ABSTRACT
In the economic arena, contested issues included decentralization, investment strategy, the energy problem, the USSR and the world economy, the slow progress of Soviet technology, wages and incomes, and the role of private plots in Soviet agriculture. Mikhail S. Gorbachev has enhanced the image of the USSR in ways that can only help him, not only with the intelligentsia, but also with the "new breed" of diplomat and party politician so much in evidence in the past decade. William Faulkner once quipped that the past is not only not dead, it's not past History is the battlefield on which the basic issues of glasnost are being fought out. Peter Reddaway certainly has a point in arguing that only serious breakdown or defeat in a war can ensure major change. But, after all, the same could be said of most societies and most reforms.
