Diagnosis, Destruction, and Creation

Abstract

Many years of domination by the administrative-command system in all spheres of life in the Soviet Union have not only led to a crisis in the economy but have almost totally eliminated such qualities in our people as entrepreneurship, business acumen, and initiative. For many of us, unfortunately, these losses are irreversible in character. Our brief experience in the economy of the transitional period—from rigid centralization to a certain amount of freedom in market relations and entrepreneurship—reflects an ambiguous picture. On the one hand, the first results of the work of certain stock-company, lease-based, cooperative, joint, and outright private enterprises have graphically demonstrated the possibility of reviving entrepreneurship. On the other hand, any expansion of economic freedom is accompanied by a strengthening and spread of such negative phenomena as fraud, poor business practices, deterioration in interpersonal relations, aggressiveness, and rapid exhaustion of the physical and mental potential of the entrepreneurs.