CONSUMER FRUSTRATIONS AND THE SOVIET REGIME

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP08S01350R000602150001-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 38
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 2, 2012
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 1, 1979
• Content Type: REPORT

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National
Foreign
Assessment
Center
/ Secret
Consumer Frustrations
and the Soviet Regime
A Research Paper
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PA 79-I0389C
August I09
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National
Foreign
Assessment
Center
Consumer Frustrations
and the Soviet Regime
A Research Paper
Research for this report was completed
on 23 August 1979.
The author of this paper is USSR?
Eastern Europe Division, Office of Political Analysis.
The paper has been coordinated with the Office of
Economic Research and with the National
Intelligence Officer for the USSR. Comments and
queries are welcome and should be directed to
h
Secret
PA 79-I0389C
August 1979
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Consumer Frustrations
and the Soviet Regime
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Key Judgments Soviet consumer discontent is growing and will cause the regime of the
1980s serious economic and political problems. Although deeply ingrained
habits of submission to authority continue to inhibit consumer assertiveness,
several developments are causing the patience of the Soviet consumer to
wear thin:
? Expanded contacts with the West have increased the access of the Soviet
people to foreign information, enabling them to compare their lot, as never
before, with that of other peoples.
? With the passage of time, World War II deprivations are receding in
popular memory, and official efforts to blame the losses of the war for
continuing deficiencies have become less persuasive.
? Marxist-Leninist ideology is waning as a force capable of mobilizing the
population to make personal sacrifices for the sake of loftier social goals.
? The advances that the regime has made in raising the standard of living
have themselves whetted the population's appetite for continued improve-
ments. The economic slowdown of the 1970s, coming after relatively rapid
progress in the late 1960s, has created considerable bitterness.
Frustration is greatest among Soviet youth and non-Russian nationalities:
? Soviet urban youth of all social classes appears to be extremely
materialistic, enamored of Western fashions and products, and less
appreciative than their parents of how much living conditions have improved
since Stalin's day. Although not openly rebellious, the typical young person
is deeply cynical.
? National minorities, particularly in the Western borderlands, tend to see
their economic woes caused by Russian exploitation. On several occasions in
recent years, economic and national grievances have combined to produce
large-scale demonstrations in the Baltic republics and in the Ukraine. The
approach of "hard times" will aggravate ethnic conflict and intensify
lobbying in Moscow for local interests.
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The regime has succeeded, for the time being, in "buying off' the upper
stratum of Soviet society through special perquisites and privileges, but
shrinking opportunities for upward mobility may make skilled workers and
intelligentsia lose faith in their ability to improve their material
circumstances.
Economic costs of present trends are already being seen in reduced
efficiency and productivity. Scarcity of consumer goods weakens material
incentives to work and contributes to a general malaise in the labor force.
Further, consumer discontent feeds a wide range of other economic and
social problems.
? Dissatisfaction with the standard of living is a factor promoting
economically counterproductive internal migration. In particular, the
exodus of youth from the villages to more attractive lives in the cities is
depleting the able-bodied rural work force. Generally, people are moving out
of areas that already suffer from manpower shortages and entering areas
that have labor surpluses.
? Much labor turnover within cities is also a response to living conditions.
Job turnover appears to be a serious drain on the economy, in terms of both
decreased productivity of workers new to a job and unemployment between
jobs.
? Deficiencies in the availability of housing, consumer goods, and services
contribute to the declining birthrate. The drop in the birthrate, in turn, is
one cause for the country's serious labor shortage.
? The great reservoir of unsatisfied consumer demand provides a powerful
impetus to private economic activity and official corruption, which tend to
erode the authority of the Party and raise questions about the efficacy of the
Soviet economic system.
? Crowded housing conditions, combined with the tedium of daily life,
contribute to an increasing rate of alcoholism, which promotes absenteeism
and industrial accidents and thus lowers economic output.
Although alcoholism, internal migration, and labor turnover affect the
economy adversely, and the regime considers private economic activity
undesirable for ideological reasons, the leadership is loath to take decisive
measures to eliminate these phenomena, viewing them as safety valves for
consumer discontent.
