Yuri V. Andropov is seeking to rescue the Soviet economy from the stagnation into which it lapsed during the final years of the Brezhnev regime. But his effort faces enormous economic, political and ideological obstacles.
A month of crisscrossing the Soviet Union, from European Russia to eastern Siberia, provided no evidence that the economy was in danger of collapsing, as some in the West have said, or that the United States could make it collapse by reducing trade or access to advanced technology.
But from conversations with dozens of officials, economists, scientists and managers, one gains the sense that the leadership is aware of its inability thus far to create a more dynamic economy, one capable of raising living standards while at the same time matching or exceeding the West in military power.
The Soviet economy suffered from many of the ills evident today when Leonid I. Brezhnev replaced Nikita S. Khrushchev in 1964. For the first six years of Mr. Brezhnev's 18-year rule, real incomes increased, industrial production rose and economic goals for some industries were met or exceeded. Yet for the next dozen years, economic growth slipped and goals were lowered to more realistic levels. At the same time, the emphasis began to shift away from heavy industry to agriculture. The Andropov program represents an effort to break the barriers to economic growth. These barriers include:
- A lack of incentives for working people and for managers, in both industry and agriculture, and, with the Stalinist terror gone, insufficient fear to instill discipline.
- A shortage of skilled workers, trained technicians and competent managers. ''There are more problems than people to solve them,'' said Vsevolod Y. Budayev, an economist in the State Planning Committee. There is also a near-exhaustion of cheap natural resources, such as coal, oil, timber, iron ore and other minerals in the accessible western regions, which will have to be replaced by high-cost resources in remote Siberia.
- A system so rigid and averse to risk that it frustrates innovation and the spread of new technology; and so highly bureaucratic and secretive that it obstructs the decision-making of those responsible for running enterprises.
- Increasingly difficult ''zero-sum'' choices on how to allocate scarce resources among consumption, investment and the military. With growth slowing down, living standards stagnant, plants decaying and the arms race continuing, the most fundamental obstacle to development, in the eyes of Western experts, appears to be Communist ideology itself.
It is an ideology summed up in the Marxist-Leninist doctrines calling for state ownership of the means of production, the abolition of private property, a dearth of competition and the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat, as administered by bureaucrats. Change in Small Degrees
Is the Andropov regime likely to change this system fundamentally? ''Our position,'' says Oleg N. Kulikov, a director of the State Bank, ''is that we have a system, and it works. It works with not bad results. We know what we have now. We can take it as a basis, and work to improve it in different sections.
''Take the factory. We can change methods of planning. All of us can do more, do better. We have many problems which we don't want to have. We could borrow from other countries, other socialist countries. But we have a different size and different traditions. We are going to stay with the system.''
Yet that very system may be incompatible with a modern industrial - and post-industrial - society. Current doctrine holds that the economy must make the transition from extensive to intensive growth. By extensive growth, the Russians mean growth that results from utilizing more labor, capital, land and natural resources; by intensive growth, they mean increasing productivity, improving allocation of existing resources and innovations resulting from human imagination and ingenuity. The highly controlled system is having difficulties adopting the path of intensive growth. Eager for Western Technology
Conscious of their technological deficiencies, the Russians are eager to get what they need from abroad, but without becoming dependent on trade in a potentially hostile world.
Aleksei N. Manzhulo, a Deputy Foreign Trade Minister, said in an interview at his office in Moscow: ''We like to say that we stand for the international division of labor, with everyone producing what they can in the most efficient way and exchanging with others. This works for lower world prices and to everyone's advantage.
''Some extremists or ultras are trying to make the case that the Soviet Union would perish without what you call high technology. The only weapon the United States has against the Soviet Union is trade, but it won't work.''
He conceded that the Soviet Union was going through a difficult time, but he said this was nothing new. ''Since we began to build our state, we have had difficulties,'' he said.
Yet he expressed a plea for continued trade with the West. ''If trade is disrupted,'' Mr. Manzhulo said, ''everybody stands to lose. But if there is cooperation, we can achieve stronger growth and give more help to the developing countries, especially if money is not spent on armaments.''
As it is shaping up, the Andropov economic program is designed to attack the problems of specific sectors, but not to make fundamental changes in the centrally controlled system.
