Soviet economic policy of the 1960s–1980s is a phenomenon that columnists and conspiracy theorists more often attempted to explain than historians. The dearth of works that have attempted comprehensive analysis has meant that most of the key questions surrounding this era remain unanswered. What goals and objectives did the Soviet economy set for itself at that time? Why did it need certain reforms? Under what conditions did the reforms take place and what actors participated in them? Nikolai Mitrokhin’s book is an analysis of the practice of making economic decisions in the USSR by key political and state institutions. Based on interviews and memoirs of representatives of the highest Soviet bureaucracy, as well as documents of the Soviet leadership used for the first time, the researcher seeks to reconstruct the mechanics of managing the Soviet economy in the last decades of its existence. Particular attention is paid to the reforms that were carried out in 1965–1969, 1979–1980 and 1982–1989. Nikolai Mitrokhin is a candidate of historical sciences, a specialist in the history of late Soviet society, currently working at the University of Bremen (Germany).