Managing the Soviet Labor Market: Politics and Policymaking Under Brezhnev. (Volumes I and II).

Abstract

Western scholars often equate genuine economic reform in the Soviet Union with decentralization and deregulation. The most common reasons offered to explain the lack of reform emphasize the economic roles and institutional position of the Communist party and central bureaucracy, which are said to give most party officials and central economic administrators a powerful interest in opposing change that might threaten existing concentrations of power and privilege. The Soviet labor market, though no more efficient than the rest of the economy, is much less regulated by comparison, and a more effective labor market policy would mean, on balance, greater state intervention, not less. Thus, the st and ard reasons given for the lack of general economic reform probably cannot explain the lack of reform in labor market policy. This study tries to account for the paradox of a weakly regulated Soviet labor market. Chapter 1 reviews the Western literature on Soviet policymaking, and Chapter 2 examines labor policy under Khrushchev. Chapters 3-5 offer a detailed chronology of labor market policy in the Brezhnev period, with policy defined as a composite of formal legislation, budgetary choices, institutional change, and leadership rhetoric. Chapters 6 and 7 then present a study of the job placement service, including an extended analysis of the debate over the "Ufa-Kaluga" experiment--a proposal to require placement service approval of most hiring decisions, which was twice rejected as national policy. Three conclusions are reached concerning the recent lack of reform in labor market policy, which may also be applicable to the lack of general economic reform. First, lack of reform was a self-conscious policy choice, not the result of governmental paralysis or bureaucratic stalemate. Second, it was a choice by leaders whose motives were more complex and ambivalent than has been thought: the Soviet leadership, while attentive to elite interests, remained loyal to certain longst and ing working class interests as well; but it also evinced a willingness to consider serious reform in principle. Third, the choice not to reform was made considerably easier: by the irregular pulse of political competition at the top; and by the unexpectedly conservatizing effects of a more open policy debate.