Gorbachev Sought Reform and Didn’t Seem to Get It

Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s party conference will not be soon forgotten. Whatever its concrete effect, there is no doubt that it was a radical departure from past procedures.

Gorbachev managed to open up the political process in an unprecedented way, and he undoubtedly hoped that there would be a parallel reaction in the economy. But with delegates unleashing pent-up complaints about food shortages, pollution, corruption, incompetence and political skulduggery, there must have been times when Gorbachev found himself asking just what he had set in motion. That would explain his desperate plea last Thursday to curb the complaining and political name-calling and to focus instead on plans for reform.

But when his message went unheeded and former Moscow party chief Boris Yeltsin and Politburo member Yegor Ligachev openly sought to destroy each other, Gorbachev evidently concluded that too much of a good thing would do nothing for his economic reforms. That may explain why Gorbachev seemed to end the conference so abruptly.

But if one of Gorbachev’s goals was to provoke economic change, it is hard to see where he succeeded. He called for an increase in operating autonomy for Soviet peasants, even a form of private farming as well as for more private and cooperative business and manufacturing activity. All this in turn would mean curbing the role of ministries and Gosplan (the state planning commission), as well as a more meaningful price and market system.

But Gorbachev has been calling for such changes for several months. Nothing that happened at the conference would seem to have accelerated the process. Instead, caught up in the dynamic negativism, numerous delegates vented their anger and frustration over the economic inadequacies of the system. As a worker from the Ural Mountains put it at the conference, “The workers ask directly, where is perestroika ? Nothing has changed in the food shops except for the addition of sugar rationing. Meat is still unavailable, as it has been for a long time, and now non-food consumer goods also disappear periodically.�

Such protests certainly did not come as news to the average Soviet citizen who knows firsthand that Gorbachev has been unable to generate economic change. But to hear such shortcomings proclaimed repeatedly by conference delegates seemed to provide confirmation of the overall dimensions of the problem.

Even Gorbachev’s economic advisers found themselves swept up in the process. Leonid Abalkin, the director of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences, complained that the rate of growth of the Soviet national income for the last two years was below what it was during the Brezhnev period.

Gorbachev was clearly hoping that the party conference would stimulate the process of economic transformation. But while he commanded Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov to increase food supplies and Politburo member Nikolai P. Slyunkov to do the same for other consumer goods, Gorbachev did not accompany these words with deeds; there was no decree abolishing the collective farm or Gosplan. Instead, there is general acknowledgment that the enterprise law passed by the Soviet government in 1987 that was supposed to free the factories from ministerial control has been sabotaged by the bureaucrats. The Soviet cooperative law that was to encourage non-state production appears to have suffered the same fate.

The fate of these earlier reforms and the lack of any noticeable improvement in the day-to-day standard of living bodes poorly for any new economic initiative that Gorbachev may propose. It would be different if Gorbachev could point to an outpouring of increased consumer goods, as Deng Xiaoping can do in China. But even in China there is seething discontent because of the price increases of the sort that Gorbachev has called for. If the Chinese are upset by their price reforms, however, they have at least seen that their economic reforms can produce more goods. What will be the Soviet reaction when and if Gorbachev allows prices to rise and there still is no sign of a major improvement in consumer well-being?

It may be that because glasnost has made it possible for people to complain publicly about the country’s economic shortcomings, their sense of frustration is made deeper than it might otherwise be. Yet for the recent visitor to Moscow the extent of the disappointment and the cynicism about the economic reforms are unmatched by anything since the mid-1960s. Gorbachev has bought about vast change in political discourse during his more than three years in power, but he has nothing to show for his efforts in terms of economic improvements. If the situation is anything like Abalkin and the delegates from the Urals suggest, the economic situation may have deteriorated.

A Soviet worker was asked on Soviet television what perestroika meant to him. “It means I work harder for less,� he said. If Gorbachev is to succeed, he will have to reverse that equation. Unfortunately, nothing happened at the party conference to indicate that such changes will take place soon.