The contradictions of the marketless market: Self‐financing in the Soviet industrial enterprise, 1986–90

Abstract

THE SUMMER AND AUTUMN of 1990 witnessed a number of legal and institutional changes in the status and internal operation of the Soviet enterprise designed to facilitate its adaptation to the market. In at least two cases this meant rolling back or superseding previous legislation originally deemed central to perestroika. A new law, 'On Enterprises in the USSR', promulgated in June 1990, replaced the old State Enterprise Law of 1987, and effectively did away with the limited experiments in enterprise self-management embodied in the Councils of Labour Collectives (STK) and the competitive election of enterprise managers.1 Henceforth enterprises will all have owners (in the case of state enterprises the owner is the state) who, either directly or through their delegated plenipotentiaries, will appoint management at all levels. Enterprise directors are to decide all questions of enterprise activity, including the disposal of enterprise property, without interference from below. The STK, heretofore obligatory in every work collective and which, at least in theory (although rarely in practice) were to function as the 'legislative arm' of the enterprise, are replaced by an enterprise council, made up of equal numbers of representatives appointed by the owner and elected by the labour collective. The enterprise council may determine the 'general direction' of the enterprise's economic and social development, including distribution of profits and decisions on whether to enter or leave larger production associations, but its main concrete task is to resolve conflicts arising between management and the workforce.