In fact, Goldman says, at a Soviet economic forum he attended last Thursday, Yavlinsky said that his government did not want to be given money by Western nations. "They're so over-whelmed by their country's problems," he says. "That's just not what they want right now." Others argue that the project damaged reform efforts by diverting attention away from the question of internal commitment to reform.

Worse Than Useless?

"It skewed the whole debate," says Kramer, who calls the project "worse than useless." "It focused attention on the role of the West, which is really peripheral. We can't make them reform," he says.

But the project's participants maintain that their work has benefitted the course of economic change in the Soviet Union. They point out that if nothing else, the publicity surrounding the plan catapulted the topic of Soviet aid back onto the American agenda. Furthermore, says Nye, the project started people thinking about concrete reform goals. "It established in principle a plan for reform, at a time when a lot of people were saying that reform was impossible," he says.

Fischer says he thinks most of the criticism of the report has come from people who formed their opinions of it before it actually came out. "There was a lot of advance publicity and the publicity turned a lot of people off," says Fischer. "In terms of the actual substance of it I have no hesitation standing by it as an economist."

Not a Dead Document

There is little chance at this point that the controversial plan will be adopted explicitly. But Soviet officials say that the ideas it raises continue to play an influential role in debate over the future of their troubled economy.

They say that the central government of the newly-named Union of Sovereign States hopes soon to establish a plan of economic reform that will move them to a market-based economy. "Very frantic work is being carried out right now," says Yuriy N. Isakov, senior counsel for economic affairs at the Soviet mission in New York City.

Isakov says that within the next several weeks, Soviet officials expect to have a unified economic program to present to the people of their 12 republics and to the rest of the world. Economists in Moscow are considering a number of different possible models, he says, ranging from a loose Russian economic federation to a "unified economic space," extending as far west as the nations of Eastern Europe. And he says that the Allison-Yavlinsky plan is "by no means dead."

"It is a valuable document which draws attention to quite a number of useful ideas," Isakov says. "A part of [the final document] will definitely reflect the ideas of Mr. Yavlinsky, as well as of others," he says.

But it remains to be seen whether the new post-Soviet government will have the political authority to put any unified economic reform plan into practice. Harvard's scholars at the Russian Research Center are dubious, if not pessimistic. "Economically it's pretty easy to say what should be done, but it's difficult politically to tell if they'll be able to do it," says Kramer.

And Goldman says, "In the range of history, [the Allison-Yavlinsky proposal] didn't make matters any worse, but it certainly hasn't made them any better."

The Grand Bargain

The timetable for economic change proposed by the authors of the "Window of Opportunity" economic plan:

1991-1992