Soviets Edgy About New Economic Plan : Restructuring Goes Into Effect Today in Shops, Farms, Factories

As it enters the new year, the Soviet Union is more somber than merry, for perestroika begins in earnest today, and people are getting nervous.

Until now, the promise of economic reform has been often spoken but barely felt. In 1988 it will take effect where it really counts: on the shop floors and in the directors’ offices of factories, farms and enterprises.

Today, 60% of Soviet industrial and agricultural production switches to a system known as khozrachiot , or economic accountability, a concept that has no equivalent in the West. It means that enterprises are on their own--linked to the national economy by plan guidelines, but given autonomy to settle their own bills, keep their profits and, to some extent, find their own customers and suppliers.

In an economy beset by chronic shortages, this kind of independence does not suit everyone. In recent weeks, Soviet newspapers have revealed the anxieties of average citizens over the reforms. “Will there be enough money for wages?” queried one headline in the daily Socialist Industry.

In a roundtable discussion published this week in the government newspaper Izvestia, directors of Moscow enterprises that already are working under the new system poured out their woes.

Raw Materials Shortage

The head of a textile factory told how he went out into the wholesale market to look for raw materials and came up 20% short. “Under khozrachiot , it is going to be tough,” said Fyodor Plekhanov. “We even calculated our future losses from the lack of raw materials: Our profits will be down by 1 million rubles”--about $1.5 million.

At a production group that makes scales and other measuring equipment, director Yuri Sergeinko found himself short 400 tons of sheet metal. “On a country-wide scale, that’s small change,” he said. “But for us, it is extremely alarming.”

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev noted in November that with the coming economic reforms, perestroika --or restructuring--is moving into its second stage. In the newspapers and elsewhere, this next stage is being universally proclaimed as the most difficult, requiring major psychological adjustments and harsh lessons in economic reality.

Other aspects of Gorbachev’s reform package will be taking hold in the coming year. But the first centerpiece of reform thus far is the new law on state enterprises that goes into effect today. The Soviet Union’s top economist, Abel G. Aganbegyan, describes it as a compromise “worked out as a result of a clash of opinion and contradictory judgments.” Some economists say that “self-financing” cannot be made to work until prices are reformed since it forces managers to seek profits based on unrealistic costs.

Last year, 160 enterprises in Moscow were working under khozrachiot as part of a scattered experiment. Now, as the first major law on economic reform takes effect, another 300 enterprises in the city switch to the new system. By 1989, all of Moscow’s industry is to be “self-financing” under the reform.

Loss of 50 Million Rubles

To put the need for change in context, Izvestia listed the problems plaguing the city’s industry: the loss of 50 million rubles ($80 million at the official exchange rate) in defective goods, 360 million from unrealized technology, 12 million in fines for unjustified warehousing of supplies and 60 million in fines for unfulfilled contracts.

Thus far, results of self-financing under the initial experimental conditions are mixed, according to figures recently cited by Stepan A. Sitiryan, deputy chairman of the state central planning agency Gosplan. Overall, enterprises working under khozrachiot performed better than ones working under the old system, recording higher productivity and profits, he said in the Communist Party newspaper Pravda on Monday.

However, in Moscow, one-sixth of the self-financing factories were unable to deliver on their contracts, which cost them a total of 30 million rubles in fines.