Agriculture Agriculture has been a problem since the Stalinist collectivization in the early 1930's and in recent years it has been aggravated by poor weather. The Russians seem aware that, until farm productivity rises, the potential for development will be hampered.
Although the Soviet Union has 10 times as many people in agriculture as the United States and has 40 percent more sown acreage, Soviet farm output is only three-fourths as large.
Boris A. Runov, a Deputy Minister of Agriculture, said in a Moscow interview that one of the problems was how to keep qualified young people on the land. He said that from 1960 to 1980, while the total Soviet population rose by 55 million, the rural population declined by 10 million. ''They migrated to become consumers,'' as he put it.
The effort to raise productivity is aimed at increasing the knowledge and competence of farmers. ''We are training 60,000 students a year in agricultural colleges,'' Mr. Runov said. System of Incentives
There is also a goal to provide greater incentives and a greater sense of responsibility to teams of workers on the huge collective and state farms.
The chosen instrument for achieving that objective is the so-called collective contract, through which the farm management negotiates a contract with a brigade of 5 to 25 workers. Such brigades sometimes consist of the members of a single family.
The collective contracts are not likely to mean a return to family farming. The Government will still own the land and farm equipment and will supply these, together with seed and fertilizer, in exchange for commitments by brigades to produce a given output.
''We say to the farmers,'' said Mr. Runov, '' 'If we get the amount of output specified, your payment will be as agreed. And if you produce more than the norm, your payment will be higher.' '' If bad weather causes a crop failure, he added, there would still be payment, as specified in the contract.
A question for the future will be whether norms will be continuously raised, if overfulfilled, with a loss of incentives to the workers.
Productivity It appears likely that the Andropov regime will also push for collective contracts in industry and construction.
Mr. Andropov started out, soon after taking office in November, by attacking lax labor discipline, warning that those guilty of sloppy performance and absenteeism would be punished.
''Shoddy work, inactivity and irresponsibility,'' he said, ''should have an immediate and unavoidable effect on the earnings, official status and moral prestige of workers.''
But academic economists say the problems of productivity cannot be solved by ''campaigns.'' One Moscow economist who requested anonymity said in an interview that the Americans were lucky because they did not have the problem of full employment to deal with.
The assurance of getting a job, he said, is the root cause of slack effort and low productivity. While it is not impossible for a manager to dismiss a worker, doing so reflects badly on the manager as well as on the worker. And Soviet politicians take seriously the commitment to provide work for all.
Another barrier to efficient production, the economist said, is the inability of the government-run enterprises to fail. Without a profit-and-loss system, the sheriff never comes. Monopoly, the overwhelming pattern of industrial organization in the Soviet Union, obviates failure, but not inefficiency. Solutions Seem Vague
Soviet economists use generalizations for how they think the problem of low productivity and shoddy goods should be solved. They speak of the need for increasing not just the quantity but the quality of production, and for improving the quality of management.
''We need to make better use of financial resources,'' they said. ''We need to make better use of raw materials. We are trying to make our planning more responsible, more realistic, more balanced. It is easier to plan than to fulfill plans.''
Planning One hears some of the freest, frankest and most critical discussions of economic problems and the frustrations of trying to solve them at the very heart of the planning system, the Government's State Planning Committee.
Mr. Budayev, a deputy director of the agency's Economic Research Institute, said planning had its own problems, especially in regard to computerization.
An American specialist in computers found that ''interactive computing seems to be at least 10 years behind the state of the art in the United States.''
But the Soviet planners realize that the problems go far deeper than computing and forecasting, and extend to the entire control-andresponse system of economic enterprises in the absence of a flexible market-price mechanism to guide decisions. Flexibility on Pricing
Mr. Budayev said that he favored the use of more flexible prices, but that this was mainly the responsibility of the Government's State Committee on Prices. He added, though, that the planning agency plays a large role in investigating supply and demand and can influence price setting, for instance, to encourage technological innovation.
''Plants can be permitted to raise prices and gain bonuses for introducing new, effective technologies,'' he said. But he conceded that the plan had run into obstacles, especially from the State Bank, which provides the financing.
