Perestroika and Change in Soviet Weapons ... - The Black Vault

26
THE NECESSITY OF CONVERSION PLANS
While the rapid sequence of conversion activities has overtaken the
system's capacity to produce clearly articulated plans, the main goals of
conversion have been stated repeatedly, and they amount to a substantial
planned contribution by defense industry to civilian output in the
years to 1995. One of the main reasons for the necessity of specific
and detailed conversion plans is the lack of fungibility of budgets and
monetary resources. Simple reallocation of budgets is insufficient in
the Soviet economic system to assure the output of a new mix of products.
Such a redirection must be explicitly planned and commanded by
the central authorities. This requirement was graphically described by
the chief designer and director of a defense industry institute:
In the absence of the ruble as a yardstick ... and with arbitrary
prices, it is impossible to simply take a ruble out of, say, tank production
and increase (let us say) the pensions of retirees. The wages
that used to be paid to the workers at a tank plant will still have to
be paid to them. The funds actually freed up from outlays for the
metal of tanks consist of entirely different rubles, which do not turn
directly into wages. 29
This point was reiterated by the chief designer of an aviation design
bureau: "We have thirty kinds of rubles-for wages, planned materials,
foreign goods, manufactured goods, profits, investment-and not one of
them can be substituted for another. " m In the Ministry of Instrument
Making (Minpribor), khozraschet has given the enterprises the opportunity
to earn money, but they cannot spend it at their own discretion.
Enterprises have R500 million under the mattress.... They have
their own economic "notes"-goals, indicators, normatives, incentives-governing
the tunes they can play that lead production away
from the goals proclaimed in the decisions of high party and state
agencies ... and the products the country needs. 31
Another barrier to defense industry enterprise autonomy in conversion
activities is that organizations often do not possess all of the
necessary functions for independent behavior. Research institutes,
design bureaus, and production facilities specialize in their own narrow
range of activities. Integrated firms possessing the combined capabilities
of such a Western company as Boeing do not exist. In recognition
29 Statement of Ye. O. Adamov, general designer and director of the Power Equipment
Institute, in "How to Beat Swords into Plowshares," Moskovekaya Prmvda, March 21,
1969, p. 1 (FBIS-SOV-89-069, April 12, 1989, p. 64).
°PenronUW communication, November 1989.
$ 1 &'jsa/jhfhh Industrya, April 25, 1969, p. 1 (FBIS-SOV-89-082, May 1, 1989,
p. 83).