Recent Economic Reform in the USSR
Abstract
The goal of my SIP project is to provide a limited but
interesting descriptive outline of macroeconomic failures within
the Soviet economy that have made continuous efforts at economic
reform necessary. The first part of my paper is primarily a
general discussion on the developments of socialism and
industrialization under Stalin within the Soviet Union. It consists
of a fairly straight forward assessment of the reasons why
centralized planning came to be implemented within the Soviet
Union.. The second part of my SIP will deal with the design and
flaws of centralized planning itself and its diseconomies of
managements. It will also focus on the issues of poor technical
progress and of chronic low quality in the production of consumer
goods. The third part of my paper will deal mainly with the
sociological, political, and practical reasons for Gorbachev's recent
reform efforts. In this section, I will compare the early attempts at
reform under the New Economic Policy with the Gorbachev's recent
reform agenda. Finally, in the concluding section, there will be a
brief summary of why perestroika has failed.