Sar 5 TERE Sena

Special Supplement

eS :

rehabilitate those who in the past fell
victim to unjustified political
accusations and illegality.

We need a constantly operating
mechanism for comparing views, for
criticism and self-criticism in the Party
and society. The undoubted gains of
the policy of openness are to be
consolidated and multiplied. With the
one-party system, which has historically
evolved and established itself in this
country, and is being closely combined
today with processes of
democratization, this is a matter of
vital importance. A Leninist-type
approach is essential here. In
condemning factionalism, Lenin was
definitively against persecution of his
Party comrades for thinking otherwise.
A constant and constructive political
dialogue, the civilized way of
conducting discussions, wide
information available on matters of
domestic and foreign policy, and study
and account of public opinion have to
become part and parcel of the Party’s
life.

Economic Reforms

atters of
economic and
social
development
have featured
prominently
in the Party’s
activities since
the April 1985
Plenary Meeting of the Central
Committee.

The years of stagnation put the
country on the brink of an economic
crisis. An extensive, spend-away system
of economic management fully
exhausted itself. Its structure and
technical level are at variance with
modern requirements. The
commandist-administrative methods of
management became a serious brake.
Production, its efficiency, and living
standards of the population ceased to
grow. Many social questions were
neglected. The finances of the country
became seriously disrupted and the
sense of responsibility of personnel and
labour discipline-slackened.

The Party was faced with a difficult
task, one of taking the country out of
the doldrums, of improving the
economic situation, of putting
development at the service of the
people, of working out and
implementing a set of long-term
measures to speed attainment of the
advanced frontiers of world scientific,
technical and economic progress.

As a first step, considerable work
was done to introduce elementary
order and to tighten discipline in the
national economy, to set greater
demands on personnel, and to remove
the more glaring instances of
bureaucratic methods standing in the
way of people’s normal work.

A practical start was made on
implementing a new structural policy,
with the emphasis on further scientific
and technological progress and
modernization of engineering as the
basis for raising the technological level
of the entire economy. Specific
measures of an economic and
organizational kind are being taken to
raise the quality of products.

To counterbalance the “residual
principle” used in the past in allocating
funds for the development of the social
sphere, more money was assigned for
housing construction and health care,
for the development of public
education, the strengthening of the

material base of culture, and for other
social aims.

The main stress was placed on the
development and real implementation
of a radical reform to ensure transition
from the predominantly administrative
to economic methods of management,
on increasing the interest of collectives
and individual workers in the results of
their work.

The Laws on the State Enterprise
(Association), on Co-operatives, and
on Individual Enterprise, which were
adopted, marked major milestones
along that road. Large scale work

~ began across the country to transfer

enterprises to profit-and-loss
accounting, to progressive forms of
organization and stimulation of labour,
to self-management. These forms are
unfettering the initiative of work
collectives, the enterprising spirit of
people, prompt them to work with
maximum effect, help extirpate wage-
levelling in all forms, and are putting
the process of democratization on a
material foundation.

The Party set the course towards full
application of the potential of the
collective and state farms through the
development of diverse contract forms,
establishment of a wide network of co-
Operatives within the framework of
existing farms and in conjunction with
other enterprises and branches of the
economy.

Certainly, two to three years is not
long enough to implement radical
economic reforms. We are at an early
stage, in a sort of transition period. It is
only from this year that the Law on the
State Enterprise and other decisions
relating to the economic reform have
begun to operate, and even they are
not functioning at full strength, for they
were put into effect in the middle of the
five year period, with old prices, in the
absence of wholesale trade in the
means of production, in conditions of
continuing scarcity of goods. The
major programs of technological
progress that have been drawn up and
put into operation will not bring
returns at once.

And still positive shifts are taking
place. The main thing is that we have
been able to halt the growth of negative
tendencies that threatened to grow into
a crisis situation, to reverse these trends
and to create certain prerequisites for
further steady advance.

This is not only a question of raising
the rate of growth in industrial
production, in increasing the
commissioning of fixed assets and
improving other quantitative
indicators. The important thing is that
these rates. have been achieved on a
more sound economic basis. Last year,
for the first time ever, the entire
increment in national income was
obtained through labour productivity.
Early encouraging results have
appeared in the development of
prototypes of modern equipment and
technology. There has been some
increase in agricultural output.

The situation in the social sphere has
changed too. Over the past two years
the average monthly wages of industrial
and office workers have gone up by
almost 6 per cent, and labour
remuneration of collective farmers, by
8.9 per cent. The amount of housing
annually completed for tenancy,
compared with the Eleventh Five-Year
Plan, has grown by 15 million square
metres. The death rate has declined and
the birth rate has risen, with the
measures against alcoholism and

_ drinking contributing to that in no

small degree.

Difficulties Remain

Ositive results
are here to see,
but they do not
give grounds for
speaking about
a radical turn in
the country’s
social and
economic
development. The economic structure is
still heavily handicapped, bearing a
manifestly spend-away character.
Targets for national income growth
and resource saving are not being met.
Engineering is developing more slowly
than was planned. There is still a
shortage of high quality electronic
goods and modern construction
materials. .

Especially intolerable are failures to
meet assignments for accelerated _
growth of consumer goods production.
Difficulties remain in food supplies for
the population. Targets for increasing
the output and raising the quality of
consumer goods, for raising goods
turnover, have not been achieved.
Commodity-money imbalances and the
deficit of the state budget are having a
negative effect on current production
and the course of the reform itself.

The potentialities that opened up
with the start of the reform are being
put to obviously insufficient use. The
conference is to look into the causes of
that. Evidently, despite all difficulties of
changing over from one system of
economic management to another, a
good deal stems from the conservative
and backward mentality of some of
our economic executives and whole
collectives, from a striving to

cling to habitual ways and »
methods, to live and work in
the old way.
One cannot fail to see
that measures to
implement the economic
reform are being to a
considerable extent

paralysed by the bureaucratic position
of some Ministries and departments, of
economic bodies. In many instances,
the old ways of administrative diktat
are being preserved under a guise of
state-placed orders, economic
normatives and other new methods of
management. Perestroika at the level of
branch Ministries is clearly behind
perestroika at enterprise. In view of
this, we must uncompromisingly
condemn moves that distort the essence
of the economic reform and are directly
or indirectly undermining the Law on
Enterprises.

Life is also posing such a serious
question as promotion of economic
competition as an antidote to
monopoly, stagnation and
conservatism.

In the context of this situation, the
activities of the USSR State Planning
Committee, the USSR State Committee
for Material and Technical Supplies,
the USSR Ministry of Finance, branch
Ministries and other Union
departments, economic bodies in
Republics, enterprises and
organizations, must be analyzed and
assessed. This is especially important 1n
view of the forthcoming transfer of
enterprises in all branches to cost
accounting and self-financing. a

In drawing lessons from the initial
stage of perestroika, we must accelerate
solution of the problems which decide
the full application of the principles of
the economic reform. We must
accelerate transition to wholesale trade
of the means of production, carry out
measures to improve the credit and
finance system, and prepare carefully
and conduct in good time a reform of
prices and pricing. Without that, it 1s
impossible to introduce really full cost

CO accounting at
Ae “Ye. enterprises, ensure
. full autonomy of
work collectives,
develop the
co-operative
movement, and
raise the efficiency

business in Tallin, Estonia.
TEES

Vello Ruutu, a mechanic and professional driver, has started his own auto repair

nei RECS

$ e Pacific Tribune, June 22, 1988