1990 Reports

Soviet Economic Reform

Desai, Padme

Two caveats need to be entered. First, this essay is an effort at interpretation: the two plan documents compared in it are at times characterized by ambiguity, reflecting perhaps the traditional political art of seeking consensus by semantic obfuscation. Second, the Soviet situation remains highly volatile. Originally a comparison of the (now-defunct) Ryzhkov planand that of Shatalin, the essay was quickly rewritten to compare the Shatalin and Gorbachev plans. But, no matter what cataclysmic political and economic events overtake the Soviet scene, the dramatic confrontation and interplay of the Shatalin and Gorbachev plans will shape the course of Soviet economic reform. This, and the widespread but rather hasty presumption that the Shatalin plan was superbly crafted and the Gorbachev plan was a compromise anda calamity, are reasons enough to write this essay.