industry

By the mid‑1920s, USSR industry had approached the limit of its extensive development, which inevitably placed the political leadership of the state before the most difficult problem of planning on a national scale. The authorities of the North-West region had to solve a complex of problems in planning the development of the regional economy, including the problem of slowing economic development, reduction of raw material and fuel resources of industry, elimination of commodity hunger for consumer goods, scarcity of financial influence from the central government, shortage of skilled labor, deterioration of transport infrastructure. Solving all these problems in the forward planning process was complicated by the diktat of the Centre in defining the parameters of regional economic development, and the reticence of the Centre towards the requests of regional authorities for additional funding. As a result, the process of elaboration of perspective plans turned into a fiction. In practice, planning was reduced to the coordination of rather unreliable information received by the North-Western Regional Economic Meeting from the provincial economic meetings, with the norms sent from the Centre. This practice was quickly revealed to be flawed, calling into question the very need for the existence of the North-Western Regional Economic Meeting.