Russia: Borrowing from the Capitalists

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Others suspect some sort of balance will be struck: "Within carefully defined limits," says the Rand Corporation's Sovietologist Abraham Becker, "the consumer will be allowed to determine the major part of his buying habits. But the central planners will still set the limits as they see fit." Still, he admits, "it would not be beyond the realm of possibility that Soviet society would resemble Yugoslavia's within ten years." State Department experts, however, tend to take the view that, since "the new experiments inherently mean curtailment of the control of Party members," sooner or later it will become a political issue—and the experiments will be scrapped, just as NEP, Communism's first essay in capitalism from 1921 to 1927, was dismantled by the political commissars.

Erosion Elsewhere. Perhaps the most hopeful analysis for the West of Communism's great debate comes from Harvard's respected Soviet Analyst Abram Bergson. "This is a shift toward pragmatism—an erosion of doctrine in economic affairs. It might be argued that erosion of doctrine in economic affairs could lead to erosion of other Communist doctrines. For it enhances the spread of pragmatism into politics, and thus into foreign policy."