ABSTRACT

Many years of domination by the administrative-command system in all spheres of life in the former Soviet Union have not only led to a crisis in the economy but have almost totally eliminated such qualities in our people as entrepreneurship, business acumen, and initiative. For many of us, unfortunately, these losses are irreversible in character. Our brief experience in the economy of the transitional period—from rigid centralization to a certain amount of freedom in market relations and entrepreneurship—reflects an ambiguous picture. On the one hand, the first results of the work of certain stock-company, lease-based, cooperative, joint, and outright private enterprises have graphically demonstrated the possibility of reviving entrepreneurship. On the other hand, any expansion of economic freedom is accompanied by a strengthening and spread of such negative phenomena as fraud, poor business practices, deterioration in interpersonal relations, aggressiveness, and rapid exhaustion of the physical and mental potential of the entrepreneurs. There is a growing number of unscrupulous entrepreneurs, people who have neither honor nor conscience, let alone the rudimentary knowledge necessary for entrepreneurship. Corruption and the rackets are flourishing, and there is the real danger that honest and capable entrepreneurs will either be forced to adopt these "rules of the game" or get out of business. It must also be kept in mind that the state of the socioeconomic crisis can only exacerbate this negative situation.