year period; its primary architects are the USSR Academy of Sciences, the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology, and the USSR State Committee for Construction, along with Union republican and branch academies of 59 sciences, research institutes, design and construction organisations, ministries and departments. Among the tasks of the Comprehensive Programme for STP are forecasts of the principal currents of scientific and technical progress and their impact on socio-economic processes; substantiation of priorities for individual areas of development of science and technology, the rates for the introduction of scientific and technological achievements in different sectors of the economy, and the distribution of production resources between the lines of scientific and technological progress; evaluation of the effects of a break-through in production technology on its structure and effectiveness; substantiation of the directions of improvements in the economic mechanism and organisational structure of the economy, ensuring the practical implementation of scientific, technological and economic innovations envisaged by the Comprehensive Programme; the working out of priority measures for the given five-year plan encouraging the implementation of longterm scientific and technological policy. Overall, the aim of the Comprehensive Programme for STP is to substantiate those currents of scientific and technological development which help to successfully deal with key socio-economic problems. The Comprehensive Programme for STP is worked out for individual sectors embracing large realms and branches of the economy such as the fuel and power industries, engineering, metallurgy, construction, computer technology and management facilities, the agro-industrial complex, education, health protection, utilisation of natural resources, nature conservation, etc. This is accompanied by calculations and substantiations making it possible to evaluate the specific and general economic results and social consequences of scientific and technological progress, such as break-throughs in the production structure, in the indicators of labour productivity, economic efficiency of capital investment, material intensity of production, and in living standards. The Comprehensive Programme is based on scientific and technological forecasting related to certain technological processes, the methods of producing specific goods and services (steelmaking, power transmission, construction plastics, air passengers transportation, etc.). Each technological process and corresponding system of labour implements has its own set of technical characteristics (speed and the freight capacity of air transport, rapid operation and memorising ability of a computer, etc.). Technological progress can be judged primarily by improvements in the corresponding technical characteristics. Within the given realm of technology, the improvement may be evolutionary or qualitative, implying a transition to fundamentally different technical solutions. If the latter case holds true, what is usually involved is a transition to a new generation of machines or implements of labour (such as changes in steelmaking technology based on the direct furnaceless reduction of metal). A forecast of technical characteristics, as well as of chances of their evolutionary or qualitative growth, is a key axis of scientific forecasting. The latest forecasts are taken as a basis to prognosticate the corresponding technical and economic indicators characterising the material and labour inputs per unit of output or useful effect. A systems approach to scientific and technical forecasts and their coordination makes it possible to determine the probable succession and scale of innovations in different economic sectors, the basic directions of technically restructuring the economy, and the social and economic results of introducing scientific and technical achievements. The Comprehensive Programme validates the measures which ensure the best possible and most effective utilisation of scientific and technical achievements in the economy. Among these measures are recommendations on structural policy, i. e., on the distribution and redistribution of human, material and financial resources with the major currents of scientific and technological progress; proposals on the dynamics and structure of the country’s scientific and educational perspectives, i. e. on expenditures for the development of science and education and on the structure of these 60 expenditures; on the creation of economic, organisational and other essential conditions for accelerating scientific and technological progress in the chosen directions. The Comprehensive Programme, together with the incorporated measures, is drawn up for a long-term period. The practical implementation of a far-reaching scientific and technical policy requires that it be progressively realised from one five-year term to another. This continuity is ensured by coordination of the priority measures, envisaged for the subsequent five-year term, with the long-range objectives and priorities. These measures must take into consideration, as fully as possible, the realities of the economic life and, at the same time, be oriented toward long-term objectives. The first draft of the Comprehensive Programme for Scientific and Technological Progress was developed for the period running to 1990-2000.