From the Publisher

By Louis A. Weil III

Everyone knows that the sick Soviet economy needs a remedy. But is there a prescription for converting a torpid communist behemoth into a sleek free- market machine? It was assistant managing editor Karsten Prager's idea that TIME, which has periodically convened groups of experts to diagnose the U.S. and European economies, could offer some friendly advice. In the spirit of glasnost, we called in a specialist to collaborate with TIME's Washington- based national-economics correspondent Richard Hornik in composing the Rx memo to Mikhail that appears in this week's business section.

Ed A. Hewett, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, was an easy choice. One of America's foremost authorities on the Soviet economy, Hewett has written or edited five texts on the subject. These days, the peripatetic economist is in high demand as a speaker and seminar participant. Even Soviet policymakers seek his advice. He is especially close to Nikolai Petrakov, Gorbachev's top economic adviser, which gives Hewett an inside angle on the challenges facing the reformers in Moscow.

Since joining TIME in 1978, Hornik, who holds a master's degree in Russian studies from George Washington University, has spent much of his time exploring communist economics. He was our man in Warsaw from 1981 to 1983, when the drive for reform was flagging, and in Beijing from 1985 to 1987. "It has been the theme of my career," says Hornik, "that I go to these places where they try to reform but never quite make it."

Gorbachev's announcement last week that he was postponing shock therapy for the Soviet economy -- the core of the remedy recommended by Hewett and Hornik -- has redoubled doubts about whether the U.S.S.R. will make it. Still, nobody is counting Gorbachev out yet. "We can't just take what he is saying, that he won't let prices float, at face value," says Hewett. "This is not the kind of thing that you announce with a lot of lead time." In the end, the Soviet President -- whom Hewett calls a "man I would not want to play poker with" -- may well find our authors' prescriptions more useful than he is letting on.