Marshall I. Goldman

The jailing of Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has revealed the fault lines running through the post-Soviet political economy. The reforms and privatization of the 1990s were so flawed and unfair as to make them unstable. A backlash was inevitable. Given Vladimir Putin's authoritarian tendencies, that backlash has proved equally flawed and unfair-and perhaps equally unstable.

Gorbachev's political liberalization has not produced economic revitalization, but rather economic crisis which threatens his political survival.

Soviet citizens were probably relieved at the selection of Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, for he stands in sharp contrast to his aging and ailing predecessors. At 54, he is young enough to be their son. More important, the mortality odds are that he will be around for a decade or more to implement those programs he wants. The likelihood of such continuity is in itself an important change. Also impressive are the speed and the purposefulness with which he has assumed control and addressed himself to the country's problems. This is clearly a man in a hurry who realizes he has to deal with some significant dilemmas, particularly in the economic sphere.

On the eve of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Communist Revolution, the Russians have embarked on yet another economic revolution. With hardly a word about ideological purity, Premier Alexei Kosygin has announced that by 1968 profits, sales and rate of return on investment will replace fulfillment of quotas as the main standards of success for every Soviet firm. Moreover, Soviet managers will have to pay interest or capital charges for the capital they use. Profits will be divided up in a form of profit-sharing, and some enterprises will even have to pay rent. The economic reforms are matched in their significance, according to one Russian economist, A. Birman, only by the transition to N.E.P. in 1921 and the launching of the Five Year Plans in 1929-32. Clearly what the Soviets are currently attempting amounts to a repudiation of formerly sacred doctrines.