<P> The major strength of the Soviet economy was its enormous supply of oil and gas, which became much more valuable as exports after the world price of oil skyrocketed in the 1970s . As Daniel Yergin notes, the Soviet economy in its final decades was "heavily dependent on vast natural resources--oil and gas in particular ." However, Yergin goes on, world oil prices collapsed in 1986, putting very heavy pressure on the economy . After Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, he began a process of economic liberalisation towards a mixed economy . At its dissolution at the end of 1991, the Soviet Union begat a Russian Federation with a growing pile of $66 billion in external debt, and with barely a few billion dollars in net gold and foreign exchange reserves . </P> <P> The complex demands of the modern economy and inflexible administration overwhelmed and constrained the central planners . Corruption and data fiddling became common practice among the bureaucracy by reporting fulfilled targets and quotas, thus entrenching the crisis . From the Stalin - era to the early Brezhnev - era, the Soviet economy grew much slower than Japan and slightly faster than the United States . GDP levels in 1950 (in billion 1990 dollars) were 510 (100%) in the USSR, 161 (100%) in Japan and 1456 (100%) in the US . By 1965 the corresponding values were 1011 (198%), 587 (365%), and 2607 (179%). The Soviet Union maintained itself as the second largest economy in both nominal and purchasing power parity values for much of the Cold War until 1988, when Japan's economy exceeded $3 trillion in nominal value . </P> <P> The USSR's relatively small consumer sector accounted for just under 60% of the country's GDP in 1990, while the industrial and agricultural sectors contributed 22% and 20% respectively in 1991 . Agriculture was the predominant occupation in the USSR before the massive industrialization under Joseph Stalin . The service sector was of low importance in the USSR, with the majority of the labor force employed in the industrial sector . The labor force totaled 152.3 million people . Major industrial products included petroleum, steel, motor vehicles, aerospace, telecommunications, chemicals, electronics, food processing, lumber, mining, and defense industry . </P> <P> Though the GDP of the USSR crossed $1 trillion in the 1970s and $2 trillion in the 1980s, the effects of central planning were progressively distorted due to the rapid growth of the second economy in the Soviet Union . </P>

The industrialization of the ussr took pace in what decade