Word: western
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Most Western experts, along with rueful Soviets, blame the country's industrial ministries for stifling initiative and innovation. "I used to have to go to the ministry with the smallest change in our work," says Boris Fomin, director of the Elektrosila plant. "They issued hundreds of instructions, which usually contradicted one another. There was no strategic guidance." While Gorbachev's industrial reform required enterprises to wean themselves from government subsidies by January 1989, the majority of Soviet factories still rely on Moscow for merchandise orders, supplies and financial support...
...recognizes this, but has gone about fixing the problem in its old-fashioned way of calling all the shots from Moscow. For example, the government has ordered far more computers than factories can produce without sacrificing strict quality standards, instead of allowing the plants to set their own targets. Western economists think Moscow should give individual managers more discretion to experiment with new technologies and independent research. Says Philip Hanson, a Soviet-economics specialist at Britain's University of Birmingham: "The fundamental role of the market in weeding out unsuccessful technological processes and forcing firms to innovate is something that...
...Most Western economists think the Soviet restructuring will take as much as a decade to start showing results, since the shift in approach really amounts to a second industrial revolution. The old ways of doing business will be just as hard to replace as the rusting machinery. "It is not that they aren't going to make some progress, but it's much more difficult than starting out with a clean slate," says John Hardt, a Soviet specialist at the Congressional Research Service...
...methods. They plan to sell their equipment in package deals so that customers can sign up for an entire 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 threw themselves on manuscripts, telephone numbers, addresses, receipts from Parisian dry cleaners. My wife, corrupted by Western notions about personal inviolability, couldn't understand for the life of her what business CUSTOMS had with her intimate correspondence and assorted panties and bras. She told the customs officers in some detail what she thought of them, and they, huffing dolefully, continued to read our personal papers: "Call Zhenya in the morning . . . don't forget about Yura . . . Sima . . . Sonya ; . . . Lyusya . . . In the evening -- 157-29-09 . . ." My wife didn't let up. I was bored. Why were they doing all this...