¹ See, e.g., Brecher, Michael, Decisions in Crisis: Israel, 1967 and 1973 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980)Google Scholar; and Paige, Glenn D., The Korean Decision (New York: Free Press, 1968).Google Scholar

² Ikenberry, G. John and Kupchan, Charles A., “Socialization and Hegemonic Power,” International Organization 44 (Summer 1990), 284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This phenomenon is also described by Peter Gourevitch, who writes, “The moments of greatest freedom are crisis points.” See Gourevitch, , Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986), 240.Google Scholar For a Soviet perspective on the effects of the Gorbachev-era crisis in expanding economic options, see Kagalovskiy, K., “Ekonomi-cheskiy krizis: Gde iskat' vykhod?” Kommunist 4 (March 1990).Google Scholar On crisis policy-making and the effects of domestic and international institutions, see Haggard, Stephan and Kaufman, Robert R., eds., The Politics of Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributive Politics and the State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

³ For an example of this literature, see Legvold, Robert, “Soviet Learning in the 1980s,” in Breslauer, George W. and Tetlock, Philip E., eds., Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991).Google Scholar

⁴ See, e.g., Breslauer, George W., “Soviet Economic Reforms since Stalin: Ideology, Politics, and Learning,” Soviet Economy 6 (July—September 1990).Google Scholar

⁵ See Deutsch, , The Nerves of Government: Models of Political Communication and Control (London: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963).Google Scholar He wrote, “Simple learning is goal-seeking feedback, as in a homing torpedo” (p. 92). “A more complex type of learning is the self-modifying or goal-changing feedback” (p. 92).

⁶ Newell, Allen and Simon, Herbert A., Human Problem Solving (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1972), 7.Google Scholar

⁷ Nye, Joseph S. Jr, “Nuclear Learning and U.S.-Soviet Security Regimes,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weber, Steve, “Interactive Learning in U.S.-Soviet Arms Control,” in Breslauer and Tetlock (fn. 3).Google Scholar

⁸ Haas, Ernst B., When Knowledge Is Power: Three Models of Change in International Organizations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).Google Scholar

⁹ Lavoy, Peter R., “Learning and the Evolution of Cooperation in U.S. and Soviet NonProliferation Activities,” in Breslauer and Tetlock (fn. 3).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Moltz, James Clay, “Managing International Rivalry on High Technology Frontiers: U.S.-Soviet Competition and Cooperation in Space” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1989).Google Scholar

¹¹ Breslauer, George W., “Soviet Policy toward the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” in Breslauer and Tetlock (fn. 3).Google Scholar

¹² Haas, Peter M., “Saving the Mediterranean,” International Organization 43 (Summer 1989).Google Scholar

¹³ Robertson, , “Political Conflict and Lesson-Drawing,” Journal ofPublic Policy 2 (January-March 1991).Google Scholar

¹⁴ The terminology used in this section was drawn from discussions with Philip Roeder, who provided valuable suggestions.

¹⁵ Anderson, , “Why Competitive Politics Inhibits Learning in Soviet Foreign Policy,” in Breslauer and Tetlock (fn. 3), 117.Google Scholar As other studies have shown, this tendency is weakened by the presence of high strategic threats and technical factors. Thus, the author does not share Anderson's pessimism about learning in all areas of foreign policy.

¹⁶ Herbert Simon has called this “selective attention,” that is, political leaders exhibit a “deliberate ignoring of the remainder of a package of information] as irrelevant to the subject's goals and motives.” See Simon, , Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Mailing Processes in Administrative Organization, 3d ed. (New York: Free Press, 1976), 309.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Breslauer (fn. 4), 255.

¹⁸ Ibid., 273. Breslauer explained that evidence of differentiation among leaders could be traced to the necessity of “authority building” within the Politburo.

¹⁹ Ibid. As Breslauer correctly cautioned on the limits of the learning model as he looked beyond 1990: “To be an effective contributor to problem solving, learning processes require a stable frame of reference. When the situation changes fundamentally … lessons derived from earlier experience may no longer be applicable. That is precisely what has happened to Gorbachev's economic reform program” (p. 276).

²⁰ Gourevitch (fn. 2), 19.

