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Gorbachev and Yeltsin: Room for Two at the Top?
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18137 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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11 / 1990 |
4,156 Words |
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Alexandra Costa
Alexandra Costa is a former Soviet citizen who now lives in
the United States. She writes and lectures on Soviet affairs. |
When Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and the head of the Russian Republic Boris Yeltsin, agreed in early August to form a joint task force to produce a comprehensive program of economic reform, Gorbachev's chief economic, adviser, Nikolai Petrakov, called it “the most important information of 1990” in Soviet domestic politics. What followed at the September session of both the Russian and the central parliaments was, according to Kremlin old-timer Yegor Ligachev (safely watching the show from the galleries), “better than Shakespeare.”
Putting aside all its other important implications, the drama that took place in the Soviet parliament on September 11 showed the quintessential character traits of the two most powerful politicians in the USSR today - Gorbachev and Yeltsin.
It would be useful at this point to review the sequence of events related to economic reform in the USSR since June 1990, when the Soviet parliament rejected the government plan, which called for steep but still government-set price increases on staples. Although the plan was rejected, the mere mention of it caused widespread panic buying and hoarding all over the country, aggravating already tense supply situations. In the wake of this disaster, Gorbachev sent the plans' author, Premier Nicolai Ryzhkov, back to the drawing board and a month later committed some of his advisers to wok out an alternative plan based on Yeltsin's “500 days” program.
Although both plans are billed as a “transition to a market economy,” they are different in principle. The government program, sponsored by Ryzhkov emphasizes the gradual rise of wholesale and retail prices (which will still be fixed by the state) until they reach the “market” level. Low-income segments of the population will be compensated by direct subsidies, and the upper-income group will be heavily taxed. The program stipulates the transfer of up to 20 percent of industrial enterprises into private hands, with the rest remaining under state control. It also retains central ministries and central government authority over most aspects of the sate and the economy, with only some decision making going to the republics.
It is interesting to note that the key members of the government's working group are longtime officials from the state planning agency, the state committee on prices, and the state committee on supply - that is, all the state agencies that theoretically should cease to exit with the transition to a market economy. Logic suggests that unless these people wish to commit collective career
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