The reluctant retreat

the long version

The Reluctant Retreat asks why the economic system of East European socialism failed. It reviews the nature of the central planning system, focusing on the institutions of the most avid planning regimes, the USSR and East Germany. As it investigates their attempts to escape from the inefficiencies of central planning, it also looks at life under those regimes in social terms. The history of socialism's attempts to decentralize began with the reforms in the mid-sixties. The book traces the frustrated efforts of the party to maintain economic power and control while decentralizing enough to encourage individual enterprises to accept more responsibility and achieve greater efficiency and quality in their production efforts. The economic decline of President Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and General Secretary Erich Honecker in East Germany is discussed, and the final chapters review the problems of transforming these planning systems to market economies.