From the 1960s a shift had been taking place in work. It was more toward the production of consumer items such as automobiles, electronic devices, pharmaceuticals, civilian aircraft -- a production that was more knowledge intensive, more plastic and less cement. And it was more production for consumers -- away from the kind of heavy industrial production that had developed under Stalin.
From 1966 to 1970 under Leonid Brezhnev the Gross National Product (GNP) grew at a rate of around 5.3 percent per year. Then during 1971 to 1975 the growth declined to an average of 3.7 percent per year. And after 1975 the GNP fell to a growth of between 2.6 and 2.7 percent per year. In these years production around the world was growing rapidly, rising to an average annual rate for the world of 6.2 percent in 1973. The Soviet Union was keeping up with the United States in the production of steel, pig iron, cement and oil, but the future lay in electronics and specialty chemicals. [note]
Brezhnev and his colleagues wished Soviet citizens to be as prosperous as those in the capitalist nations, and to produce more for consumers they tried to incorporate innovations from the West, including innovations involving chemicals and computers. The Soviet Union was not keeping up with sophisticated techniques in computers, software and communications electronics or the design and manufacturing of automobiles -- as were Taiwan and Korea. The Soviet Union lost its second place standing in manufacturing, falling behind the losers of World War II, Japan and Germany, and falling behind Britain and Italy. The Soviet Union's biggest customer for its manufactured goods was its military, and manufacturing for the military continued to use the Soviet Union's most skilled people, to the detriment of production for civilians.
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