Abstract
On becoming General Secretary of the CPSU in March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev inherited a number of problems both in the international arena and on the domestic scene. Obviously, these external and internal problems were interlinked, but the former remain outside the scope of the present examination.
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Notes and References
Some of these tensions were discussed by J.L. Porket, ‘Social Policy and Employment In The Soviet Union’, Social Policy & Administration, vol. 21, no.2 (summer 1987), pp. 109–26
J.L. Porket, ‘Social Deprivation under Soviet Full Employment’, a paper presented at the III. World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies in Washington, D.C., (October 30 – November 4, 1985.)
See e.g. Joseph S. Berliner, ‘Managing the USSR Economy: Alternative Models’, Problems of Communism, vol. XXXII, no. 1 (January–February 1983), pp. 40–56
Timothy J. Colton, The Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet Union (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1984). The former distinguished the ‘conservative’, the ‘reactionary’, the ‘radical’, and the ‘liberal’ models. The latter offered a continuum of the Soviet Union’s plitical choices ranging from revolution through reform and conservatism to reaction, simultaneously dividing reform into radicoal, moderate, and minimal.
Morris Bornstein, ‘Improving the Soviet Economic Mechanism’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXVII, no. 1 (January 1985), p. 1.
J.L. Porket, ‘Participation in Management in Communist Systems in the 1970s’, British Journal of Industrial Relations, vol. XIII, no. 3 (November 1975), p. 374.
Another example is the industrial planning experiment, first introduced operationally in selected sectors in January 1984, and extended in coverage in January 1985. See David A. Dyker, ‘Soviet Planning Reforms from Andropov to Gorbachev’, in Ronald Amann and Julian Cooper (eds.), Technical Progress and Soviet Economic Development (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) Chapter 8, and Narodnoe khozyaistvo SSSR (1985) p. 94.
Zenovia A. Sochor, ‘NEP Rediscovered: Current Soviet Interest in Alternative Strategies of Development’, Soviet Union/Union Soviétique, vol. 9, part 2 (1982), pp. 189–211.
The Soviet régime under Brezhnev was characterized as welfare-state authoritarianism by George W. Breslauer, ‘On the Adaptability of Soviet Welfare-State Authoritarianism’, in Erik P. Hoffmann and Robbin F. Laird (eds.) The Soviet Polity in the Modern Era (New York: Aldine Publishing Company, 1984) Chapter 9. The label was chosen to incorporate both the character of régime politics and the direction of its social policies.
M.I. Piskotin, Sotsializm i gosudarstvennoe upravlenie (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo ‘Nauka’, 1984) p. 254.
Murray Yanowitch, Work in the Soviet Union (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1985) Chapter 6
Joel C. Moses, ‘Worker Self-Management and the Reformist Alternative in Soviet Labour Policy, 1979–85’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXIX, no. 2 (April 1987), pp. 205–28.
An overview of the first two years of Gorbachev’s rule is to be found in Gerhard Wettig et al. (eds.) Sowjetunion 1986/87 (München: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1987).
Werner Hahn, ‘Electoral Choice in the Soviet Bloc’, Problems of Communism, vol. XXXVI, no. 2 (March–April 1987), pp. 29–39.
Peter Hauslohner, ‘Gorbachev’s Social Contract’, Soviet Economy, vol. 3, no. 1 (January–March 1987), p. 77.
KPSS, Materialy XXVII s”ezda Kommunisticheskoi Partii Sovetskogo Soyuza (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1986).
Gertrude E. Schroeder, ‘Anatomy of Gorbachev’s Economic Reform’, Soviet Economy, vol. 3, no. 3 (July–September 1987), pp. 219–41.
Stanislaw Gomulka, ‘Gorbachev’s Economic Reforms: If not now, when? If not us, who?’ L.S.E. Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 4 (Winter 1987), pp. 413–32.
Seweryn Bialer, The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal Decline (London: LB. Tauris, 1986) pp. 139–40.
See also Michael Kaser, ‘“One economy, two systems”: parallels between Soviet and Chinese reform’, International Affairs, vol. 63, no. 3 (summer 1987), pp. 395–412
M.S. Gorbachev, Perestroika i novoe myshlenie dlya nashei strany i dlya vsego mira (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1987) pp. 84 and 87.
Soviet scholars’ discussion on a price reform was reviewed by Alec Nove, ‘“Radical Reform”: Problems and Prospects’, Soviet Studies, vol. XXXIX, no. 3 (July 1987), pp. 452–67.
Compared with low performers, high performers are underpaid, wrote V.M. Selunskaya, Sotsial’naya struktura sovetskogo obshchestva (Moskva: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1987) p. 214. It might be added that by the end of 1987 the enterprise wage fund still depended basically on the number of employed persons and the amount of hours worked, while labour productivity had little impact on it.
Valentin Litvin, ‘On Perestroyka: Reforming Economic Management’, Problems of Communism, vol. XXXVI, no. 4 (July–August 1987), p. 89. As the author recalls, gross income is a more radical success indicator than profit, because it abolishes fixed wages.
See also J.L. Porket, ‘The Shortage, Use and Reserves of Labour in the Soviet Union’, Oesteuropa-Wirtschaft, vol. 29, no. 1 (March 1984), p. 23.
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Porket, J.L. (1989). Prospects. In: Work, Employment and Unemployment in the Soviet Union. St Antony’s. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10930-2_10
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