Gorbachev’s Economic Reforms in the Context of the Soviet Political System
Since spring 1985 a warm wind of change has begun to envelop the Soviet Union, raising the prospect that the country’s immensely large and highly centralised institutional structure, particularly its economic sector, may soon begin to shrink and decentralise. This institutional structure has changed remarkably little since the early 1930s. It was established, it may be recalled, by a small group of single-minded communist revolutionaries to serve the implementation of their drastically new social order. The new institutions, initially at least, operated in a political and cultural environment very much hostile to that order and, in part because of that hostility, in a manner exceptionally authoritarian for nearly all and extremely unpleasant — indeed, tragic — for a large number of the Soviet people. That manner changed much for the better after Stalin’s death in 1953, when official ideology also became less rigid and more tolerant of other ideas. However, Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation process was effectively stopped when Brezhnev came to power in 1964.
An international comparison of material intensity
Abstract Various measures of material intensity are estimated, using input-output tables for eleven capitalist and four socialist countries. The socialist countries studied proved to be considerably more material intensive. However, it was found that the adoption by these countries of a capitalist structure of final demand would, in the mid 1970s, not have affected material intensity significantly. In the case of Czechoslovakia, the adoption of a mid-1980s capitalist structure had the same result. Paradoxically, dominant eigenvalues of input-output tables, the standard measures of technology productiveness, vary little between socialist and capitalist countries. An interpretation is suggested. The “energy efficiency gap” in industry between West and East has been growing since 1975, and an interpretation of this is attempted.
The guaianolides of ambrosia cumanensis HBK : The structures of cumambrins A and B☆
Abstract Cumambrins A and B isolated from Ambrosia cumanensis HBK were shown to be guaianolides with structures Ia and Ib.