led to increasingly unrealistic targets, which could only be satisfied with cheating, double accounting, hoarding of resources, and shturmovshchina (last-minute cramming)--which, in the long term, led to a collapse of the supply chain in the economy. In 1987, Soviet economist Nikolai Shmelov estimated that out of 450 billion roubles worth of inventories of raw materials and parts, around 170 billion was kept as surplus, with the sole purpose of securing the successful completion of plans.

Organization