The author discusses the traditional system of management of the economy as it existed in the early 1950s in the USSR and goes on to deal with the reforms of the 1960s and of the 1980s, country by country. He shows that the focus of the reforms is on finding a proper combination of planning and the market mechanism, and their success will be judged by their ability to solve acute economic problems.

List of Tables - Acknowledgements - Abbreviations - Introduction - PART 1 THE TRADITIONAL SOVIET SYSTEM - The Centralised System of Management - PART 2 ECONOMIC REFORMS OF THE 1960s - Common and Contrasting Features of the Reforms of the 1960s - The Soviet Economic Reform of 1965 - The Economic Reform in Czechoslovakia in 1966-9 - The Hungarian Economic Reform of 1968 - The Polish Economic Reform of 1973 - PART 3 ECONOMIC REFORMS OF THE 1980s - Common and Contrasting Features of the Reforms of the 1980s - The Hungarian Economic Reform in the 1980s - The Polish Economic Reform of 1982 - Gorgachev's Economic Reform - The Czechoslovak Attempts to Improve the System of Management in the 1980s - Appendix: Recent Changes in the System of Management in the German Democratic Republic - Conclusion - Notes - Bibliography - Index