Gorbachev Economist Seeks Even Faster ‘Leap Forward’

Influential Kremlin adviser Abel G. Aganbegyan said Friday that radical economic changes approved by a meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee will allow a “leap forward” rather than “slow deterioration” in the Soviet Union.

He gave assurances that price increases, implicit in the proposal outlined by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev, will not occur before 1990. Even then, Aganbegyan added, families with low incomes will receive benefits to offset the additional cost.

The new plan, he said, envisions the possibility that a Soviet enterprise may be allowed to go bankrupt if a series of government remedies do not halt heavy financial losses in its operation.

But he said that the state will take steps to prevent unemployment, even if modernization of factories and cutbacks in bureaucratic overseers eliminate many jobs.

Aganbegyan, an Armenian academician with a reputation as a maverick economist, made it clear that he would like to go even faster and further than the Gorbachev plan.

Speaking at a news conference about possible price increases for meat and bread to reduce or eliminate government subsidies, he said:

“Personally, I would like to put that into effect next year. Every kilogram of meat sold for 1.80 rubles is subsidized by three rubles. People who eat more meat receive more subsidies. Muscovites get more subsidies than others because more meat is available here. The same is true of bread, to a lesser extent.”

Aganbegyan also took a more drastic approach to shutdowns of inefficient factories than Gorbachev’s plan calls for.

“We have 48,000 enterprises, and it would be very wise to close down several thousand of them,” he said. “Several mining operations, for example, show terrible losses and have unbearable working conditions. Why do they exist? Why use state funds for a bad enterprise that runs at a loss?” he asked rhetorically.

But Aganbegyan explained that the plan will provide several kinds of assistance to a money-losing plant under the proposed new “self-financing” concept.

First, he said, a bank would lend funds and impose new operating conditions. If that fails, a government ministry could provide emergency funds and change the plant’s organization. If that does not work, another ministry could take over the ailing enterprise.

Even if a plant is closed, he said, workers will receive a lump-sum payment equal to six months of their average wage. If they cannot find new jobs on their own, they will be put to work by applying to a state employment office.

Aganbegyan, who is now head of the Economic Research Department at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, sat in on most of the Central Committee meeting where the Gorbachev plan was debated.

“I have been an economist for 30 years and have seen a lot of party meetings,” he said. “No other plenary meeting was so meticulously prepared.”

‘Diverse Views’ Presented

Economists and historians, he said, analyzed why previous Soviet reform efforts failed and studied the evolution of the economic system from the 1920s onward.

“There were diverse views on how to solve problems,” he said, adding, “You only get unanimous agreement in a cemetery.”

Once the basic law dealing with greater autonomy for enterprises is passed next week, he said, 11 more draft documents will be approved in the following three months to revise the role of central economic agencies.

This will make it possible for the combination of changes to take effect next Jan. 1, he said, with a changeover to the new system of management in 1990, before the next five-year plan begins in 1991.

Eventually, Aganbegyan predicted, the Soviet ruble will be freely exchanged on world money markets, once the “obsolete, outmoded” Soviet pricing system is changed.

“I think we will come to the convertibility of the ruble, first within the socialist countries and then with the rest of the world,” he said.