Long-Term Planning, compilation and implementation of plans for the development of the socialist economy and its components—sectors and enterprises ( associations)—drawn up for several (five and more) years. Based on the study of the objective laws of social life, the interrelation of all economic sectors and spheres, and the attained level of development and prospects for science and technology, the long-term plan formulates the economicopolitical concept of economic development for the given period and determines the most effective ways and means to implement it. The long-term plan ensures planned and balanced development of the socialist economy, i. e., its rationally administered proportions which correspond to the objective requirements of social development, above all the greatest possible growth of the efficiency of social production on the basis of intensification (see Proportions of Social Production). The plan also outlines proportions which ensure the most progressive avenues in economic development and prevent over or underproduction of certain products, making it possible to most fully satisfy production and personal requirements with the lowest expenditure of labour, material and financial resources. The growing scale of production, more complicated economic links and the ongoing scientific and technological revolution 208 make new and increasingly higher demands on economic planning. The system of measures to improve planning now being implemented in the USSR proceeds from the need to make the role of long-term plans more important, and to orient them towards improving production efficiency and the quality of work, and towards ensuring good final results of production activity, fuller satisfaction of the growing social and personal requirements, and greater attention in dealing with social problems. This is ensured through the organic dovetailing of long-term plans with scientific and technical progress, making them balanced, and closely tying in long-term and current problems, and the tasks of sectoral and territorial development. It is also extremely important to make work collectives more responsible and interested in final results of production. The basic form of planning, the main instrument for carrying out the economic policy of the Communist Party is the five-year plan, relying on a system of scientifically-grounded technical and economic norms and standards governing the types of work, expenditures of labour, raw and other materials, fuel and energy, as well as standards for the use of production capacities and capital investment based on economic and technical calculations (see Rated Planning), which excludes plan assignments being formulated on the established dynamic of corresponding indicators alone. During the five-year plan period, wholesale and estimated prices of and tariffs on freight haulage remain stable. Fulfilment of the five-year plan at all levels of economic management is estimated by summarising advances calculated since the beginning of the plan period. The annual assignments and economic standards of the five-year plan serve as the basis for compiling annual economic and social development plans, which specify these assignments, making them more concrete. This ensures the unity of long-term and current planning. Under mature socialism, it is vitally important to work out long-term plans expressing the socio-economic strategy and the main policy lines of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. Long-term plans are major landmarks in creating material, technical, social and intellectual foundations ensuring transition to complete communism. A major component in the long-term state economic and social development plans are the scientific and technical, economic and social target comprehensive programmes, as well as the programmes for the development of the individual regions and territorialproduction complexes (e.g., Food and Energy programmes, and those for saving fuel and metals, the development of the Baikal-Amur Railway zone, for cutting down the use of manual labour, and increasing the production of better consumer goods). The Food Programme of the USSR highlights the radical improvement of agriculture and allied industries and in character and scale will ensure the progress of the entire Soviet economy. The food problem has been posed by the CPSU as the central problem for the current decade. In the planning process, programmes are integrated with the corresponding sections of the plan and with material and financial resources. Wide use is also made of economic, scientific, technical and social forecasts (see Forecasting, Economic). In current practice, the compilation of longterm economic and social development plans begins with the elaboration of a comprehensive programme for scientific and technical progress for 20 years (by fiveyear periods), which is specified after the elapse of each five years and compiled for the next five-year period. Proceeding from the long-term socio-economic tasks determined by the Party and the comprehensive programme of scientific and technical progress, the USSR State Planning Committee and the relevant bodies work out and appropriately specify draft guidelines for economic and social development that run for 10 years (by five-year periods), which stipulate how major economic and social questions are to be dealt with. In conformity with the approved draft guidelines, the USSR State Planning Committee determines target figures in the basic indicators and economic standards for the five subsequent years (broken down into years), and presents them to the ministries and departments of the USSR and Councils of Ministers of the Union republics which, 209 in turn, bring them down to the relevant associations, enterprises and organisations. Based on target figures and preliminary work with consumers and suppliers, the associations, enterprises and organisations work out five-year draft plans, broken down into years. With the target figures, these drafts underlie the five-year plans in the economic sectors and Union republics. Taking account of the latter, the USSR State Planning Committee works out the state draft five-year plan, which is balanced in all indicators (assignments being distributed by years) and submits it to the Council of Ministers of the USSR. Once the five-year plan is adopted according to the established procedure, it acquires the force of law. This way of compiling plans ensures the unity and flexibility of the entire system of planning, making it possible, on the one hand, to manage the economy in a centralised way, and on the other, to develop the broad initiative of the working people and local economic management bodies, i.e. to implement in planning the principle of democratic centralism in economic management. The 26th CPSU Congress approved the Guidelines for the Economic and Social Development of the USSR for 1981-1985 and for the Period Ending in 1990. The principal task of the eleventh five-year plan is to ensure that the Soviet people’s well-being is further improved through the steady growth of the economy, the acceleration of scientific and technical progress, intensive economic development, as well as the rational utilisation of the country’s economic potential, a comprehensive saving of all types of resources and through improving the quality of work.