Quote:Some of America's top experts on the Soviet economy seem just as perplexed by our popular sense of an imminent collapse— especially when it centers on the Soviet economy. Vladimir Treml, a professor of Soviet economics at Duke University, says simply, "Economies this size don't collapse." John Hardt, the Congressional Research Service's top Soviet analyst, likewise sees neither imminent collapse nor any immediate threat to Gorbachev's political future.

Jerry Hough, a Brookings Institution political scientist, whose judgments about Gorbachev are highly regarded, is blunt: despite its current problems, he expects the Soviet economy to begin showing significant improvement within the next two to three years, and he says that when he raised the issue of Gorbachev's possible downfall with a broad range of Soviet citizens on a recent trip, "they looked at me with a blank stare." Hough says that "no one I talked to has the sense of an imminent popular uprising" or of widespread collapse.

The Black Box of Soviet Production

WHEN AMERICANS THINK ABOUT THE SOVIET Union, they often tend to think about scarcity. That, after all, explains the lines, the discontent, the seeming perennial shortage of goods.

The peculiar fact is that the Soviet Union produces an enormous abundance of goods. When you look at primary production (in what is still the world's second largest economy), the Soviets come out first globally year after year in things like oil, natural gas, iron ore, and steel. In 1988, for instance, they produced nearly twice as much steel as the United States did. Taken together, all the things that Marx, Smith, Ricardo, or any other classical theorist of capitalism would tell you are important to industrial success are hallmarks of the Soviet achievement. That's what makes the current disarray of Gorbachev's Russia seem so peculiar at first glance. The disarray down the line leads everyone— Soviets and Westerners alike— to debate what is going on, and why.
Inside the Collapsing Soviet Economy (June 1990)

Quote:... to more deeply integrate domestic policy and foreign policy

Quote:This is the surest path to all 4 major challenges of the day: resurrecting a middle class, to sowing political support for further decarbonization; to out-competing China; and, through all of this, to repairing faith in democracy itself.