ABSTRACT
Economic reform to increase labor productivity, thereby lessening labor requirements. The military establishment might be induced to support reform in exchange for promises of steady supplies of new recruits, especially Slavs. The most effective measure— and the one least likely to succeed, for quite a while at least—is economic reform. The history of Soviet attempts at economic reform, however, suggests that no effective reform can long endure within the Soviet political framework. In the civilian sector, the supply of labor could be increased by inducing able retirees to return to the labor force or by raising the retirement age. It is likely to count on its ways of solving the nationalities problem—sovietizing all groups of peoples, promoting the universal use of the Russian language, improving educational levels, suppressing ethnic unrest and tendencies toward regionalisms, and tinkering with economic reform.
