tries. Even by most alternative calculations of Soviet economic growth, the Soviet Union seemed to be making great strides. The Soviet Union showed that they had mastered advanced technology by being the first to send a man into space, while on the ground they reported record harvests and some of the world's fastest growth rates in steel production and in the output of other basic raw materials. The Soviets seemed to have transformed Western development techniques-highlighting some aspects and abandoning others. Until the mid-1960's at least, the Soviet Union seemed to have mastered the secret of economic development and there seemed to be some basis to Nikita Khrushchev's claim that, by 1970 or 1980, the Soviet Union would be able to overtake the United Sates and move on to the attain