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After decades of neglecting consumer welfare, Soviet leaders have shown
growing concern in recent years, especially since the harvest failure of 1975,
over the political and economic costs of popular discontent with living
conditions. Brezhnev, in particular, has exhibited considerable apprehension
about the popular "mood." Nervousness about the morale of the population
has led the leadership to give more attention to consumer-oriented
programs.
Nevertheless, for reasons deeply rooted in Russian history and the
psychology of Soviet leaders, the regime's commitment to the expansion of
Soviet economic and military power continues to be the main consideration
in setting economic priorities. It seems unlikely that the current aged and
conservative leadership, on the eve of a succession, will initiate any
fundamental reordering of priorities to benefit the consumer, or any major
reform of the economic system to raise productivity.
Politically, the short-run consequences of continuing present policies will
probably not pose a genuine threat to the stability of the state. Deficiencies
in housing, consumer goods, and services, however damaging to morale, are
not likely to ignite disturbances unless conditions deteriorate a great deal.
Food shortages, by contrast, have led to active protest since 1975, but the
level of unrest has been manageable.
With the important exception of disaffected national groups, most of the
existing hostility over the standard of living is thus far diffuse. Soviet
citizens seeking reasons for economic shortcomings usually criticize
peripheral features, real or imagined, of the system?such as privileges for
the elite, corruption and managerial inefficiency, or extensive foreign
aid?rather than question the basic organization of the economy or the
regime's economic priorities.
Most Soviet citizens apparently underestimate the impact of military
spending on consumer well-being. In any case, popular fear of external
aggression is so strong as to preclude significant criticism of armaments
expenditures.
Strikes and protests during the past several years have generally not focused
on political objectives, nor have they, as a rule, been protracted. The
intelligentsia is estranged from the lower classes, making unlikely an
alliance between disaffected workers and human rights activists or other
dissidents. Soviet authorities have been able to contain disturbances by
shifting resources rapidly to bring temporary relief to troubled areas.
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In the longer run, however, consumer dissatisfaction could have severe
political consequences. The Soviet leaders can ill afford to ignore the
material demands of their increasingly acquisitive society. If, as projected,
economic growth declines to the point where the regime is unable to improve
or even to maintain the current standard of living by the mid-1980s, the
incidence of active unrest will certainly grow, forcing the leadership to
consider a reordering of its economic priorities.
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Contents
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Key Judgments
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The Dimensions of the Problem
1
The Traditional Psychology of the Soviet Consumer
1
Growth of Consumer Discontent
3
Placing the Blame
7
Attitudes of Different Groups
9
Urban and Rural
9
Intelligentsia and Workers
11
Nationalities
11
Youth
14
Social, Economic, and Political Costs of Consumer Discontent
15
Unrest and Active Opposition
15
Internal Migration and Labor Turnover
17
Labor Shortage
19
Illegal Economic Activity
20
Problems of Productivity and Inflation
21
Consumption of Alcohol
22
Leadership Perceptions and Attitudes
22
Present Concern
22
Traditional Attitudes
24
Proconsumer Advocacy in Recent Years
25
Outlook
28
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Consumer Frustration
and the Soviet Regime
The Dimensions of the Problem
Hard times are ahead for the Soviet consumer. The
Soviet economy is slowing down and, if current trends
hold, by the mid-1980s the standard of living will
stagnate.
In the three decades after World War II rapid
economic growth enabled the Soviet leadership to
pursue the twin goals of developing heavy industry and
competing with the United States as a military
superpower, with enough resources left over to bring
gradual but substantial improvements in the popula-
tion's standard of living. Between 1951 and 1975 per
capita consumption in the USSR rose by more than
250 percent.* In addition to quantitative increases, in
some areas substantial gains were made in quality. The
Soviet consumer ate, on the average, only half as many
potatoes in 1975 as in 1951, but he ate more than twice
as much meat. The styling of clothing improved
markedly as well. A consumer durable-goods industry
was built up from nothing. In 1960 only 8 percent of all
Soviet families had a television, 4 percent a refrigera-
tor, and 4 percent a washing machine, whereas by
1975, 74 percent had a TV, 62 percent a refrigerator,
and 65 percent a washing machine. Although the
urban housing shortage remains a major problem, per
capita living space almost doubled between 1951 and
1975.
