Western economists have looked with suspicion on Nikita Khrushchev's juggling of statistics to prove that the Soviet economy is fast overhauling the U.S. Last week their suspicions were confirmed by an unexpected source: Soviet Economist Stanislav Gustavovich Strumilin.
At 83, Strumilin is the dean of Soviet economists. He wrote the first drafts of the first of all Five-Year Plans and was a leading spokesman in the Communist campaign that launched Soviet Russia on the path to rapid industrialization in 1928. Of all the pioneer planners, Strumilin alone lived through all purges and party-line changes, and in his old age he...