Is There a Way Out of the Crisis?

Abstract

One more year of perestroika—the next to last year of the Twelfth Five-Year Plan—has passed. It was a year rich in events and social conflicts, with the emergence of the concept strike which is new to our life, with increasing shortages, and with the growth of the shadow economy, but it was also noteworthy for heated debates at the Second Congress of People's Deputies and for the approval of the government's program for normalizing the economy. How did this year influence the socioeconomic development of our country: Was it a stage in improving the functioning of the economy, or did it aggravate the already critical state, making the course of perestroika more difficult? It is probably not possible to offer an unequivocal answer to this question, because the processes taking place in the national economy are interconnected, are frequently unpredictable like their consequences, and, what is especially important, have almost no analogues in the past. There has been an increase in the number of factors and...