Books, Arts & Manners: Perestroika’s Entrepreneurs

Communist Entrepreneurs: Unknown Innovators in the Global Economy, by John Kiser (Franklin Watts, 225 pp., $19.95)

Perestroika will fail, not because of bureaucratic inertia or the second thoughts of Communist hard-liners or the paucity of Western investment, consumer goods, or technology. The fatal flaw, so this argument goes, ultimately lies in the Russian people themselves: they simply lack the talent and entrepreneurial drive, not to mention the technological know-how, to succeed in business, no matter how enticing the financial rewards for that success might become. In this respect they have much in common with the rest of Eastern Europe, perhaps excepting the Hungarians, but differ sharply from the Chinese, whose centuries-long exposure to Yankee traders has given them the business savvy required to pull off a successful economic restructuring (if they ever get the chance).

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Ed Rubenstein

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Communist Entrepreneurs: Unknown Innovators in the Global Economy, by John Kiser (Franklin Watts, 225 pp., $19.95)

Perestroika will fail, not because of bureaucratic inertia or the second thoughts of Communist hard-liners or the paucity of Western investment, consumer goods, or technology. The fatal flaw, so this argument goes, ultimately lies in the Russian people themselves: they simply lack the talent and entrepreneurial drive, not to mention the technological know-how, to succeed in business, no matter how enticing the financial rewards for that success might become. In this respect they have much in common with the rest of Eastern Europe, perhaps excepting the Hungarians, but differ sharply from the Chinese, whose centuries-long exposure to Yankee traders has given them the business savvy required to pull off a successful economic restructuring (if they ever get the chance).