The Reformer Ousted

There is no doubt that the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis weakened Khrushchev’s position. This was most clearly evident in the fate of talk about radical economic reform. Before the crisis developed, Liberman had written his famous article in Pravda on 9 September 1962, and Izvestiya continued to publish articles by reform economists supporting Liberman’s ideas until 29 October. Liberman was even interviewed on the radio early in November. However, his ideas were firmly rejected by the Soviet leadership at the Central Committee Plenum of 19–23 November. On the eve of that plenum, an article in the party’s theoretical journal Kommunist condemned Liberman’s proposals, and the November issue of the economics journal Voprosy Ekonomiki carried three articles on Liberman, two attacking him and only one supporting him: a former finance minister set the tone by criticising “oversimplification in solving complex questions” and insisting that the planning agencies were quite capable of accurately assessing the production capacities of enterprises; the Director of the Institute of Economics in the Academy of Sciences simply condemned Liberman’s ideas as unsound; it was only Nemchinov who once again defended Liberman, pointing out that critics of “reviving the capitalist category of the price of production” had completely misunderstood Liberman’s proposals and were essentially raising a red herring.1