Word: goldman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With his latest book, USSR In Crisis. Marshall Goldman does not pretend to provide startling revelations that finally answer all the questions about the Soviet Union. The author, associate director of Harvard's Russian Research Center, is too aware of the ambiguities of Soviet life too conscious of the blinders any Westerner is forced to wear when looking at the USSR, to go out on a limb. Indeed, he performs an adept juggling act, usually balancing all sides to a problem and never maintaing that his findings are the truth. But his lucid study convincingly details the major dilemmas that...
...simply, Goldman maintains that the Soviet Union is in trouble at home. Mother Russia cannot adequately feed her people, provide them with the necessary consumer goods and housing, or maintain a tolerable social system. The culprit, the Stalinist economic model. With its emphasis on heavy industry, production quotas and planning. Stalin's model still essentially in use--is redundant, low on quality and inflexible. While it allowed the Soviet Union impressive growth several decades ago, the model just isn't suited to change--hence today's set of problems...
There isn't much headroom for evolution. In an explanation that, ironically could be viewed as Marxist. Goldman contends that the authoritarian nature of the economic system dictates the political system's constraints. Even Soviet leaders are provided little space in which to maneuver or more accurately incentive to effect change. The "classless society" makes a clearcut distinction between the masses and the elite granting the latter inumerable privileges. As Goldman writes, "For those who do realize the true state of life, the temptation to protest is generally tempered by the realization that muckraking may lead to the withdrawal...
...Goldman does not blame ill the USSR's woes on Stalin. He cites also a "sense of cultural and historical isolation and a sense of inferiority, to show why the Soviet Union has been so wary of change. And, in a characteristic attempt to see things from the Soviet perspective, he makes clear why the Soviet people have accepted their repressive system for so long...
...that the USSR is a benign, passive state cowering in the face of incessant threats. The impressive Soviet military industry the only part of the Soviet economy that works, essentially because of the emphasis placed upon it and the greater, market-type flexibility it is allowed belies this. But Goldman's analysis sheds light on a complex country that gets more out of its perceived national interest than through ideological fervor...