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The Soviet Union and the Challenge of the Future
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15887 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1989 |
4,627 Words |
| Author
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Alexander Shtromas
Alexander Shtromas is a reader in politics in the Department
of Politics and Contemporary History at the University of
Salford, United Kingdom. |
The authors of this volume have undertaken a systematic and comprehensive study of the Soviet economy and society in order to evaluate the USSR's capability of coping with its critical socioeconomic problems, to identify changes necessary for a successful solution to these problems, and to assess the Soviet system's overall viability.
Part 1, "The Present State and Future Prospects for the Soviet Economy," centers around two main topics: prospects for economic growth and the capability of Soviet economic reform to bring about an economic recovery in the USSR. The authors of this part are unanimous in their gloomy assessments of the prospects for Soviet economic growth under the present circumstances. The consensus on this issue is perhaps best expressed by Vladimir Kontorovich, who in the opening chapter, "The Current State of the Soviet Economy: Deepening Crisis or Recovery?," came to the meticulously substantiated conclusion that because of the slow upward trend that started in 1983, the Soviet economy had at best been stabilized by 1986 at zero per capita growth, a level not likely to increase in the future. According to Kontorovich's analysis, by 1990 the USSR's national income and industrial output will be growing at rates below 1.3 percent and 1.7 percent respectively, which is to say that from 1990 the USSR will face a per capita economic decline that inevitably will be translated into an absolute economic decline.
Although most of the contributions to part 1 were last revised in 1986, their basic conclusions with regard to the prospects for economic growth in the USSR remain entirely valid, despite the somewhat more encouraging figures on Soviet economic performance during 1986, released in 1987 by the Soviet Committee on Statistics and largely confirmed by an independent assessment of the CIA. According to these figures, Soviet GNP rose at over 4 percent in 1986. Philip Hanson, in his introduction to part 1, written in May 1987, came to the conclusion that the 1986 improvement in Soviet economic performance is attributable, in part, to good luck with the weather and, in part, to Gorbachev's "shaking up USSR Incorporated" by "tightening discipline, making managers and senior officials worry more about retaining their jobs, reducing corruption and breaking up the mutual protection circles that support it." This shake-up can, in Hanson's opinion, have a positive effect on economic production in the USSR for not much longer than couple of years, which means that the prognosis for 1990 and beyond given by Kontorovich and other contributors to part 1 stands.
Actually, Hanson's predictions that the Gorbachev
...
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