²¹ For an excellent analysis of these processes from a public policy perspective, see Richard Rose, “What Is Lesson-Drawing?” and Bennett, Colin J., “How States Utilize Foreign Evidence,” both in Journal ofPublic Policy 2 (January–March 1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² For a previous use of this term, see Moltz, James Clay, “Commonwealth Economics in Perspective: Lessons from the East Asian Model,” Soviet Economy 7 (October–December 1991).Google Scholar

²³ For more on learning of this variety, see Haas (fn. 8).

²⁴ An epistemic community is a group of individuals united by shared beliefs about cause-and-effect relationships in a particular domestic or international policy environment; the group is united across institutional, professional, and sometimes national boundaries. For our purposes, it may include Soviet academics, industrial officials, Foreign Ministry bureaucrats, and advisers in various Central Committee departments who promoted a particular set of economic reforms. For a detailed discussion of this concept, see the special issue of International Organization (“Knowledge, Power, and International Policy Coordination,” ed. Peter M. Haas) 46 (Winter 1992).

²⁵ See “An Interview with Gorbachev,” Time, September 9, 1985, p. 24.

²⁶ Ibid. He admitted only one area of Soviet weakness: “We have not yet learned proper managerial skills as is required by a modern economy.”

²⁷ For an analysis of the nuances of the debate at this time, see Aslund, Anders, Gorbachev's Struggle for Economic Reform (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991), 25–68.Google Scholar

²⁸ Rommetveit, , “Decision Making under Changing Norms,” in March, James G. and Olsen, Johan P., eds, Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1976), 141.Google Scholar

²⁹ For an argument on the strength of Gorbachev's political power at this time, see Hough, Jerry F., Opening Up the Soviet Economy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1988).Google Scholar

³⁰ Meanwhile, Yeltsin continued his heckling of Ligachev at the Nineteenth Party Conference the following year, although he no longer had the power to influence his or Gorbachev's positions. On the Yeltsin-Ligachev dispute, see Roeder, Philip G., “Red Sunset: Origins of the Soviet Constitutional Revolution” (Manuscript, November 1991), 315.Google Scholar

³¹ See, e.g., Krasnopol'skaya, T., “Gosudarstvennoe regulirovanie i chastnoe predprinimate'stvo v kapitalist-icheskikh stranakh: evolyutsiya vzaimootnosheniy” (State regulation and private enterprise in capitalist countries: The evolution of interrelations), MEMO 11 (1986)Google Scholar; Pusenkova, N., “Gosudarstvennaya politika SShA v oblasti ‘;vysokoy tekhnologii’” (State policy in the U.S.A. in the sphere of high technology), MEMO 3 (1987)Google Scholar; and Lapitskiy, M. I., “Pochemu oni rabotaet luchshe nas” (Why they work harder than we do), SShA 2 (1989).Google Scholar

³² Abalkin, interview in Der Spiegel, July 6, 1987, p. 98.Google Scholar

³³ Gorbachev, Mikhail S., “Ha novom etape perestroyki,” in Izbrannye rechi i stat' i (Selected speeches and articles) (Moscow: Politizdat, 1989), 6:573.Google Scholar

³⁴ Figures provided by Russian economist Aleksey Isyumov, IREX Younger Scholars U.S.Soviet Exchange in International Economic Security, Rockefeller Center, Dartmouth College, October 11–14, 1991.

³⁵ Despite its illegality, this practice continued throughout the final days of the Soviet Union.

³⁶ Kuzin, D. V. et al., Ekpnomicheskiy uspekh: novye faktory v sovremennyKh usloviyakh (Economie success: New factors in contemporary conditions), A Report of the Sector on Foreign Experience and Criticism of Bourgeois Theories (Moscow: Institute of Economics, USSR Academy of Sciences, December 21, 1989), 11.Google Scholar

³⁷ Artemov, I. and Stankovskiy, S., “GATT i interesy SSSR” (GATT and the interests of the USSR), MEMO 19, no. 8 (1989).Google Scholar

³⁸ See Maslyukov's, speech at the Twenty-eighth Party Congress, Pravda, July 5, 1990, p. 3.Google Scholar

³⁹ For the text of Gorbachev's, speech, see Pravda, July 11, 1990, p. 2.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For more details on these changes, see Moltz (fn. 22).

