ABSTRACT
The twin influences of glasnost and perestroika have had many important impacts since 1985, not only on the former Comecon countries of eastern Europe—the East European Six: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the former German Democratic Republic—but also on the European energy scene. In the future, the further spread and development of these ideas will have substantial effects on the entire energy world. Perestroika, focusing on modernization, sought to restructure the Soviet Union’s economy with the aim of building up investment, retooling, updating industry, and improving quality control standards. Glasnost sought to encourage individual initiative with more accountable bureaucracy. From these beginnings, the idea of modernizing the existing system developed into a campaign to reform the system itself. At the center of these reforms in the Soviet Union was the “Law on State Enterprises” which, among other things, replaced output targets with centrally directed orders placed with concerns to deliver specified quantities of goods. This gave enterprises greater autonomy in the use of internally generated funds, in wage payments, incentive bonuses, and other matters.