Despite continuing deficiencies in the personal services
sector of the economy, per capita consumption of
services tripled between 1951 and 1975. Communal
services, health care, and education made impressive
gains from an already relatively high level.
The rate of growth in Soviet resources, however, is
shrinking rapidly. Already GNP growth has fallen
from an average annual rate of almost 6 percent during
the 1950s to 3.3 percent last year. Per capita consump-
tion, which grew by 5 percent a year during the late
* Economic data on consumption is provided more fully in "Soviet
Consumer Policy: Trends and Prospects,"in a forthcoming compen-
dium of papers entitled Soviet Economy in a New Prospective, that
was submitted to the Joint Economic Committee of the US
Congress
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1960s, fell to 2.9 percent during the 1971-75 plan
period. The final figures for the current five-year plan
ending in 1980 are not yet in, but it is clear that the
rate of consumption growth has dropped furtherE7
The food situation has been particularly bad during the
1970s, with virtually no gain in per capita food
consumption since 1975. This has been largely because
of harvest failures in 1972 and 1975. It is now clear
that the 1979 harvest will also be poor. The harshness
of the Soviet climate virtually guarantees that some
harvest failures will recur in the 1980s. Should the
Soviet Union have two crop failures in a row, the
regime would have no time to recuperate between bad
years. 25X1
It is expected that GNP growth will have declined to
less than 1 percent this year, further straining the
available resources of the economy. If the annual rate
of growth of military spending continues to hold steady
at 4 to 5 percent, while investment continues to grow
by the already diminished rate of 3 to 4 percent
annually, consumption will increase by less than 1
percent by the mid-1980s. 25X1
Any appraisal of where the Soviet Union will be five
years from now must take into account the bleak 25X1
outlook for the Soviet consumer. This paper considers
how the consumer views his situation and reacts to it,
what the economic and political costs of consumer
dissatisfaction are, how the Soviet leadership appears
to perceive the problem, and what the regime's options
are in attempting to deal with it. 25X1
The Traditional Psychology of the Soviet Consumer
The Soviet consumer's long history of political quies-
cence provides the background against which recent
evidence of discontent must be evaluated. Although
the traditional attitudes of the consumer appear to be
changing somewhat under the impact of changed
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conditions both within the Soviet Union itself and in
the Soviet Union's relations with the outside world,
many of these attitudes are still sufficiently strong to
inhibit consumer assertiveness
During most of the period since World War II most
Soviet people clearly believed their standard of living
was rising. In a generalized way they attributed this
rise to their socialist system of government. The regime
delivered enough material benefits to secure at least a
minimal level of compliance and passive acceptance of
its legitimacy. This was partly attributable to the
regime's economic performance, but the cultural
context and the population's vivid memory of much
harder times in the not-so-distant past also played a
role. Additionally, the consumer's lack of contact with
the outside world made it difficult to conceive of
alternatives to the Soviet way of life.
The average citizen's inclination to accept his personal
circumstances and the system of government under
which he lived as inevitable was accentuated by
centuries of authoritarian rule and decades of Soviet
propaganda. As a result, a preference for security and
stability over freedom and progress and an unusual
capacity for endurance and conformity remained
dominant features of the consumer's outlook. There is
no vigorous, articulate, and conscious public opinion.
An emigre who left the Soviet Union in 1975, when
asked about the popular attitude toward defense
spending, put it this way:
It is doubtful that there is an identifiable
popular notion about the "justifiability" of
defense spending; Russians do not think that
way. The government spent at whatever level it
saw fit, and people accepted it, if they thought
about it much at all, because Soviet govern-
ments always have made these decisions
without any kind of serious reference to the
people.
