Control Figures

Methodology

Gosplan was founded in 1921 but at first functioned closer to an advisory body handling electrification planning and branch surveys. The control figures, drawn up annually from 1925, were a system of preliminary targets and the first attempt to gather the numbers for production, investment, and circulation across the whole national economy into a single document.

Groman and Bazarov, who designed the methodology, worked by the genetic method: survey the actual trends and market conditions of the economy, estimate what was attainable, and lay policy adjustment on top of that forecast. The approach stood opposed to the teleological method, which fixed the target to be reached first and allocated resources to match.

Becoming binding

With the adoption of the first Five-Year Plan in 1928 the teleological method won. The control figures changed in character from forecasts reflecting market conditions into assignments handed down, and failure to meet them was treated as a breach of plan discipline. The economists who had defended the genetic method were removed politically, and Groman and Bazarov were convicted in the Menshevik trial of 1931.

Thereafter the control figures were combined with the system of material balances to form the basic instrument of Soviet planning. Annual control figures were allocated by branch, each branch subdivided them into assignments for enterprises, and the enterprise received both an output target and an allocation of inputs.

Structural problems

The system carried defects that were identified repeatedly. Because targets were ratcheted upward from the previous year's performance, enterprises had an incentive to conceal capacity and keep targets low. Where output targets were set in gross quantities, quality and assortment were sacrificed, and where input allocations fell short, enterprises built informal supply networks of their own.

These problems were a constant of Soviet reform debate. The 1965 reform tried to reduce the number of indicators and introduce a profit measure, and further decrees through the 1970s and 1980s attempted to cut back directive indicators. The allocation structure resting on control figures and material balances nonetheless remained in place until the Soviet Union dissolved.