Scientific and Technical Progress, the interrelated advance of science and technology caused by the needs of material production and growing social requirements, which become increasingly complex. Scientific and technical progress is inseparably linked with the appearance and development of large-scale mechanised production based on the increasingly intensive use of scientific and technological achievements. It allows powerful natural forces and resources to be placed at the service of mankind, production to be turned into a technological process of the deliberate use of the information provided by natural and other sciences. As the links between large-scale mechanised production and science and technology gained in strength at the close of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, special kinds of scientific research were swiftly expanded, the aim being to embody scientific ideas in technical means and new technology, applied research, research and development. As a result, science increasingly turns into a direct productive force transforming growing numbers of aspects and elements of material production. Scientific and technical progress has two main forms: (1) evolutionary, signifying a relatively slow and partial improvement of the traditional scientific and technological foundation of production; (2) revolutionary, embodied in the scientific and technological revolution. These forms are interdependent: the quantitative accumulation of relatively small changes in science and technology ultimately leads to radical qualitative transformations in this field and, after switching over to basically new machinery and technology, gradual evolutionary changes. Depending on the dominant social system, scientific and technical progress has different socio- economic consequences. Under capitalism, private appropriation of the means of production and the results of research and development lead to scientific and technical progress developing mainly in the interests of the bourgeoisie and being used to intensify the exploitation of the proletariat, and to militaristic and misanthropic ends. Under socialism, scientific and technical progress is placed at the service of society as a whole and its achievements are used for fulfilling the economic and social tasks involved in building communism, forming the material and intellectual prerequisites for the comprehensive development of the individual. In the period of developed 319 socialism, the acceleration of scientific and technical progress is a decisive condition for raising the efficiency of social production and improving the quality of output, so it is the most important goal pursued in the strategy of the CPSU. The technical policy evolved by the CPSU at the present stage is increasingly subordinated to fulfilling the economic and social tasks facing Soviet society, speeding up the economy’s transfer on to the lines of intensive development and raising the efficiency of social production. Proceeding from this, the 26th CPSU Congress pointed out the need to elaborate and implement a complex programme for scientific and technical progress, special programmes for resolving the most important scientific and technological problems, consolidating mutual links between science and production, determining and attaining the main objectives of research and development and the organisational structure of research institutions in good time, intensifying the cooperation between the social, and natural sciences and engineering. In the period up to 1990, the comprehensive mechanisation of crop-growing and livestock-breeding is, in the main, to be completed. The technical retooling of production is being speeded up on the basis of a unified technical policy in all the branches of the national economy, and progressive machinery and technology are introduced on a broad scale, thereby ensuring higher labour productivity and quality of output, thrifty use of material resources, better working conditions, environmental protection, and rational use of natural resources. A transition is effected from developing and introducing individual machines and technological processes to the development, production and broad application of highly efficient systems of machines, equipment, instruments and technological processes, ensuring mechanisation and automation of all production processes, especially auxiliary, transport and storage operations. Wider use is to be made of regeared technical means which will make it possible to start rapidly producing new output. Fundamentally new machines and technology are in the offing, alongside an improvement of existing technological processes.