The Soviet collective memory stretches back beyond
the deprivations of World War II to the 1930s, when
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the central thrust of state policy was the subordination
of immediate human needs to the task of building
"socialism in one country" by forced industrialization
and the collectivization of agriculture. Gratified by
their rising standard of living after the war, Soviet
consumers considered deficiencies a legacy that would
yet be overcome. Even many of those who most sharply
criticized present "Soviet reality" expressed little
doubt that their economic problems would eventually
be resolved. "Just come back to see us in 10 or 20
years," American guides at the annual ICA (USIA)
exhibits were told.
World War II also reinforced the population's desire
for material security. Those who lived through the
deprivations of that period developed a "depressibn
mentality" that caused them to be reluctant to take
risks to acquire more material goods for fear of losing
the modest material gains they had made since the
war. Most Soviet citizens apparently continue to prefer
the assurance of a job, housing, and various
state-provided social services to a higher but less
certain standard of living. They see the welfare
features of Soviet socialism as advantages their system
enjoys over the West, where?their propagandists have
told them?ruthless competition, unemployment, peri-
odic depressions, and expensive private medical care
and education threaten the security of the individual.
Another characteristic of the Russian psyche which
has tempered popular criticism of the standard of
living is national pride, manifested in a tendency to
close ranks against foreign criticism and even against
Soviet dissidents who openly find fault with the system.
According to one plausible rumor, in Khrushchev's day
a strike over food shortages in Donetsk broke up when
the word was passed that if the strike continued, the
Voice of America would get wind of it. The people who
grumble in food lines are nonetheless anxious to
conceal their deprivation from Americans, whom they
assure "If there's no war, we'll soon catch up and
overtake you."
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USSR: Growth in Per Capita Consumption
Average Annual Rates of Growth
1961-65
1966-70
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1971-75
1976
1977,
1978
Total consumption
2.3
5.0
3.1
1.4
3.2
3.3
3.7
2.9
1.9
2.5
2.2
Food
1.6
4.2
1.6
-1.3
2.9
2.8
2.4
1.7
0.0
0.8
0.6
Soft goods
1.7
6.6
3.6
2.0
2.3
2.5
5.0
3.1
3.8
3.0
2.6
Durables
4.2
9.3
12.5
14.5
7.4
7.4
8.9
10.1
6.1
8.6
7.0
Personal services
4.3
5.3
4.8
4.8
4.6
5.0
4.9
4.7
4.0
3.1
3.6
Communal services
4.0
2.9
1.8
0.9
1.5
2.0
1.7
1.6
0.8
2.0
2.2
The Russian phrase "u nas luchshe" ("we have things
better here") exemplifies the national defensiveness
toward foreigners, the tendency to equate national
pride with acceptance of one's lot, and the failure to
distinguish between antiregime and antinational be-
havior. Before he became an unyielding critic of the
regime's economic performance, even Sakharov was
loath to blame Soviet socialism for economic deficien-
cies. In 1968 he contended that "in the provision of
high living standards. . . it is a drawn game between
capitalism and socialism." Such attitudes have played
a role in preventing popular frustrations over periodic
food shortages and chronic shortcomings in the supply
of consumer goods from escalating to active unrest or
to fundamental _questioning of the efficacy of the
Soviet system.
Growth of Consumer Discontent
Several developments threaten to erode the Soviet
consumer's fatalism. Improvements in modern com-
munications, together with steps taken by the regime
itself to liberalize contacts with the West, have
increased the Soviet population's access to foreign
information, causing many of them to adopt a new
standard of comparison for their material welfare. As
World War II grows dimmer in popular memory,
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many are increasingly looking with envy at the
contemporary West, rather than comparing their
situation with the grim Soviet past. A 1976
Kommunist article made the following remarkable
admission:
Detente's . . . expansion of contacts, including
economic contacts, with the highly developed
capitalist countries undoubtedly leads to a
certain enlargement of the range of material
expectations of Soviet persons, to the appear-
ance of new demands born on foreign
social-cultural soil, and.. . particularly among
the young, to moods, habits, and views charac-
teristic of the so-called consumerist style of life
and behavior. . . . As a subversive influence 25x1
[bourgeois propaganda makes use] of the fact
that the industrially more developed capitalist
countries still have a certain superiority in
producing various consumer goods.
