Tatiana I. Zaslavskaia - A Voice of Reform: Essays

Essays by
Tat'iana I. Zaslavskaia
Edited with an introduction by
Murray Yanowitch

First published 1989 by M.E. Sharpe

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Zaslavskaia, T. I.
[Selections, English. 1989]
A voice of reform : essays / by Tat'iana I. Zaslavskaia ; Murray Yanowitch editor.
p. cm.
Translated from Russian.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-87332-505-2
1. Soviet UnionSocial conditions1970 2. Soviet UnionSocial policy. 3. Soviet UnionEconomic policy1986 I. Yanowitch, Murray. II. Title.

HN523.5.Z368213 1989
306'.0947dc19

8823802
CIP

ISBN 13: 9780873325059 (hbk)

Murray Yanowitch

It has become common, both in Soviet and in Western writings about the USSR, to characterize the early 1980s (the immediate pre-Gorbachev period) as years of "stagnation" or, at the very least, "near-stagnation" in the Soviet system. Whatever the justification for applying this characterization to the Soviet economy, it is not always recognized that this same period was a time of considerable intellectual ferment in the Soviet social science literature. On close inspection, it is clear that the apparently sudden outburst of reformist thinking since 1985 is actually an elaboration and reinforcement of concepts and ideas that had already begun to emerge in the pre-Gorbachev years. We are by no means suggesting that there is nothing strikingly new about Soviet economic and social thought in more recent years; but we are pointing to a certain continuity within Soviet reformist intellectual discourse that pre-dates the Gorbachev period. The writings of Tat 'iana I. Zaslavskaia, trained as an economist and today one of the most influential and best known Soviet sociologists, provide an illustration of this proposition.

In a 1984 essay on economic sociology, written jointly with Rozalina V. Ryvkina (see selection 2), Zaslavskaiathen the head of the Social Problems Department of an Academy of Sciences institute in Novo-sibirskcited several Soviet colleagues whose recent writings on social and economic themes she regarded as related to her own. Who were these writers, and what was there about their work (other than an interdisciplinary focus) that prompted Zaslavskaia to consider it complementary to her own efforts? The question is worth asking, for even our brief answer will help establish some of the elements of a common reformist intellectual orientation which had begun to take shape in the years of "stagnation," and which obviously has found much fuller expression in the more recent work of Zaslavskaia and her colleagues.

The 1984 article referred to above explicitly cited the work of Boris Kurashvili, Vladimir Iadov, and Vadim Rogovin, among others. The first had argued for a transition from the prevailing "command system of management" to a relatively decentralized "stimulative" system with increased opportunities for "self-management" (Kurashvili, 1982). Similarly, Iadov's studies of work attitudes seemed to suggest that the aspirations fostered by the educational and cultural levels of young workers would remain frustrated unless accompanied by the "democratization of management" (Levin, 1983). Rogovin's writings had begun to pose the issue of implementing "social justice" not only in the economic sphere and in ensuring relatively equal "starting positions" for the offspring of various social groups, but also in access to "the adoption of socially significant decisions" (Rogovin et al., 1982, pp. 7-18). Zaslavskaia also attached "great importance" to studies by Hungarian economists and sociologists of the role of "group interests" in their socialist society. Finally, although she did not cite the work of her sociologist colleague Arkadii Prigozhin, she was certainly aware that his writings on the sociology of organizations had warned against delay in implementing "radical innovations" in management, and had stressed that the "restructuring" of organizational mechanisms could be at least as effective as technological advance in accelerating economic growth (Prigozhin, 1983, p. 6; 1984, pp. 57-67).

This highly compressed summary of the concepts and sentiments which circulated in the reform-minded social science literature of the immediate pre-Gorbachev years suggests the kind of intellectual environment in which Zaslavskaia's essaysat least the early ones collected herewere written. (It also indicates, incidentally, that the new political leadership had at its disposal in the mid-1980s an appropriate vocabulary and conceptual apparatus that could be drawn upon to formulate and introduce its program of "restructuring.") Some of the principal features of the socioeconomic environment of those years, to which her studies were addressed, are well put in Zaslavskaia's own words: "At the end of the 70s and early 80s, in many sectors of the economy, one could observe a noticeable weakening of labor, production and planning discipline, an increase in the turnover of trained personnel, a deterioration in the attitude toward work, the premature breakdown of expensive equipment, irrational expenditures of raw materials and energy" (Zaslavskaia and Kupriianova, p. 27). Yet all of these negative features could be observed at the same time as the educational, skill, and cultural levels of the workforce continued to increase. This combination of circumstances helps explain why the recurring question which Zaslavskaia so often appears to confront is how to account for the enormous underutilization of the "labor potential" (or "human factor") in the Soviet system.

What are some of the principal themes in Zaslavskaia's essays and how has she influenced the work of other Soviet sociologists and economists?

By 1984 Zaslavskaia's earlier stress on the need to study the "social aspects" and "social components" of economic development, and the urgency of promoting the closest "interfacing" of economic and sociological research (see selection 1) had become embodied in a newly emerging intellectual discipline or "scientific current"economic sociology. Much of her published work since 1984 may be regarded as an effort to legitimate this discipline and demonstrate its usefulness in studying not only the sources of stagnation in the Soviet system but also the obstacles confronting efforts to reform it. The principal focus of Zaslavskaia's economic sociology is the study of economic activity as a "social process" involving the interaction of classes, strata, and social groups occupying different positions, endowed with unequal rights and obligations, and guided by distinctoften conflictinginterests. This approach is explicitly intended to encompass not only the formal or "official" economic mechanism but the "shadow" economy as well, and the interaction between these two sectors.