Open for Business

Ed A. Hewett

doi:10.5771/9780815719151

Summary

In December 1991 the Union of Soviet Socialist Republicsborn in violent revolution and dominated for more than six decades by highly authoritarian rulewas dissolved by its constituent republics. The causes for this remarkable event will be probed for many years to come. Our understanding of it may never be complete. Nevertheless, it is evident even now that part of the story lay in a conscious redirection of policy by specific individuals. Those at the center of political and economic power understood the flaws in their system well enough to initiate a process of reform, but one that triggered a more massive transformation than they had intended.

The process has left enormous turmoil in this wake. Political power has dissipated in all the new states emerging from the fragmented former USSR, and all are struggling to establish some constitutional order. They do so under conditions of severe austerity as they seed to reconstruct their once integrated, highly concentrated, internationally isolated economy into independent instruments of national viability. With no detailed blueprint available, and with only fractured mechanisms of policy control at their disposal, these new nations are being carried along by the inertia of state enterprises and by a spontaneous process or regeneration at the grass-roots level.

This book, which analyzes Gorbachev's foreign economic strategy, provides a window for understanding the disintegrative forces that stymied his reforms and eventually defeated him, undermining the country he sought to preserve. Gorbachev was committed to ending Soviet isolation from the world economy and at the same time saving Soviet socialism. Ironically, it is the destruction of Soviet socialism and the emergence of new post-Soviet states, that has begun to break down the isolationist barriers erected over the last seven decades. This book documents the incredibly complex legacies that Russia and the other new post-Soviet states face as t

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Bibliographic data

Copyright year: 2010
ISBN-Print: 978-0-8157-3619-6
ISBN-Online: 978-0-8157-1915-1
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 164
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
1. The Soviet Union in the Global Economy No access
2. The Global Economy in the Soviet Economy No access
3. The Monopoly of Foreign Trade No access
4. Gorbachev's View of the USSR in the Global Economy No access
1. New Faces for a New Policy No access
2. Entry into the GATT No access
3. The USSR and the Bretton Woods Institutions No access
4. Normalizing Bilateral Economic Relations No access
5. The Limits to Diplomacy No access
1. Selective Devolution of the Foreign Trade Monopoly No access
2. Extension throughout the Economy No access
3. Joint Ventures No access
4. The Modest Impact of the Reforms No access
5. The Balance of Payments Crisis of 1990 No access
6. The Deeper Roots of the Disappointing Results No access
1. The Path to Economic Crisis No access
2. Radicalization of the Reform Debate No access
3. Debate over the Union No access
4. The 500-Day Plan No access
1. From Shatalin to the Coup No access
2. What Kind of Market? No access
3. Through Chaos to the Market No access
4. Open for Business? No access
5. Western Governments and the Post-Soviet Economies No access
1. A No access
2. B No access
3. C No access
4. D No access
5. E No access
6. F No access
7. G No access
8. H No access
9. I No access
10. J No access
11. K No access
12. L No access
13. M No access
14. N No access
15. O No access
16. P No access
17. R No access
18. S No access
19. T No access
20. U No access
21. V No access
22. W No access
23. Y No access
24. Z No access