Tara Rodden Robinson

William Moskoff

Fritz L. Knopf

William Post

Anthony J. Gaston

Elizabeth A. Webb

James H. Gammonley

Janet McI. Williams

John Timothy Wootton

John W. Chardine

Laurie Jean Goodrich

Margaret A. Skeel

Nils D. Warnock

Oscar Walter Johnson

Paul John DuBowy

Ralph Roy Moldenhauer

Ray G. Poulin

Robert Bruce MacWhirter

Archilochus Colubris

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

The Conflict between Public and Private Decision-Making in a Planned Economy

Labour and Leisure in the Soviet Union

This book is a collection of seven papers originally given at the 1989 meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. The authors come from the fields of economics, history, and political science and are all specialists in the field of Soviet and East European agriculture. The first essay, by David Macey, assesses Gorbachev's agricultural reform in light of the experience of the Stolypin reforms at the beginning of the century. The essays by Jim Butterfield and Ed Cook examine the impediments to successful reform from the perspective of a political scientist and an economist. Karen Brooks and Don Van Atta concentrate their attention on the efforts to introduce lease contracting into agriculture. D.Gale Johnson's essay examines the economic effects of trade liberalization in agriculture. The final paper, by Michael Marrese, suggests that there are lessons for the Soviet Union to be learned from the Hungarian experience, namely, that the changes in agriculture must be comprehensive and that the party can win over popular support if its agricultural policies succeed.

Agricultural Reform in the Gorbachev Era

Perestroika in the Countryside

Examines the objective and subjective experience of economic decline as it affected ordinary Soviet citizens during the Gorbachev era. Moskoff examines key questions, such as the causes of food and goods shortages and the extent of declining living standards.

Impoverishment and Protest in the Perestroika Years : the Soviet Union 1985-1991

Hard Times

The precipitous decline of the Soviet population's standard of living in the last years of the USSR is one of the great ironies of the Gorbachev era. In Hard Times, economist William Moskoff takes a closer look at the objective and subjective experience of economic decline as it affected ordinary citizens. After an introductory survey of the Soviet economy during these years, Moskoff examines several key problems: the chronic shortages of food and consumer goods, so emblematic of Soviet life, and the hoarding, black marketeering, and corruption which scarcity fostered. Next he takes the measure of declining living standards in the late 1980s and early 1990s as reflected in prices and incomes, collapsing social programs, and rising indigency and homelessness. Employment, by contrast, shows a relatively small decline - a reflection of political rather than economic realities. In concluding chapters the population's response to the combined experience of political liberalization and economic distress is examined, with special attention to labor militancy and the radicalization of popular moods.

William Moskoff

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