ugh the use of forced labor, central planning and the collectivization of agriculture (p. 27).
Industrialization, which was concentrated in heavy industry and for military purposes, continued after the war but by the 1960s, Premier Nikita Khrushchev acknowledged that the agricultural sector was lagging due to poor harvests and low productivity. Brzezinski (1989) says that "during the 1970s, Soviet growth rates lost momentum, and the economy atrophied" (p. 35). According to Spanier et al. (1995), Soviet rates of economic growth declined from five percent in the 1960s to two percent in the early 1970s and zero by 1980 (p. 222). The standard of living of the average Russian fell during the 1980s. Spanier et al. (1995) said that "capable only of producing a plentiful supply of weapons, the Soviet economy could no longer supply basic goods and public services . . . harvests failed repeatedly in the 1970s . . . [and] was nearing a breakdown" (p. 222). The basic problems were traceable to the centrally planned
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