Disagreements among ministries and pressure on the State Planning Committee in the Soviet economy in the early 1950s

The following paper deals with mechanisms for working out compromise solutions when discussing the plan for the USSR national economy development in 1951-1955. The sources analysis (notes of ministries heads to the government, the Gosplan’s reports and its projects for the development of the Soviet economy for the period 1951-1955) shows there were disagreements between the central planning body and the economic agencies. The position of the State Planning Committee, which sought to draw up a balanced plan, consisted in the allocation of resources and economic obligations between ministries. The ministries, for their part, were inclined to offer lower figures for the growth of production indicators and overestimated amounts of resources to implement the plans. Divergences in positions were regulated by a special interdepartmental commission on disagreements, its proposals were taken as a basis by the government and the State Planning Committee to amend the current and future planning of the industrial development of the USSR. The results of the study allow us to conclude that the planned economy was actually the economy of «approvals». In this system, government directives were viewed as a result of an interagency struggle between «planners» and «production workers», where the State Planning Committee counterbalanced the ambitions of ministries. However, active «lobbyism» of ministers limited the possibilities of «planners», as evidenced by the documents of the Dispute Commission.