Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy

by Paul R. Gregory

Overview

Inefficient, overstaffed and indifferent to the public's needs, the Soviet economic bureaucracy operates today much as it did in the 1930s. In Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy, Paul R. Gregory takes an inside look at how this system works and why it has traditionally been so resistant to change. Gregory's findings shed light on a bureaucracy that is widely considered the greatest threat to Gorbachev's efforts at perestroika, or restructuring. Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy is based on Soviet and Western published accounts as well as interviews with former members of the Soviet economic bureaucracy, mainly from the middle elite. These informants, with their expert knowledge of the system, tell how bureaucrats big and small make the routine and extraordinary decisions that determine Soviet resource allocation. This highly personalized account reveals Soviet bureaucratic practices to be the response to an inherently complex resource-allocation problem that defies easy solutions. The often-criticized irrationalities of the Soviet bureaucracy are revealed to contain their own internal logic and consistency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521363860
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/27/1990
Series:	Soviet Interview Project
Pages:	196
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword James R. Millar; Preface; 1. Perestroika and bureaucracy; 2. Design; 3. Organization; 4. Bureaucratic behaviour; 5. Allocation; 6. Construction; 7. The party; 8. Reform; Appendix: interviewing former Soviet economic bureaucrats; Index.