Any opinion, as I understand you're something of a Sovietologist (unless I'm confusing you with someone else) as to why stagnation only started in the Brezhnev era? My common-sense interpretation would be that central planning is good at building the base of an economy (build this factory now!) but bad at coordinating it once it exists.
Why did the economy only really shrink during Perestroika? Poorly attempted reforms? System too ossifed to accept change without collapse? Sabotage (Gorbachev says p's opponents were trying to wreck the banking system)?
Chris Doss The Russia Journal ---------------------------
Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 15:16:06 +0000 From: "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> Subject: RE: Science, Science and Marxism
Planned systems are OK at simply defined crash projects to which unlimited resources can be devoted. The Soviets had a handful of good products in machine tools, weapons systems, and the like. But you can't eat that stuff. Despite decades of efforts under Brezhnev, they failed to develop adequate consumer goods because you can't treat them like Kalashnikovs. Economists call this the difference between intensive and extensive development. This is tedious. Go read, e,g., Ellman's Socialsit Planning or Shmelev's & Popov's TheTurning point, or Nove's Economics of Feasile Socialism, or Kornai's The Socialsit System, and then if you want to discuss this stuff we
can do so in an informed way. jks
>
>jks -- There's no comparison with Soviet goods, none. Soviet TV sets
>regularly
>exploded; the smart purchaser kept a bucket of sand by the set. There was a
>actually a TV show under perestroika that was based on making fun of
>worthless goods. A handful of Soviet products, machine tools and the like,
>were world market quality. For the rest, Soviet industry made stuff that
>was
>
>unmarketable.
>
>They built pretty good MiGs and Kalashnikovs and space stations. I think
>priorities had something to do with this.
>
>Didn't the USSR sell cars to Latin America?
>
>Chris Doss
>The Russia Journal