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The Dynamics of the Gorbachev Reforms: a Crisis of Reconstruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2016

David A. Dyker
David A. Dyker*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
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Summary

The author investigates the reasons why the Soviet reform programme is running into increasing difficulties. He argues that the budget deficit is the central characteristic of the new crisis of stagnation. On the one hand, it represents a direct reflection of the severe structural problems of the Soviet economy, the deep-seated tendency to loss-making, the tradition of giving budgetary support to unprofitable economic activities. On the other, the inflationary pressure the deficit generates represents the biggest single obstacle to effective reform of the planning system, since it makes it impossible to liberalise and rationalise the price system without running the risk of hyper-inflation. At present the prospects for effective perestroïka are not good.

Résumé

Résumé

L'auteur analyse les raisons qui conduisent le programme soviétiques de réformes économiques au devant de difficultés croissantes. Il prétend que le déficit budgétaire est la caractéristique majeure de la stagnation actuelle. D'une part, ce déficit est un reflet immédiat des problèmes structurels graves de l'économie soviétique, de sa tendance profonde au maintien des pertes des entreprises et de la tradition de compenser ces pertes par des transferts au départ du budget de l'Etat. D'autre part, la pression inflationniste que génère ce déficit représente le plus formidable obstacle à la réforme du système de planification: elle rend impossible la libéralisation et la rationalisation du système des prix sans entraîner le risque d'une hyperinflation. Aujourd'hui, la perestroïka semble mal engagée.

Keywords

124134322124134322
Type
Research Article
Information
Recherches Économiques de Louvain/ Louvain Economic Review , Volume 56 , Issue 2: Economic Change in the East , 1990 , pp. 127 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de recherches économiques et sociales 1990 

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Footnotes

*

The bulk of the research for this article was done during my tenure of a Volkswagen Foundation fellowship at the Bundesinstitut für ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien, Cologne, West Germany

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