СОЦИОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ ПРОБЛЕМ ПРОИЗВОДСТВЕННОЙ ДЕМОКРАТИИ В ПЕРИОД ПЕРЕСТРОЙКИ

Abstract

Declared in 1985 by the Soviet leadership headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, the policy of «perestroika» was based on a pecu- liarly understood return to the principles of the reign of V. I. Lenin. The reforms included the process of introducing industrial democracy along the lines of the Yugoslav economy. The election of the management staff of state-owned enterprises should 1) contribute to improving the efficiency of the national economy; 2) extend electoral procedures to the sphere of economic corporations, thus supporting the reform of the political system in the area of transition to competitive elections. The concept of «industrial democracy» is extremely policemen. Western researchers include in its framework very diverse phenomena and processes, from the right of employees to speak out on important management issues, to participate in the management of the enterprise and receive a share of the company's profits. The Soviet reformers of the perestroika period were based on the Yugoslav experience, embodying the philanthropic prin- ciple of «class cooperation» in the process of socialist construction. Moreover, the results of attracting employees to the en- terprise management process were very contradictory. The article considers one of the aspects of this process – sociological research conducted by Soviet researchers at state- owned enterprises. Sociologists studied 1) the attitude of employees to the system of elective leadership; 2) the reaction to the introduction of institutions of industrial democracy; 3) the compliance of the results with the stated goals of the party leadership. As a result, the following main positions were identified: the unwillingness of employees to accept innovations «from above» as an urgent need; the incompetence of employees, including candidates for managers of enterprises and institutions; the preservation of relative inviolability of forms of state ownership, which did not allow the introduction of a new system for managing this property.