May I recommend JRL to those who do not yet know it.
Write to David at the address given and ask to receive it.
You will get one or more issues a day, which if printed out
would be 15 pages each. Many-sided coverage of current
issues, texts originate in Russia, Europe and the US.
Andrew Jameson, Lancaster, UK
Email: [log in to unmask]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Johnson's Russia List
#5437
11 September 2001
[log in to unmask]

#10
From: John Wilhelm <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: My Letter in the Moscow Times.
Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2001

David Johnson, I hope that you might be willing to share with the
readers of your list the somewhat edited text of my letter which
appeared in the Moscow Times last Friday on Semenenko's article
which you published on August 13.

MOSCOW TIMES
Friday, Sep. 7, 2001. Page 9
It's Not True That No One Saw 1991 Coming
Letters

In response to "Economic Crash No One Saw
Coming," an article by Igor Semenenko, Aug. 13.

Editor,

I think you did a service by publishing the piece by Igor Semenenko,
but there are some issues which I touch on below that need to be
discussed. Although there was a lot that I liked in this piece on what
I consider to be an important subject, there was also a lot that I
found disappointing in it, especially its title, "The Economic Crash
No One Saw Coming."

While I was pleased to see mention made of the (unjustified) suspicion
which both Naum Jasny and Igor Birman received from the profession
here, a real scandal if one looks at the record, I was very
disappointed that Birman was not given credit for seeing the crash
coming, which he in fact did. I know, because in the late 1970s and
early 1980s I paid a lot of attention to what Birman was saying and
writing on this and supported him in both my published and unpublished
writings. I also had him over twice during the two years I taught at
Dickinson College in the late 1970s and early 1980s to speak with
students about his views on the Soviet economic situation. If anyone
doubts that Birman had it right, I would simply recommend looking up
the record of what he wrote in the journal Russia, which he edited
himself in part because the profession here refused to engage him in
real dialogue and, worse yet, refused to allow him to publish his
views in our journals -- as Birman himself has pointed out.

With all due respect to Professor Kantorovich, I do not believe from
his comments -- as related in the piece by Semenenko -- that the
professor really understands what actually happened in the area.

While it may be true that the people in the field were "a very small
group ... who knew each other closely and who did not criticize each
other," the problem was that they would not allow their critics -- be
it Jasney, G.  Warren Nutter or Birman -- to engage in any real honest
academic exchange. I know of these cases from anecdotal information,
given to me by a former student of Nutter's, from very considerable
documentation in the case of Jasny's biography/autobiography, which
was published posthumously, and from what I myself saw in the case of
Birman.

A lot of the problem here, which does not get discussed, originated
with Professor Abram Bergson of Harvard and his proteges. It was
Bergson -- as Abraham Becker rightly pointed out in an article
defending the CIA estimates, in Post-Soviet Affairs -- who originated
the model that was eventually taken over by the CIA as the basis for
studying and making comparisons with the Soviet economy. I would
submit that if one looked at the record, especially Jasny's
experience, which I know from what I have read and been told greatly
troubled the late Alex Nove, it is clear that Bergson's approach had
it wrong from the beginning and that those who questioned it like
Jasny, and later Birman, were treated harshly by the profession for
doing so.

In both cases, the retaliation involved efforts to deny these men
support for their academic work in terms of grants and employment. A
number of years ago at one AEA meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, I was told
by a professor at a southern school who had been in the Air Force of a
situation in which the CIA fought tooth and nail to prevent Birman
from getting a contract with a department within that agency to do
work for it on the Soviet economy.

In my opinion the Bergsons, Beckers and James Millars have a lot to
answer for, as does the academic community which has been so reluctant
to give an honest account of what went wrong and why. In the case of
Bergson, I heard a talk he gave at the AEA convention in New Orleans
in 1992 on communist economic efficiency and was simply appalled. I
recall after the talk mentioning to the wife of Janos Kornai, who was
at the session, that Bergson did not seem to know that the data was
bogus. From her reaction, I would judge that she understood what I was
saying and agreed with me.

The problem with Bergson is that he does not seem to have the
intellect, or perhaps honesty, to admit that he had it wrong and tell
us why -- something that surely would be quite useful in terms of
future comparative work.

In the case of Becker, he can write a -- to my mind not very
convincing -- defense of CIA estimates (published in Post-Soviet
Affairs) and not have it challenged in that journal since, as Birman
commented to me, the editor would never publish one for political
reasons.

In the case of James Millar, who headed a task force evaluating the
CIA's analysis of Soviet economic performance, one can have an
assessment of the CIA's performance without any honest dealing with
Birman and his works (the report was published in Comparative Economic
Studies).

From what I recall from the comments I saw on Johnson's Russia List of
the meeting earlier this year in the Spring at Princeton, those like
Robert Gates who claimed that the CIA performed well in evaluating the
Soviet economy simply do not understand what the problem was. I find
the argument that the CIA identified Soviet difficulties early on to
be totally irrelevant.

To my knowledge, all data -- be it Soviet or otherwise -- indicated a
clear slowdown.  The real issue was not one of a slowdown, but of how
serious the Soviet economic difficulties were and on this score I
would argue that the CIA did not have a clue, although clearly Birman
did. Furthermore, based on my analysis in a joint statement on the
Afghanistan situation written in July 1980 and circulated at the
Republican Convention in Detroit, I would argue that I understood as
well.

To my knowledge, at the time of the Afghanistan invasion the CIA had
no clue as to its significance for the future of the Soviet system, as
my analysis would argue it clearly did. The failure of the CIA and the
profession at that time was inexcusable if one knew Soviet reality.

Semenenko did a service by raising some of the issues here once
again. But it is unfortunate that it still seems impossible to get an
article published here outlining the serious failures that occurred in
the area of our economic and political evaluation of the Soviet Union
in its last 20 years.

John Howard Wilhelm
Ann Arbor, Michigan

*****