ABSTRACT
The ideological polarization within the party regarding the pace and character of Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms was evident among the ranks of the security organs. In September 1986, a decree on reforming the wage system in the production sector stipulated that workers' pay must be linked to job performance and that raises and bonuses must be paid for out of enterprise profits. Price reform became a hot topic in the Soviet Union, and the question of subsidies was perhaps the most sensitive point. Yet in questioning the government's revised post referendum reform program, the unions' tone was unusually aggressive. Wage decisions were the prerogative of individual enterprises, which under the economic reform, according to government spokesman Jerzy Urban, were "independent and self-financing. As the various facades of economic and political reform were exposed, the official rhetoric of reform began to show the strain.
