Word: good
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...primary obstacle for managers trying to balance their books is their inability to set prices. By dictating everything from salaries to the price of finished goods, Moscow planners rob factories of any incentive to hold down costs or make a profit. For example, the prices of labor and raw materials are kept so artificially low that factory managers live in a financial fantasy land. "Right now factory managers don't know when they're doing a good job. They can say they're profitable even though they're selling tractors for $2,000 when they should be selling them...
...power plant with a single stroke of the pen. Elektrosila hopes for a substantial boost in exports to raise the foreign currency the plant needs to buy up-to-date Western machinery. At the moment the factory has only 7 million rubles ($11.2 million) in hard currency, and "one good machine tool costs about 2 million rubles," says economist Murinas...
...they are too enthusiastic to be daunted. Fomin, a stocky man whose black wavy hair makes him look a decade younger than his 62 years, has turned down repeated offers of ministry jobs in Moscow. "I'm in love with what I'm doing now. Besides, I do more good here. So far, I have had no bad flukes, so I sleep pretty well. But there are a lot of general managers in the Soviet Union who don't sleep well at all these days." As any capitalist would tell them, a little restlessness is good for business...
...Soviet authorities reluctantly permitted him to return last January to attend the funeral of his great friend Daniel. In the following pages, Sinyavsky reflects on those remarkable five days in Moscow, on Gorbachev, on the Soviet character and on whether his beloved country has indeed changed for good...
...good that at least they're writing about all this in the newspapers. Glasnost provides salvation from psychological destitution. But it's still a long way from physical evidence of perestroika. The gypsy cabdriver who drove us from the airport remarked in a melancholy tone of voice on the neglected roads, filled with potholes, over which we, swearing, were bouncing: "So have ended many great empires!" I was amazed at the daring and aesthetic exactness of his maxims. In my time, people didn't talk so freely...