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At the same time, the advances which have been made
in raising the standard of living have themselves
whetted the population's appetite for continued im-
provements. In the absence of a national crisis, Soviet
citizens are growin tired of sacrificing for a tomorrow
that never comes. 25X1
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Since 1973, when the Soviet Union stopped jamming
VOA, BBC, and Deutsche WeIle, these Western radio
stations have provided an alternative source of news to
millions of Soviet citizens. One study estimates that 40
percent of all Muscovites with secondary education
tune in regularly, and ICA exhibit guides find it almost
impossible to find visitors to the exhibit who do not
listen to VOA at least occasionally. Whatever the
exact size of the Soviet audience, it is clear that large
numbers prefer the crisp reporting of Western radios to
the Soviet media's didactic and soporific style. It is also
clear that Western broadcasts broaden the horizon of
Soviet citizens. Emigres report that such programs as
VOA's "Labor" series have led Soviet citizens to make
comparisons between daily life in the United States
and Soviet reality.
The influence of these broadcasts on public opinion is
recognized by Soviet authorities.
the Soviet population is significantly affected by
Western broadcasting, especially in the western parts
of the Soviet Union where Western television as well as
radio transmission is received. Officials in border
regions frequently warn their populace about the
seductive power of foreign broadcasting. Ukrainian
Party First Secretary Vladimir Shcherbitskiy has
publicly complained, for example, about foreign broad-
casts beamed at those in the Ukraine who dream about
a "consumer society."
The freer movement of peoples during recent years has
also increased the flow of information to the Soviet
citizen. The large numbers of Jews, Germans, and
Armenians who have emigrated to the West have,
provided relatives and friends in
the Soviet Union with positive impressions of the West,
feeding their growing curiosity about how other people
live. For example, a public lecturer in Leningrad in
1978 was asked why Jews who emigrate to the United
States are able to find such good jobs if unemployment
there is as bad as Soviet propaganda claims.
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/C?Llot only news from the West but also the increased
quantity of goods entering the Soviet Union from both,
Eastern and Western Europe?whether through legiti-
mate trade, parcels sent by emigres to relatives and
friends, or black market dealings?have brought home
to Soviet consumers the inferior quality of Soviet
merchandise.
Denigration of Soviet-made consumer goods and a
desire to acquire Western products have reached
unusual proportions; Western goods are almost auto-
matically preferred and assumed, prima facie, to be
superior to Soviet merchandise.
))
As a result of the partial opening up of Soviet society,
Soviet citizens have become more critical in evaluating
Party propaganda about conditions outside the Soviet
Union.
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Azerbaydzhan in 1976:
Beginning with the lowest worker, all
Azerbaydzhanis and other residents of
Azerbaydzhan knew perfectly well that living
standards were much higher in the West than in
Azerbaydzhan or elsewhere in the USSR.
Propaganda about widespread poverty in the
West was no longer credible.
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The emigre added that although Azerbaydzhan resi-
dents were totally ignorant of Western welfare state
measures, they believed that anyone who was willing to
work could achieve a decent standard of living in the
West. There was no feeling, in his view, that a
significant number of people in Western countries
were so unsuccessful in life that they were worse off in
material terms than most Soviet citizens.
Some Soviet citizens apparently perceive chaos in
Western economic life and are shocked to discover, if
they ever do, the true extent of disparity between
Soviet and Western living conditions. The following
description of a reaction to
an American supermarket during his first visit to the
United States is illustrative:
He was astonished at what he saw, and he used
up an entire roll of film taking pictures inside
the store. At the fresh vegetable display he
acted stunned and admitted that he had never
seen anything like it before. He said it was like a
museum for food.
Well-educated Jewish emigres from Moscow have
similarly indicated that they were overwhelmed by the
abundance of material goods in the West.
