Soviet Economic Options in the Eighties: Foreign Policy Implications

Abstract

The period of the Eleventh and Twelfth Five Year Plans (1981-1990) may be periods of sharp economic slowdown in growth with negative performance in some key sectors of importance to economic growth. At the same time economic potentials make possible a significantly more favorable growth performance rivaling the rapid, impressive rates of the recent past. The Soviet economy, with other industrial economics, may be entering, or already in, a qualitatively different stage in development requiring new adjustment of ends and means, revised expectations, and different leadership opportunities. With more than its share of institutional rigidity the Soviet leadership may have difficulty adjusting to the new stage. A change in top leadership is almost inevitable with the passage of Leonid Brezhnev from the scene. The potentiality in changed leadership derives in part from a generational change. A new generational group of leaders not only too young for involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution but lacking direct participation under the Stalinist system and the Great Patriotic War (World War II) may have either unsettling effects, open new opportunities or both.