The Second Economy : Boon or Hindrance to Reforms in the First Economy

Abstract

Mr. Gorbachev's rise to the general-secretaryship of the CPSU made the world privy to a veritable flood of unprecedentedly candid information from the USSR Coming from all levels and parts of the Soviet polity and society, this information tends to focus on the ills of the Soviet economy, and serves to underpin the twin remedial imperatives of "acceleration" and reform or "restructuring"

Not the least among these highly publicized ills-most of which, incidentally have been long known to specialists-are a variety of self-serving activities that transgress the legal or ethical bounds of socialist life and wor,, activiteis that come under such officaial headings as "non labor income", "economic crime", "shadow economy" (tenevaia ekonomika), bribery, and the like. In the aggregate, these activities add up to a lot of unofficial and often illicit private income and wealth, an underworld of production and trade, a set of blackk and grey markets, indeed a whole "second economy", which spills over into almost every other realm of social existence.