The Soviet Union after the failure of five years of economic reforms: Towards a new stage of transition?

Conclusion The measures taken by the Pavlov government, at the beginning of 1991, seem to initiate a new economic strategy where administrative power has regained its leading role.Regarding the whole approach of the government, there seem to be signals with very controversial meanings. First, there is the new stress on heavy industry, that could dangerously increase the already deep structural imbalance; the military industrial sector, in particular, could play a greater role since the better performing high technology industries (and services) belong to them. The loosening control over industrial management and discipline throughout the country, could justify the need for strong central control of the government: the heavy industry complex represents a powerful economic and political aggregation that could better defend the unified economic system.Secondly, the resistance to private ownership of enterprises is justified by the unrest engendered by the emergence of a sort of uncontrolled submerged privatisation. The fear of the State's capital assets being sold off cheaply, played an important part in the tightening of control over the process of destatalisation.Thirdly, the rejection of private ownership of land is also linked with the necessary alliance with the old economic structures of kolkhoz and sovkhoz, which represent the consolidated interests in the rural areas.From these different positions emerges the search for a very difficult compromise between the necessary political alliances around the Party, for the defence of central power, and the implementation of some economic reforms which, to become effective, need a substantial liberalisation of economic and political conditions. However, the fundamental limits to the implementation of this moderate programme has to be attributed to the disintegration of the economy by the republican claims. The confrontation on alternative economic programmes and the creation of different regional aggregations could become a very serious tendency towards the progressive disruption of the present Federation.     

The need for an industrial policy in the transition: Questions and challenges

Conclusions The wide set of objectives and the employment of very diversified policy instruments gave to the industrial policy in the transitional economies, a very specific importance and responsibility for establishing a link between the macroeconomic policy and the adjustments at structural level.The policy issues analysed reveal that there is the necessity of a non-rigid and dogmatic approach, adapting the policies and tools to the rapid changes underway. The long-term perspective, in terms of strategies for new growth patterns, has to be modulated with the short-term targets, that have to face the contingent constraints: the role of the industrial policy is also that of establishing a close relation between the two moments, softening the emergence of trade-offs. The constraints, in particular financial, remain substantial and the process of adjustment cannot be without pain.In this framework the main question concerns the capacity of the government in improving its ability to establish the main outlines and to implement them efficiently: a process oflearning by doing has already started and is improving rapidly.     

Foreword from the Co-Editors

MOCT-MOST: Economic Policy in Transitional Economies -