In a fashion the old revolutionary could hardly have intended, the Soviet economy has become today a battlefield of explosive ideas that threaten nearly every precept and practice of Communism in the past generation. Hotel lobbies from Warsaw to Bucharest are jammed with Western businessmen scrambling to get into Communist markets.
Hardly a week goes by without the announcement of a new trade agreement between a Western nation and a member of the East bloc, typically for double the amount of previous trade.
Command Economy. As the increasingly independent Eastern European satellites are opening up to the West, so they are boldly opening up their own internal economies to Western techniques. Fortnight ago, Czechoslovakia inaugurated a massive decentralization program drawn up by Prague Economics Professor Ota Sik. Except for general growth goals set by the state and controlled prices in some key sectors, each Czech factory will have wide freedom for its own development.
East Germany, too, has relegated planning to groups of enterprises, freed the prices of some raw materials, is toying with profit incentives. To push exports, Poland has permitted three firms to set up their own foreign-trade pipelines, bypassing Warsaw to deal directly abroad.
Russia itself has lagged behind the satellites in the economic shift toward Western ways. Clearly, such unsettling prospects would not even be countenanced in the Krernlin were it not for yet a grimmer vista already looming.
