Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 14, 1990 TAG: 9006140046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: MOSCOW LENGTH: Medium
The action authorizes Gorbachev to issue a series of decrees starting July 1 on comprehensive denationalization of state properties, creation of a stock market and a new banking system and passage of anti-monopoly legislation.
Yuri Maslyukov, chairman of the central planning commission Gosplan, said the Soviet leadership plans to denationalize 40 percent of all state property within two years and 60 percent in three years. That would put thousands of state-run factories, farms, stores and apartments on a market system.
The Supreme Soviet's decrees are more detailed and far-reaching than a plan recommended last month by Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, which featured rapid price increases for food and other essentials but was slower to relinquish traditional centralized control of the economy. Ryzhkov's plan provoked so much controversy that Gorbachev's closest advisers tried to distance him from it.
The legislature also put off for at least a month Ryzhkov's recommendation to triple the price of bread July 1. Maslyukov said bread prices are artificially low, about what they were 30 years ago, but some deputies argued furiously with him, accusing the government of waste and of providing consumers little choice. "Some people are so poor," one deputy said, "that bread is their principal source of food."
Gorbachev has spoken repeatedly of the need to create a market economy in the Soviet Union, but he also has ignored advice from his closest economic advisers to take more radical steps toward a market economy.
by CNB