(NEP) implemented by Lenin in the USSR in 1921 (Mazour, 1967) has served, in many ways, as a model for Gorbachev. Yosif Stalin terminated the NEP in 1928. In the mid 1950s, Nikita Khrushchev introduced significant economic reforms in the USSR, which were terminated by Leonid Brezhnev in the mid 1960s. Elsewhere in eastern Europe, both Yugoslavia and Hungary implemented economic reforms in the 1960s. Those in Hungary were curtailed to the point of death, prior to being revived in the 1980s. In 1979, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) implemented far reaching economic changes. Even in the wake of the violent supression of student protestors in the spring of 1989, the Chinese economic reforms remain largely intact. 3
The changes initiated in Yugoslavia and Hungary in partic ular, together with those implemented in the PRC, serve to illustrate the second factor which must be considered in the examination of the contemporary economic developments in the Soviet Union. The economic changes in Yugoslavia, Hungary, and the PRC were made within the structure of the socialist eco nomic system. The economic restructuring which occurred did not move these countries away from basic socialist ideology or goals, nor were they intended to cause such a move. Similarly, the changes introduced in the USSR by Gorbachev are being made within the existing socialist system of that country, and there is no intent to install a capitalist economic system in that country through perestroika the term used by the Soviets to describe the current economic, political, and social restruc turing (Gorbachev, 1987). It would be naive to presume that perestroika was intended to throw the socialist system out of the USSR, or to assume that restructuring was intended to weaken the social and political system.
Lastly, in examining the contemporary economic develop ments in the Soviet Union, it must be borne in mind that, as most people in the western countr...