Article: Gathering nuts in May: the Soviet Union's overriding need for money has made Mikhail Gorbachev try to end the chill in his relations with the West. (American Survey)

THE gleam in President Gorbachev's eye is no less than a new Marshall Plan to reorganise the Soviet Union's economy, financed by the world's seven leading industrial countries, the G7. Short of this, he wants the Soviet Union tied more closely into the western economy, even as the ending of the cold war tied it closer to western diplomacy. But in Washington these overtures, which happen to have been delivered in a thoroughly unorthodox way, are being sniffed at most gingerly.

The lobbying of America has been a curious off-the-books exercise (see box on next page). on the Soviet side, the main figure is a young economist, Grigori Yavlinsky, who has no formal job ...