Gosplan career planner who served from wartime reconstruction through the Kosygin reform preparations
In the spring of 1944, a new Gosplan administration for economic reconstruction in the liberated territories was set up — with Korobov at its head, cataloguing destroyed factories, railways, and housing across the recovering western USSR.
An economic official who spent nearly three decades in the central apparatus of Soviet planning, rising from a working group leader in Gosplan to Deputy Chairman. During the Second World War he headed the Gosplan administration for economic reconstruction in liberated territories. As Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee and Minister of the USSR from 1963 to 1965, he was involved in preparing the measures that formed the basis for Alexei Kosygin's 1965 economic reform.
Career Timeline
- 1938–1951Group leader, deputy head of department, head of department, head of administration at Gosplan
- 1951–1953Deputy Chairman of Gosplan, Assistant to Chairman of the Council of Ministers
- 1953–1958Administrator of Affairs of the Council of Ministers of the USSR
- 1958–1960Deputy Minister of Finance of the USSR
- 1960–1963Deputy Chairman of the State Economic Council, Head of the Consolidated Planning Dept of Gosplan
- 1963–1965Deputy Chairman of the State Planning Committee — Minister of the USSR
Related historical events
The 1955 Gosplan Reform and Defender of the Planning Apparatus
In early 1955, Soviet economic planning faced a deepening crisis. The control targets for the Fifth Five-Year Plan remained unapproved, while shortages of fuel and metal and inter-agency competition for investment eroded the planning apparatus. Five days after Malenkov's resignation as premier in February 1955, Gosplan chairman M. Z. Saburov submitted a reorganization proposal to the CPSU Central Committee Presidium. The centerpiece was splitting Gosplan into two bodies: a long-term planning commission (Gosplan) and a current planning commission (Gosekonomkomissiya).
As Administrator of Affairs of the Council of Ministers, Korobov prepared for Premier N. A. Bulganin a document titled "Comments on the Draft Resolution 'On Restructuring the Work of Gosplan and Measures to Improve State Planning'." It played a decisive role across three rounds of revision from the initial draft to the final text. Korobov opposed the division of Gosplan into two separate bodies as "incorrect in principle." He argued that separating long-term from current planning would generate redundant paperwork, duplication, irresponsibility, and confusion. His alternative preserved Gosplan as a unified organ while restructuring its internal organization and working methods.
Korobov's proposal was rejected, and in May 1955 Gosplan was split into two bodies. But the arrangement lasted less than two years, swept aside by Khrushchev's sovnarkhoz reform of May 1957. Korobov himself later returned to Gosplan and, during the preparation of the 1965 Kosygin reform, was counted among the "veterans of the command system" who shaped the reform's limited, conservative final version. According to historian Vyacheslav Nekrasov, Korobov's "Comments" is the single most valuable primary source for understanding how the 1955 Gosplan reform was actually designed.