The Thinking Reed

Neither at the Twenty-Third Congress nor subsequently was Stalin rehabilitated, although in 1969 everything was made ready for this to happen. The Stalinists’ failure can be explained by a number of factors, among which not the least must be considered the interests of the statocracy themselves, for whom Brezhnev’s regime, with its conservative stability, was very much more convenient than direct reaction in the form of a return to Stalinism — that is, to a time when even members of the ruling class did not feel safe. But the intelligentsia, too, made a definite contribution to the victory over the Stalinists in the 1960s. Their letter left an impression.

The Economic Reform Discussion

In this uncertain situation a polemic flared up about the economic reforms. A group of progressive economists backed these measures, which were attempts to effect a definite change in the economic structure and thereby to democratize the economy. It was now that economic questions entered the realm of public opinion for the first time and became a subject for reflection by the intelligentsia: not only economists and sociologists but the intelligentsia as a whole. N. Petrakov, one of the participants in the discussion, wrote later that at the end of the 1960s interest in economic problems markedly increased. The economist, as such, somehow imperceptibly ‘acquired an importance which the physicist and the lyric poet might envy.’9

The new economists and writers about economics — Liberman, Birman, Volin, Lisichkin, Kantorovich, Latsis, Petrakov, Volkov and many others — were working in the same direction as O. Šik in Czechoslovakia, R. Nyers and J. Kornai in Hungary, or W. Brus in Poland. It was really a case of the appearance of a single East European school of Marxist economics, on the theory of the planned market.10 Novy Mir opened its pages to the new theoreticians. Its economic articles were for several years the most interesting things being printed.

The economists around Novy Mir even worked out a sort of division of labour among themselves. A. Birman spoke as a theoretician, providing a very general foundation for the theory of the socialist market and defending the reforms introduced after 1965. ‘The objective possibility of voluntarism is inherent in the system itself,’ he wrote, ‘in the very process of planning, we must not fear to say that.’11 It was therefore necessary to make use of market relations, creating a real, objective basis for planning. The remedy for bureaucratic voluntarism was democratization, control from below, the ending of overcentralized authority, and the granting of extensive rights to the enterprises. And finally, freedom of thought on economic matters must be allowed.12

P. Volin and O. Latsis spoke as propagandists for the market economy. Coming down from the height of pure theory, they directed the reader’s attention to concrete facts, speaking in a lively and interesting way about new ideas and the absurdity of the existing economic system. Malicious mockery of the system of ‘indices’ employed for the guidance of production became the theme of many articles:

It costs a lot — never mind, so long as the quantity is increased… It’s worse in quality — no worries, so long as it [i.e. production] is greater. The consumers don’t need all this — that doesn’t matter, the main thing is to manufacture the stuff and send it off, what happens after that is no concern of yours. They want different goods, not the old sort — shut your eyes to that, the old ones are quicker and easier to make.13