Economic Ideas and Institutional Change: Evidence from Soviet Economic Discourse 1987-1991

In recent years, institutional and evolutionary economists have become increasingly aware that ideas play an important role in economic development. In the current literature, the problem is usually elaborated upon in purely theoretical terms. In the present paper it is argued that ideas are always also shaped by historical and cultural factors. Due to this historical and cultural specificity theoretical research must be supplemented by historical case studies. The paper analyses the shift in ideas that took place in Soviet economic thought between 1987 and 1991. This case study, it is argued, may contribute to our understanding of the links between ideas and institutions. More specifically, it sheds new light on the issue of whether the evolution of economic ideas is pathdependent, so that they change only incrementally, or whether their development takes place in a discontinuous way that can best be compared with revolutions

Problems of Restructuring the Political Economy of Socialism

The Twenty-seventh CPSU Congress and the All-Union Conference of Social Science Department Heads (October 1986) posed the task of working steadfastly to overcome manifestations of stagnation, dogmatism, and utilitarianism in ideological and theoretical work and [to reverse] a certain lag of social science behind practical demands. Not only these but other serious shortcomings are characteristic of the contemporary political economy of socialism. They concern both the theory and methodology of that science.

Economic Functions of Payment for Resources

The new conditions of management presuppose the introduction of important changes in the financial and credit relations between enterprises and the state. This side of the reform is expressed externally in the creation of a new system of concrete forms in which the state accumulates at enterprises part of the newly created value. Individual elements of this system, such as payment for productive capital, rent, interest on loans, have one feature in common: the size of the payments made by the enterprise is directly dependent on the volume and quality of the resources belonging to society and utilized by the enterprise. Such a dependence is not accidental. On the one hand, it is conditioned by the necessity of increasing incentives for rational utilization of resources, and on the other hand by the need to create economically equal conditions for different enterprises.

The Condition of the Population of Russia: Social Breakdown During the "Leap to the Market"

The reform that has been under way in Russia since the end of 1991 has been given many precise names: "reformist breakthrough" (B. Yeltsin), the "leap to the market" (E. Gaidar), and "economic genocide against one's own people" (A. Rutskoi). This reform is also called the robbery of the robbed. A more precise scientific definition is initial capital accumulation.

Specific Historical Peculiarities of the Formation of a Labor Market in the USSR

The transition to a market is the principal direction of Soviet economic reform today. It would seem to be more specific and distinct than the concept of >i>"perestroika.">/i> However, the catchword nature of the name remains. The transition to a market is understood in different ways not only by individual people but also by social forces, movements, and parties (in Shatalin's hockey terminologyâteams). Given the indefiniteness (the deliberate ambiguity and multisignification) of the slogan "transition to a market," the problems of the labor market are also posed quite indefinitely. It is important to understand that the problems themselves are entirely definite, that many of them "cry out for," so to speak, demand an immediate solution. The indefiniteness stems either from a reluctance to address them or from the desire to lend a special party bias to their solution. In this connection, let us examine several key issues relating to the formation of a labor market in the USSR.

Toward a Revision of Our Whole Point of View on Distribution

Lenin's expression regarding the revision of "our whole point of view on socialism" has almost become a byword, and there are many who apply it to the reorientation of modern Soviet society. Neither V.I. Lenin nor socialism is relevant here. Lenin suggested that the goal of socialism and the ways of moving toward it must be understood differently than they were understood by revolutionaries in the past. When people talk about socialism in our country, however, they are referring to the reality that actually exists in society. But it is not socialistic. It is pseudosocialist and totalitarian. This issue is so clear that it is no longer debated.

In Refutation of Bourgeois Interpretations of the Economic Reform in the Ussr

As was to be expected, the decision to carry out an economic reform in the USSR, which was adopted by the September (1965) Plenary Meeting of the CPSU Central Committee, drew the close attention of bourgeois economists. Implementation of the projected measures will strengthen our economy and create more favorable conditions for its rapid development, and as a result it will also have considerable international significance. The economic gains, the prerequisites for which are being created by the reform, will strengthen socialism's position in the economic competition between the two differing social systems and will once more convincingly demonstrate its enduring advantages over capitalism.

Socioeconomic Problems of Small Cities in Russia

The size of a city is commonly considered decisively to determine the nature of its problems. While this cannot be denied, this dependence should not be made an absolute. Without a doubt, there are problems inherent in the city as a type of community, that is, in any city, as opposed to a village, a farmstead, or a settlement. Age-old urban problems can be differentiated according to the size of the cities, and within this process a group of so-called small cities can be separated out. There are several hundred of these in Russia: 884. Within them approximately 28 million persons live, one out of every four citizens.