The investigation of consumer demand is crucial, Mr. Budayev said, and he said this was being done by organizing meetings with buyers and by conducting polls. But he said that such efforts were necessarily selective, and that the main job of sensing and responding to consumer demand rested with enterprise managers.
These managers cannot determine their own prices, but they can, as Mr. Budayev put it, ''make their proposals'' to the appropriate ministries, to the planning agency and ultimately to the Committee on Prices. The whole process of pricing, finance, investment and innovation is subject to the control of the State Bank and that of the concerned ministries.
State Bank At the central bank, Mr. Kulikov, chief of the currency and economics department and a member of the board, denied that the bank lacked flexibility or an appreciation of the importance of innovation.
''Just yesterday,'' he said, ''we agreed that some consumer goods could be sold on a credit basis - color TV's and furniture. The problem was that these goods had been overproduced and were being sold only on a cash basis. We try to be flexible.
''We don't take part in the fixing of prices. The only thing we can do is advise the Planning Committee and the Price Committee, for instance, if we think there is overproduction in certain goods.''
But he conceded that the bank might have a veto over pricing decisions by refusing to make loans to enterprises of whose actions it disapproved.
Conflict among agencies and their ability to block each other's decisions is one of the aspects of the Soviet system that inspires the greatest agony among managers out in the field. Six Main Problems
Vasily Morshin, head of the State Bank's economic planning administration, said the bank would take part, using its own methods, in solving the main problems in the economy. He defined these as building up heavy industry, improving agriculture, increasing the production of consumer goods, improving labor productivity, increasing the efficiency of foreign trade and aiding capital investment.
The State Bank is attacking these problems, he said, by providing working capital to enterprises. ''We are, in effect, the source of all working capital,'' he said. In granting capital, he added, the bank seeks to insure that ''all credits are purposeful.''
Is this the right function for a central bank? ''Western economists,'' Mr. Morshin said, ''all underestimate the planned nature of the Soviet economy. The monetary sphere is secondary to the productive sphere.''
Mr. Morshin said he was not at all worried about inflation. ''Practically speaking, as a matter of common sense,'' he said, ''we cannot have inflation, because the state controls prices and establishes a balance between money and goods. All wages and salaries are established beforehand.'' Disguised Inflation
In fact, however, the economy appears to suffer from disguised inflation, which takes the form of endless shortages and queues of people waiting to buy goods, no matter how shoddy the goods may seem.
Suppressed inflation and shortages appear to be the hallmark of this centrally planned economy, but it is difficult to imagine it collapsing. On the surface, it has a false glow of health - bustling crowds with plenty of money to spend, full employment, indeed a shortage of workers, whether menial or skilled.
But the fruits of such an economy are inefficiency, low productivity, low morale, grumpiness and surliness in the provision of services.
Prospects Out in Siberia, where the environment is freer and the struggle to get a job done under the toughest imaginable working conditions produces an impatience with Moscow bureaucrats and with the conventional ideology, the chief engineer of the coal strip mine at Neryungri, V.V. Vodopyanov, says: ''Do you know what I think is the fundamental thing wrong with this country? The absence of competition.''
His wife, an economist, disagrees. ''I think it is the character of the Russian people,'' she said. ''They will accept anything, put up with anything.''
Back in Moscow, Mr. Andropov and the rest of the Politburo seem prepared to count on that stolidity and resignation, and mean only to try to make the existing system work better.
To achieve this, Mr. Andropov has snatched out of the planning apparatus one of its most able men, Nikolai I. Ryzhkov, and made him the chief economic strategist in the Central Committee's Secretariat. Mr. Ryzhkov has been putting together a group, now reported to number about 200, to take a fresh look at economic plans and to recommend changes for improving the system. Administrative Changes
The first step is expected to be a program of administrative changes, aimed at reducing duplication of effort in economic decision-making; regrouping the sectors of the economy and the number of ministries, and appointing administrators whom Mr. Andropov trusts.
Such a strengthening of power and efficiency at the center is not regarded by economists in Moscow as inconsistent with moves toward more effective decentralization of responsibility.
''They recognize,'' said one economist, ''that they cannot run it all out of Moscow, and that it would create chaos to try.''
