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Political and intellectual contours of technological development in the late USSR

Kasatkin P.I.,

MGIMO University, Moscow, Russia, kasatkin@inno.mgimo.ru

elibrary_id: 624018 | ORCID: 0000-0001-7292-8850 | RESEARCHER_ID: AAH-6819-2019

Konnov V.I.,

MGIMO University, Moscow, Russia, v.konnov@inno.mgimo.ru

elibrary_id: 178080 | ORCID: 0000-0001-7292-8850 | RESEARCHER_ID: R-2075-2016

Article received: 2026.01.27 11:18. Accepted: 2026.03.13 11:19


DOI: 10.17976/jpps/2026.03.03
EDN: BIQJSA

Rubric: Theme of the issue: Time of the digit – the configuration of political and technical

For citation:

Kasatkin P.I., Konnov V.I. Political and intellectual contours of technological development in the late USSR. – Polis. Political Studies. 2026. No. 3. https://doi.org/10.17976/jpps/2026.03.03. EDN: BIQJSA (In Russ.)

The article was prepared with financial support from the Russian Science Foundation, project No. 25-18-00916.

Abstract

The article offers an assessment of the political significance of the Comprehensive Program for Scientific and Technological Progress (CPSTP) – one of the most ambitious projects of late Soviet economic policy. The CPSTP is viewed not only as a scientifically grounded program and a reflection of the specific worldview of representatives of Soviet mathematical economics, but also as an element of political competition in which economists were active participants. The authors show that work on the program became a field of competition between two groupings within the Soviet elite. The first one was focused on the interests of ‘group A’ industries – ‘production of means of production,’ primarily machine building, which was closely linked to the military-industrial complex. Its interests were best served by maintaining and even expanding the centralized distribution of resources. The second one was associated with ‘group B’ industries – the ‘production of consumer goods’ – whose leaders were interested in expanding the autonomy of enterprises and developing the consumer sector. One manifestation of this tension was the competition between academic institutions and entities subordinate to the State Planning Committee for the opportunity to participate in the scientific justification of planning. A key moment in the history of this program – the transfer of a group of economic forecasting specialists, led by A.I. Anchishkin, from the Gosplan’s Economic Research Institute (NIEI) to the Central Economic Mathematics Institute (CEMI) of the Soviet Academy of Sciences – is interpreted as an episode of this competition. In addition, the article reconstructs the methodological foundations of the program, explaining how its developers sought to introduce technological progress into economic descriptions. The authors demonstrate that the actual role of the program was dual. On the one hand, the state apparatus created a unique forecasting system, involving thousands of specialists, huge amounts of data, and many academic and research institutes. On the other hand, the actual influence of the program on economic planning was systematically hampered, since its implementation threatened to redistribute powers and disrupt the established system of economic interests.

Keywords

comprehensive program of scientific and technological progress, Soviet political elite, Soviet economic science, forecasting scientific and technological progress, Cambridge School.

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