Industrial Association, intermediate link in the management of industrial production. In the USSR industrial association may be all-Union or republican. The rights and duties of the industrial associations are defined in the General Statute on the Ail-Union and Republican Industrial Associations approved by the USSR 161 Council of Ministers on March 2, 1973. The industrial association is the single production and economic complex consisting of production associations and enterprises, research, design, project-and-design, technological and other organisations. The enterprises, production associations ( combines) and organisations within the industrial association retain their independence and possess the rights of legal persons. Industrial association usually represents the totality of relatively homogeneous enterprises and production associations comprising a specialised sub-industry or complex involving several types of specialised production. It operates on the basis of cost accounting and provides full compensation of production expenditures, including those on research, R & D and design, the introduction of new articles and the development of new processes, and maintenance of the management apparatus, and also ensures the obtention of profits necessary for budgetary payments, the development of the given association, etc. The Resolution of the CC CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers of July 12, 1979, provides for the further improvement of the cost-accounting methods of industrial associations. The principal task of an association is to develop and improve production for the purpose of fully meeting the requirements of the economy and the people in the respective types of product. With this end in view, an association studies economic and popular needs in the respective types of product and their trends, analyses the structure of demand, and works out plans and carries out measures to develop the industry (sub- industry) concerned keeping sight of prospects of scientific and technical progress. It ensures the balanced and proportionate development of the entire production and economic complex, and increases its effectiveness on the basis of technical progress, concentration of production, specialisation of production, cooperation of production and combining of industrial production. An industrial association creates favourable conditions for strengthening the ties between science and production and accelerating and utilising R & D. An association pursues a unified technological policy, fully or partially centralising the execution of individual economic functions. The successful implementation of the industrial association’s functions is facilitated by its centralised funds and reserves: material incentive fund and the fund for social and cultural measures and housing construction (see Economic Incentives Funds), as well the united science and technology development fund, etc. The reserve of depreciation deductions allocated for capital repairs is channelled by industrial associations to those production associations ( enterprises) which lack their own resources for capital repairs. Part of the depreciation deductions intended for the complete restoration of fixed assets are employed by all-Union (republican) industrial associations for technical re-equipment and modernisation of operating enterprises in conformity with capital construction plans. The system of bonuses awarded to industrial associations’ workers has been made dependent on improvements in the quality of the work they do and the fulfilment by constituent enterprises (production associations) of their delivery obligations in compliance with contracts (orders), and with consideration of the results of socialist emulation.