Abstract

The Dragon of Bureaucracy

The Soviet Union has just become the scene of a gigantic economic and administrative upheaval. At its last session, the Party's Central Committee decided to undo and obliterate most of Nikita S. Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union's reforms of the 1950's. The whole structure of the Soviet economy is to be overhauled, and Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin has made it clear that it will be two or three years before the resulting disarray is brought under control. Eight years have passed since Khrushchev struck a heavy blow against Moscow, Russia's bureaucracy, ordered the disbandment of scores of central economic ministries, and set up more than a hundred Sovnarkhozty, or Economic Councils, each of which was to manage the affairs of the hundred or so economic regions into which the country was divided.