A total payroll was also to be assigned to each enterprise, but the local management might pay by time or piecework and might pay bonuses based on profits. By mid-1969 enterprises producing one-third of the total industrial output were operating under the new system. Developments in the 1970s, however, brought about the gradual decline of the Liberman approach.

Construction

Some industries lagged considerably, particularly construction. The migration of rural population into cities that accompanied rapid industrialization resulted in a housing shortage. New methods for prefabricating walls and even whole rooms were borrowed from the West, but factories for making these products were not built as rapidly as projected, and housing goals were seldom met. Moreover, new housing was not well built and deteriorated rapidly.

Minerals

Of great importance for the growth of the Soviet economy was the increased development of Siberia, utilizing forced labour. The opening of vast new fields of oil and natural gas in Tyumen' in western Siberia augmented the Soviet Union's supply of energy sources. Deposits of copper and coal have been discovered farther east. Construction is under way on the 3218-km (2000-mi) Baikal-Amur Railway, which runs north of the present Trans-Siberian Railway and thus at a safer distance from the Chinese border.

Cultural Developments

From the mid-20th century the Soviet government tried, within strict ideological confines, to enable all citizens of the Soviet Union's many nationalities to participate fully in the culture of a unified Communist society and at the same time to preserve the traditions of their regional homelands. Tuition-free education in the form of day schools, evening classes, volunteer "people's universities", and correspondence courses was available to all those who toed the party line. Special efforts were made to reach isolated areas where educational opportunities had been few. Instruction was in Russian or in one of the Soviet Union's many other languages. Non-literate peoples were provided with their own alphabets, dictionaries, and grammars. As a result, illiteracy (about 70 per cent in the Russian Empire) was eliminated, and a large part of the population acquired a narrow political awareness of Communism (but heavily biased interpretations of capitalism), and the technical skills needed to develop a modern industrialized state.

Cultural achievements in the natural sciences were outstanding: in some areas of chemistry and physics, for example, the Soviets outstripped all other countries.