ABSTRACT
No one who reads the Soviet press can doubt the high priority which the leadership gives to correcting these and other defects. However, since they still reject the ‘market’ model, the reforms they are announcing cannot possibly cure the disease: tighter central control, the imposition of centrally determined ‘norms’ (normed value-added, normed material utilisation, etc.), stricter allocation of a longer list of materials and machines, exhortation to achieve higher quality of planning and of production, more severe penalties for non-fulfilment of (planned) delivery contracts, and so on. While no one would deny that some aspects of the system could be made to function more efficiently, the basic problems are either untouched or actually exacerbated by ‘reforms’ such as these. The chronic crisis of the centralised system may be reaching its acute stage, with consequences as yet unforeseeable.
