Recent announcements of drastic revisions in the Soviet economy have stimulated much discussion East and West. Is the Soviet Union really adopting capitalism? If so, why? How successful are the Russians likely to be?
Most Western observers feel that behind these major revisions is the economic system’s lackluster performance in recent years. For several years now, a few experts on Soviet economy have been pointing out an apparent decline in the rate of growth in key sectors—for example, Dr. Colin Clark’s The Real Productivity of Soviet Russia, A Critical Evaluation, submitted to a Senate subcommittee in 1961, and Dr. G. Warren Nutter’s scholarly Growth of Industrial Production in the Soviet Union. Their findings were either rejected or totally ignored until the Soviet leaders themselves began admitting serious shortcomings in their growth rate.
Comments