Abstract: The paper deals with the problem of the planning. The planning economy was indeed one of the most important achievements of the XX century. It allows avoiding such negative phenomena as unemployment and poverty. Nowadays the planning economy in Russia is rejected because after Gorbachev’s perestroika the leaders have decided to rely only on the market relations. They thought the reason for the economic collapse of the Soviet Union was the planning. The aim of the paper is to prove that the main error of the Soviet planning economy was not the planning itself, but the absence of interaction between the public management system and population. The text gives valuable information on the origins and development of the Soviet planning. The Soviet planning appeared in the difficult political and social context of the Civil War. From the beginning, the planning was developed by eminent scientists of their time. The political leaders used the planning in theire own aims; putting unrealizable tasks and using the economic failures to find and accuse the “enemies”. Conclusions are drawn about the necessity of the development of the planning system as a system of system of reconciling the needs of the people and the interests of public administration.

Abstract: The subject of this research is the social practices implemented in Soviet planning and the prospects of their application in modern Russia. Planned economy was one of the paramount achievements of the XX century. It allowed avoiding a number of negative social occurrences, such as unemployment and social inequality. However, namely planning was proclaimed the cause of dissolution of the Soviet Union, which justified an unambiguously negative attitude to such management approach in both, academic and administrative environments. At the same time, the Western economic literature does not have a definite assessment, which encourages considering the prospects for implementation of this practice once again. Methodological base includes the systemic method for ensuring a comprehensive analysis of planning as a management technique and social practice; the problematic-chronological methods identifies the transformation trends of this technique. The article provides information on the origin and evolution of the Soviet-type economic planning. It is underlined that the political leaders used this technique for their purpose, setting the unattainable tasks and using economic failures to find and blame the “enemies”. The conduced analysis demonstrates that the cause of inefficiency of planning as a management technique was technocracy, formalism and social indifference. Thus, the system of planning under the modern circumstance must develop as a method of coordination of the citizens’ needs and interests of government administration.