SHATALIN, STANISLAV SERGEYEVICH

(1934–1997), Soviet economist; advocate of decentralization and market reforms.

Born in a family of upper-level functionaries of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Stanislav Shatalin graduated from the economics department of the Moscow State University and entered academia in the era of the Thaw. In 1965 he joined an influential school of economists at the Central Economics and Mathematics Institute (TsEMI) who were developing and advocating the System of Optimal Functioning for the Economy (SOFE) based on mathematical modeling. He shared the highest-ranking State Award, served as deputy director of the All-Union Institute for Systems Studies and director of the Institute for Economic Forecasting that had separated from TsEMI, and became full member of the Academy of Sciences in 1987. In 1989 and 1990, he emerged as a key advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev and a rival to the government economic team of Leonid Abalkin, and was appointed to the Presidential Council. He coauthored the Five-Hundred-Day Plan, a reform program that was eventually declined by Gorbachev, partly because of its emphasis on the decentralization of the Union, but was widely acclaimed in the West. This program contained, albeit in a different sequence, the essential elements of the sub-sequent reforms of the 1990s (although some argue that the five hundred days was more gradual and mindful of the social consequences of drastic deregulation).

After briefly taking part in liberal politics, Shatalin established and chaired the Reforma Foundation. His twilight years were overshadowed by the Audit Chamber's inquiry into a mutually profitable relationship between a bank affiliated with his foundation and government managers of social security funds.

See also: five-hundred-day plan

bibliography

Hough, Jerry F. (1997). Democratization and Revolution in the USSR, 1985–1991. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Shatalin, S.; Petrakov, N.; Aleksashenko, S.; Yavlinsky, G.; and Fedorov, B. (1991). 500 Days: Transition to the Market. New York: St. Martin's Press.

Dmitri Glinski