ABSTRACT
The dirigiste economic logic, i.e. "economics of shortage" of Janos Kornai, continues to prevail in the Soviet Union at all levels of agriculture and associated sectors. The micro-social mechanism of reproduction of the Soviet social order is not safe from degradation and, for economic use, from contradictions, even though it is increasingly vital for global economic and social reproduction. The Soviet system is, by nature, poorly equipped to manage and check this type of answer in an efficient manner at the macroeconomic level. The whole of the preceding analysis, and also study of the reports of economic and administrative officials in the Soviet Press, foster the following hypothesis. The Soviet press is also full of officials' reports stressing the superiority of the new brigades or zvenos in work-discipline, the struggle against absenteeism, and the excessive mobility of workers. The kollektiv tends to be a kind of collective person, and the "true basic subject of the Soviet system".