As more Soviet citizens become better informed about
Western conditions, invidious comparisons become
more frequent. Not many would go as far as the Soviet
observer at an ICA exhibit in Tashkent who wrote in
the visitors' book that "we have seen capitalism
rotting, but it smells good." Large numbers, on the
other hand, might sympathize with
"we hear a lot about how bad
things are in the West, but here we have nothing at
all."
It is also clear that the Soviet consumer's patience is
wearing thin. Efforts of the regime to blame continuing
deficiencies on the losses of the war years become less
persuasive as time passes, especially with the advent of
a new generation that did not live through the war. A
Soviet UN official observed in 1975 that in the past,
people were less demanding because they had some-
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thing to fight for, some national objective for which
sacrifices were understandable?victory in the war,
then reconstruction?but now the regime was running
out of excuses for not providing a higher standard of
living. 25X1
?)c)(1
tired of postponing th25X1
satisfaction of personal needs: "We have spent our lives
working like animals and are unable to buy even basic
items." 25X1
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Contributing to this mood is the increasing inadequacy
of Marxist-Leninist ideology as a mobilizing force. The
revelations of the de-Stalinization period created a 25X1
spiritual vacuum that has persisted. Khrushchev, after
dismantling Stalin's terror apparatus, attempted to
construct a "state of all the people," based on
expanded political partici ? ation and a broad "popu-
list" consensus of values. 25X1
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Khrushchev's ideological reformism, however, was
largely abandoned by the Brezhnev leadership, which
has sought a narrower legitimacy based on incremental
improvements in the standard of living and a relax-
ation of efforts at social transformation. Whereas
Khrushchev courted active political support and popu-
larity, domestic policies under Brezhnev seem designed
to reinforce passive compliance and political quies-
cence. His regime has staked much on its ability to
enable the individual to "breathe freely, work well, and
live quietly." 25X1
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In the absence of any loftier moral or ideological
criteria for evaluating the regime's policies, Soviet
citizens have apparently become less inclined to
tolerate deficiencies in the economic sphere. Seeing7x1
little to inspire in the cautious, opportunistic, and 25X1
bureaucratic policies of the aging Brezhnev leadership,
most of them have become extremely "bourgeois"25X1
minded, materialistic, and status conscious in their
private lives." The primary motivation of everyone
there,"
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was "personal gam.25X1
Sakharov, writing in the early 1970s, expressed the
view that "An indifference to social problems, an
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attitude of consumerism and selfishness, is developing
among the broad strata of the population. . .. Protest
against the deadening official ideology is. . . latent."
Politburo candidate Petr Masherov put it more bluntly
in a 1974 speech: "It is no secret that for some an
automobile, a dacha, stylish furniture, and other
purely material goods have almost become the main
purpose in life."
Finally, the leadership itself has taken actions that
encourage the expansion of consumer demands. The
regime's success in raising living standards has had the
treadmill effect of stimulating new demands. A 1977
Soviet book on consumption referred obliquely to the
insatiability of consumer demand, concluding that
material progress "not only fails to eliminate the
problem of shortages, but actually makes the problem
more acute." The perception that a "shortage" exists,
the author asserted, is due less to objective economic
conditions than to the subjective attitudes and expecta-
tions of individuals in a given sociopolitical context.
While the post-Stalin regime's performance in improv-
ing material benefits created new consumer demands,
its promises of more rapid improvement than it could
deliver awakened false hopes that ultimately led to
considerable disillusionment. Several emigres date the
current cynicism of Soviet citizens to the Khrushchev
period, when the Party made unrealistic promises to
the people. Relatively rapid advances in the standard
of living during the early Brezhnev years, and the
optimistic goals set for the 1971-75 Five-Year Plan,
which embodied a shortlived shift of priority to
consumer-goods production, brought a revival of popu-
lar expectations. The regime's failure to attain these
goals has apparently created widespread disenchant-
ment and even bitterness.
Most citizens today appear to view the regime's plans
for economic progress with a sense of deja vu.
Although some of them apparently retain a wooden
faith that their society is moving ahead in solving its
economic problems, there seems to be little confidence
in specific programs and widespread awareness that an
enormous gap separates official propaganda from the
actual circumstances of life.
