Russia is a huge storehouse of natural resources, including oil, gas, and other energy sources, which she can trade with the rest of the world for advanced technology and wheat. In this book, leading experts evaluate the Soviet potential in major energy and industrial raw materials, giving special attention to implications for the world economy to the end of the twentieth century. The authors examine the mineral and forest resources that the Soviet Union has developed and may yet develop to provide exports during the 1980s. They discuss the regional dimension of these resources, especially in Siberia and the Soviet Far East; individual mineral raw materials, such as petroleum, natural gas, timber, iron ore, manganese, and gold; and finally the role of raw materials in Soviet foreign trade. The authors, representing the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, are primarily geographers, but they include economists, political scientists, and a geologist. Their work is based on primary sources (for most of these reports, current information is no longer being released to researchers) and on interviews with Soviet officials.

Forest industries represent an important segment of the Soviet economy, accounting for five percent of the total industrial output and providing essential materials for other key industries. This book, the first in-depth study of Soviet forestry in the English language, looks at the organizational, planning, economic, and technological aspects of the industry. Mr. Blandon first discusses labor force trends and geographical features of the country's forest resources, then assesses the forest industry's modernization program. He analyzes the past performance of capital investment in the industry and makes projections about the effects of future investments in order to estimate the Soviet Union's future timber output. Throughout the book considerable attention is devoted to the Soviet planning system and its influence on decision making.