World Notes Soviet Union

Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev last week shoved aside some of the last of the Kremlin's tired old men and unveiled his economic blueprint for the rest of the century. That document predicts a dramatic 6% annual rate of economic growth (vs. last year's 3.8%) through sharply increased productivity. The drafting was no easy task, Gorbachev told a meeting of the Communist Party's Central Committee, because "not all of our managers have broken away from inertia, from old approaches." One such mossback, presumably, was 74-year-old Nikolai Baibakov, who was ousted as the head of Gosplan, the Soviet economic planning committee. He was replaced by Nikolai Talyzin, 56, a former telecommunications engineer who was Moscow's representative to Comecon, the East bloc's common market. Also leaving the top leadership is Nikolai Tikhonov, 80, who retired from the Politburo, having resigned last month from his government job as Premier. In addition, Gorbachev put to rest the gossamer dreams of Nikita Khrushchev, who drafted a long-term economic plan in 1961 predicting the Soviet Union would surpass the U.S. economically by 1970. Gorbachev announced that the embarrassing document, technically still in effect, had been rewritten to excise parts that in his view "have not stood the test of time."