Kyiv, Ukraine, and the Beginnings of Gorbachev’s Economic Reforms

• In Event: Dictated by Moscow: Art, Anti-Semitism, and Economics in Late Soviet Kyiv

Abstract

Based on analysis of perestroika-era Ukrainian newspapers, this paper uncovers how those living in the Ukrainian SSR’s capital city took advantage of new possibilities to use cash within Gorbachev’s perestroika-era economy. Designed to stimulate new efficiencies and the creation of more marketable goods, opportunities to convert accounting rubles from an enterprise’s “production-development fund” into cash rubles for its “wage fund” within an economy still dominated by shortages quickly produced galloping inflation which, when paired with democratization, may have sped up the USSR’s demise. That these accounting rubles also found their way to new cooperative businesses fulfilling contracts for state enterprises in places like the Ukrainian SSR likely means this privately-held cash plays a bigger role in why the multinational Soviet Union collapsed than has been explained so far.

Author

• Martin J. Blackwell, Stetson U