⁴¹ See, e.g., Gubarev, V., “Mozhno li zhit', kak v Yaponii?” (Can we live like they do in Japan?) Pravda, March 20, 1990, p. 5.Google Scholar A large picture above the article shows a group of smiling Japanese teenage girls in front of a well-stocked electronics and appliances store. See also the interview with economist Mil'ner, B. Z., “Uzhnokoreyskiy fenomen” (The South Korean phenomenon), Ogonek 37 (September 1990).Google Scholar The article has a picture of a container ship loading South Korean cars for export.

⁴² Unfortunately, these goals often worked at cross-purposes, something Gorbachev did not realize until late 1991.

⁴³ For more on the Shatalin plan, see Lavigne, Marie, “Financing the Transition in the USSR: The Shatalin Plan and the Soviet Economy,” Public Policy Paper 2 (New York: Institute for East-West Security Studies, 1990)Google Scholar; on the various revisions of the plan, see Schiffer, Jonathan R., “Soviet Territorial Pricing and Emerging Republican Politics,” Journal of Soviet Nationalities 1 (Fall 1990), 67–68.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Interview in Soyuz 43 (October 1990), 2 (FBIS-SOV-90–224, pp. 45–47). Abalkin further stated that the accelerated time frame of the Shatalin plan and unpredictable effects made it “unrealistic” (p. 46).

⁴⁵ Alekseyev in Izvestiya, November 10, 1990 (FBIS-SOV-90-224, p. 51).

⁴⁶ For one example of this school of economic thinking, see Vorobyev, V., “Bread Roll for One in Ten?” SovetsKaya Rossiya, December 16, 1989, p. 3 Google Scholar (FBIS-SOV-89–244, p. 85). The article is a scathing critique of Moscow mayor Gavriil Popov's promarket reform proposals.

⁴⁷ She is particularly well known for her letter in Sovetslaya Rossiya of March 13, 1988; th letter criticized the Gorbachev reforms and stirred up rumors of a conservative coup attemf by Ligachev.

⁴⁸ Remarks by Yanayev quoted by TASS, December 26, 1990 (FBIS-SOV-90–248, p. 10).

⁴⁹ The only form of learning this does approximate is Deutschs rare “pathological” learring (fn. 5).

⁵⁰ One author summarizes these views by saying that Rasputin is “an ultra-nationalist who wants to strengthen the Soviet military and is contemptuous of Western-style democracy and free markets.” See Braun, Aurel and Day, Richard B., “Gorbachevian Contradictions,” Problems of Communism 39 (May-June, 1990).Google Scholar

⁵¹ See Solzhenitsyn, Alexander I., “Kak nam obustroit' Rossiyu” (How we can reestablish [Old] Russia), Literaturnaya Gazeta, September 18, 1990, pp. 1–6.Google Scholar

⁵² For more on the philosophy of this wing, see Darst, Robert G. Jr, “Environmentalism in the USSR: The Opposition to the River Diversion Projects,” Soviet Economy 4 (July-September, 1988).Google Scholar

⁵³ Information from comments by Soviet economists attending the IREX Younger Scholars Exchange on International Economic Security (fn. 34).

⁵⁴ For further details regarding these trips, see Moltz (fn. 22).

⁵⁵ See Ovchinnikov, , “Formula for Success,” Business in the USSR 15 (March 1991), 58–59.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Remarks by economist Vladimir Popov at the IREX U.S.-Soviet Younger Scholars Exchange on International Economic Security (fn. 34).

⁵⁷ Parks, Michael, “Yeltsin Party Fragments over Russian Unity,” Los Angeles Times (San Diego County Edition), November 11, 1991, p. A8.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ This finding is supported by other work in the international relations literature. See e.g., Pool, Ithiel de Sola and Kessler, Allen, “The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Computer: Infor mation Processing in a Crisis,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., International Relations and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961).Google Scholar

⁵⁹ For a comparative historical case, we might consider Soviet borrowing from the American experience in the 1920s and 1930s. This interest grew out of Soviet respect for the mass production processes pioneered by Henry Ford and other leading American industrialists, as well as for rapid advancement of the United States as a world power after World War I.