e ministries,
and of county and local party committees participate in the work of the
general assemblies of employees. The reason given for this participation
is the opportunity that it provides for the management to become more
familiar with problems of interest to the enterprise.

Available evidence indicates a wide variation among enterprises in the
degree of influence exercised by the general assemblies of employees.
Toward the end of 1971 some management committees were still reported to
be disregarding or downgrading general assembly proposals, but such
instances were said to be growing progressively fewer.

Industrial enterprises are grouped into combines, trusts, and, since
1969, so-called industrial centrals. The centrals were created in an
attempt to improve the organizational structure of industry, reduce
control by the ministries and other central government agencies, and
provide greater flexibility, in order to increase industrial
efficiency. A major task assigned to the centrals is to introduce
specialization of production.

Neither the organizational forms of the centrals nor their authority and
responsibility vis-a-vis the enterprises and ministries have been
clearly defined or legally established. The resultant uncertainty,
experimentation, and bureaucratic disharmony have created considerable
confusion in the administration of industry, which has been inimical to
the attainment of the efficiency goal. At the same time, a variety of
factors, including a shortage of investment funds, an inflexible price
structure, and the method of evaluating enterprise performance, have
militated against the expansion of specialization. Industry officials
believe that it may require from three to five years to resolve the
organizational problems posed by the creation of the centrals and that
many other problems will have to be solved before specialization can
become a reality.

Industrial combines, trusts, and centrals function under the
jurisdiction of industrial ministries, of which there were eleven at the
end of 1971 (see ch. 8). Industrial ministries have undergone an almost
continuous process of reorganization. New ministries have been created;
old ones, abolished; still others, amalgamated and split. Spheres of the
ministries' activities have been reshuffled, and their internal
structures have been modified--all in the interest of improving
socialist industrial organization and raising the efficiency of
prod