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Gorbachev's Challenge: Economic Reform in the Age of High Technology

Marshall I. Goldman
Reviewed by By John C. Campbell
Fall 1987
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Marshall I. Goldman
W. W. Norton
1987
296 pp.
$16.95

The subject is not Gorbachev's challenge to the West but what he can do about the Soviet economy at a time when, by comparison with the industrial democracies, it is being left behind by the pace of technological change. The author even takes it upon himself to offer Gorbachev some quite specific advice, which probably goes well beyond the advice he is getting from his own economic and political counselors. Goldman knows well enough, and stresses in this book, the serious bureaucratic and other obstacles to reform, and he does not expect Gorbachev or any other Soviet leader to abandon what have been essential features of the Soviet system. The comparative analysis of reforms in Hungary, East Germany and China, and their possible relevance for the U.S.S.R., is worth close attention.

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