Editing Eastern Bloc (section)

===Heavy industry emphasis===
According to the official propaganda in the Soviet Union, there was unprecedented affordability of housing, health care and education.<ref name="ria.ru">{{cite web|url=http://ria.ru/history_spravki/20101108/293796130.html|title=Советская экономика в эпоху Леонида Брежнева|work=РИА Новости |date=8 November 2010|access-date=23 March 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150402092007/http://ria.ru/history_spravki/20101108/293796130.html|archive-date=2 April 2015|url-status=live}}</ref>{{Unreliable source?|date=August 2019}} Apartment rent on average amounted to only 1 percent of the family budget, a figure which reached 4 percent when municipal services are factored in. Tram tickets were 20 kopecks, and a loaf of bread was 15 kopecks. The average monthly salary of an [[engineer]] was 140–160 [[Soviet ruble|ruble]]s.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://2000.net.ua/2000/svoboda-slova/sotsium/77009 |title=Ирония нашей судьбы : Социум : Еженедельник 2000 |publisher=2000.net.ua |access-date=19 November 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131020071603/http://2000.net.ua/2000/svoboda-slova/sotsium/77009 |archive-date=20 October 2013 }}</ref>

The Soviet Union made major progress in developing the country's consumer goods sector. In 1970, the USSR produced 679&nbsp;million pairs of leather footwear, compared to 534&nbsp;million for the United States. Czechoslovakia, which had the world's highest per-capita production of shoes, exported a significant portion of its shoe production to other countries.<ref>''The world hides, skins, leather and footwear economy''. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 1970. p.85</ref>

The rising standard of living under socialism led to a steady decrease in the workday and an increase in leisure. In 1974, the average workweek for Soviet industrial workers was 40 hours. Paid vacations in 1968 reached a minimum of 15 workdays. In the mid-1970s the number of free days per year-days off, holidays and vacations was 128–130, almost double the figure from the previous ten years.<ref>Planning of manpower in the Soviet Union. Progress Publishers. 1975. p. 101</ref>

Because of the lack of market signals in such economies, they experienced mis-development by central planners resulting in those countries following a path of extensive (large mobilisation of inefficiently used capital, labor, energy and raw material inputs) rather than intensive (efficient resource use) development to attempt to achieve quick growth.<ref name="hardt15"/><ref name="bideleux474"/> The Eastern Bloc countries were required to follow the Soviet model overemphasising [[heavy industry]] at the expense of light industry and other sectors.<ref name="crampton251">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Crampton|1997|p=251}}</ref>

Since that model involved the prodigal exploitation of natural and other resources, it has been described as a kind of "slash and burn" modality.<ref name="bideleux474"/> While the Soviet system strove for a [[dictatorship of the proletariat]], there was little existing proletariat in many eastern European countries, such that to create one, heavy industry needed to be built.<ref name="crampton251"/> Each system shared the distinctive themes of state-directed economies, including poorly defined property rights, a lack of market clearing prices and overblown or distorted productive capacities in comparison with corresponding market economies.<ref name="hardt11"/>

Major errors and waste occurred in the resource allocation and distribution systems.<ref name="bideleux475"/> Because of the party-run monolithic state organs, these systems provided no effective mechanisms or incentives to control costs, profligacy, inefficiency and waste.<ref name="bideleux475"/> Heavy industry was given priority because of its importance for the military-industrial establishment and for the engineering sector.<ref name="turnock29">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Turnock|1997|p=29}}</ref>

Factories were sometimes inefficiently located, incurring high transport costs, while poor plant-organisation sometimes resulted in production hold-ups and knock-on effects in other industries dependent on monopoly suppliers of intermediates.<ref name="turnock24"/> For example, each country, including [[People's Republic of Albania|Albania]], built steel mills regardless of whether they lacked the requisite resource of energy and mineral ores.<ref name="crampton251"/> A massive metallurgical plant was built in [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]] despite the fact that its ores had to be imported from the Soviet Union and transported {{convert|320|km}} from the port at [[Burgas]].<ref name="crampton251"/> A Warsaw tractor factory in 1980 had a 52-page list of unused rusting, then useless, equipment.<ref name="crampton251"/>

This emphasis on heavy industry diverted investment from the more practical production of chemicals and plastics.<ref name="frucht382">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Frucht|2003|p=382}}</ref> In addition, the plans' emphasis on quantity rather than quality made Eastern Bloc products less competitive in the world market.<ref name="frucht382"/> High costs passed through the product chain boosted the 'value' of production on which wage increases were based, but made exports less competitive.<ref name="turnock24"/> Planners rarely closed old factories even when new capacities opened elsewhere.<ref name="turnock24"/> For example, the Polish steel industry retained a plant in [[Upper Silesia]] despite the opening of modern integrated units on the periphery while the last old [[Siemens-Martin process]] furnace installed in the 19th century was not closed down immediately.<ref name="turnock24"/>

Producer goods were favoured over consumer goods, causing consumer goods to be lacking in quantity and quality in the [[shortage economy|shortage economies]] that resulted.<ref name="dale85"/><ref name="bideleux474"/>

By the mid-1970s, budget deficits rose considerably and domestic prices widely diverged from the world prices, while production prices averaged 2% higher than consumer prices.<ref name="zwass12">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Zwass|1984|p=12}}</ref> Many premium goods could be bought either in a [[Second economy of the Soviet Union|black market]] or only in special stores using foreign currency generally inaccessible to most Eastern Bloc citizens, such as [[Intershop]] in [[East Germany]],<ref name="zwass34"/> [[Beryozka (Russian retail store)|Beryozka]] in the Soviet Union,<ref>Adelman, Deborah, ''The "children of Perestroika" come of age: young people of Moscow talk about life in the new Russia'', M.E. Sharpe, 1994, {{ISBN|978-1-56324-287-8}}, p. 162</ref> [[Pewex]] in [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]],<ref>Nagengast, Carole, ''Reluctant Socialists, Rural Entrepreneurs: Class, Culture, and the Polish State'', Westview Press, 1991, {{ISBN|978-0-8133-8053-7}}, p. 85</ref><ref name="bugajski189">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Bugajski|Pollack|1989|p=189}}</ref> [[Tuzex]] in [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]],<ref name="graubard130">{{Harvard citation no brackets|Graubard|1991|p=130}}</ref> [[Corecom]] in Bulgaria, or [[Comturist]] in Romania. Much of what was produced for the local population never reached its intended user, while many perishable products became unfit for consumption before reaching their consumers.<ref name="bideleux475"/>