ABSTRACT
The establishment of Gosagroprom and the attendant reorganization of Soviet agriculture constituted the first major step taken by the Mikhail Gorbachev administration along the admittedly long and difficult road of perestroika, that is to say the restructuring of the system. The “restructuring” of agriculture may very well be the preferred pattern of Gorbachev for reorganization elsewhere in the Soviet economy, but thus far no other sectors of the Soviet economy have been similarly restructured. Given the record of Soviet hierarchical reorganization, it is entirely possible that we will see a recreation of the abolished ministries and state committee in the guise of internal subdivisions of an expanded Gosagroprom. In terms of its composition and structure, Gosagroprom, it would seem, is a fairly typical ministerial/bureaucratic organization, with rather far-flung functions and responsibilities, but ultimately under the control of the USSR Council of Ministers.
