The factors that determined the technological backwardness of the USSR on the eve of "Perestroika"

The aim of this publication is to study the evolution of the national R&D policy in the late Soviet period of Russian history and to identify the factors that determined the worsening technological backwardness of the country by the beginning of the 1980s. The sources of the research were, first of all, the archival materials stored in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and the Russian State Archive of Economics (RSAE). These in our opinion allow us to review with greater objectivity and reliability the achievements and miscalculations of the authorities in the scientific and technical sphere, assess the actual state of the country's scientific and technical complex, as well as the ability of the real sector to modernize the industry. The author concludes that by the early 1980s, the potential for further development of the country's scientific and technical complex on the basis of the basic parameters was exhausted. The existing model of production from the organizational and technical point of view was inefficient. Integration processes as well as the creation of an innovative system on the national scale at that time were hampered by: a departmental approach, which presupposes, above all, the development of sectoral science and hampers the development and implementation of cross-sectoral projects; the vicious planned system with its rigid regulation and centralism, orientation primarily on the volumes of output, rather than on mass demand and the introduction of new technology. The main emphasis was on the mass application of the already accumulated scientific and technical experience, on some insignificant reorganizations. Perspective domestic achievements for years were not mastered by industry. One of the serious failures of the authorities was inattention to the development of high technologies in the civil sector, the trend to borrow outdated foreign models. There was a crisis of the existing system of management and economic science, which demonstrated a lack of understanding of the essence of the main trends in the development of the world community, the specifics of the Russian model of modernization, the significance of scientifically grounded, accurate and consistently implemented state scientific and technical policy. In general, they were unable to ensure the transition of the country with a powerful raw material, scientific, technical and industrial potential to a new round of technological development that did not create the conditions for a new stage of modernization. This later became one of the factors that determined the development of the economic crisis and centrifugal tendencies.

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