Secret
Some
members of the intelligentsia express disgust at the
crude propaganda efforts, which they believe reveal a
disdain for the basic intelligence of the people. "How
can they think we're so stupid?" is a common reaction.
Although the consumer does not have the figures at
hand, the Soviet economic slowdown of the 1970s has
by no means gone unnoticed. A surprisingly large
number of German and Jewish emigres, who admit-
tedly are biased against the regime, believe that the
1970s have been worse than the 1960s, especially with
regard to diet. Although they correctly perceive that
the food situation has stagnated since the 1975 harvest
failure, some of them mistakenly believe that the
downturn of the 1970s has been absolute rather than
relative, that provisions were actually more ample in
the late 1960s. At a public lecture in Leningrad last
month the speaker's statement that statistics show a
per capita rise in meat consumption of from 16 to 19
kilograms over the last 14 years provoked a loud
"nonsense" from the audience, whereupon he admitted
that the increased "strain" in this area tended to make
people doubt the statistics. After the rapid advances of
the late 1960s, the slow progress of the 1970s seems to
many like no progress.
&appears, then, that the economic slowdown has
caused Soviet consumers to scale down their expecta-
tions but not their desires.
)
An
article published in a Soviet Academy of Science
journal in 1978 acknowledged that "present-day con-
ditions. . . tend to increase the danger of a structural
gap between consumption requirements and the actual
potentialities for satisfying them."
.,.-----'
The general feeling of the consumer seems to be that,
even making allowance for the difficulties of overcom-
ing the legacy of the past and the vagaries of the
6
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USSR: Per Capita
Meat Consumption
Kilograms
60
45
1970
72 74
76 78
580248 8-79
weather, life should be easier than it is. Aware that the
Soviet Union is wealthy in natural resources, consum-
ers evidently believe that something is somehow going
wrong, that the system is operating below its potential.
The most pressing consumer demand appears to be for
improvement in the diet, and particularly for increased
amounts of fresh meat, which many people have come
to consider a virtual necessity. Also of great concern to
Soviet citizens is the housing situation. Although there
is general recognition that rapid progress has been
made in housing construction, a Soviet sociological
journal last year summarized the conclusions of
various sociological studies as follows: "The need for
an immediate solution to the housing problem is
important to all workers." One Soviet official,
gave his opinion that of the various material
advantages enjoyed by US citizens the one most
coveted by Soviet citizens was the detached
single-family home. In the area of personal services
(tailoring, cleaning, shoe repair, and the like), de-
mands appear to be much lower, perhaps because the
7
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private sector to a large extent can fill the gap. Except
for the shortage of nurseries for children of working
mothers, complaints about deficiencies in communal
services are relatively rare. 25X1
Placing the Blame
Many Soviet citizens, in effect, blame each other for
their standard of living. They attribute their economic
problems to low productivity and the fact that no one is
willing to work hard. Some members of the intelligen-
tsia blame flaws in the production system, such as the
low priority given to consumer-goods production and to
the service sector, the use of success indicators for
production based on rubles and volume rather than
assortment or quality, the divorcing of consumer
demand from production decisions, and the officially
retarded system of material incentives. Most citizens,25X1
however, have the feeling that the problem in the
system lies in distribution rather than production.
There is a strong feeling that plenty of food and quality
consumer goods are being produced, but that for
various reasons these do not find their way to the state
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Foreign aid is almost universally seen as a direct cause
of shortages at home. In a typical exchange, a cab
driver explained to a US Embassy officer in Moscow
last year that whenever the Soviet Union gets involved
overseas, "meat disappears from the stores." Although
the man on the street has no way of knowing how large
is the tab for foreign aid, he assumes that huge
amounts of agricultural produce are diverted to
overseas allies. Rumors of railroad cars being loaded
under cover of darkness with provisions for Vietnam
and of US wheat being resacked in Soviet bags for
shipment to Cuba circulate regularly. 25X1
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that "everything seems to be sent abroad." A group of
workers reportedly circulated leaflets in Leningrad in
1972 decrying the squandering of Soviet money 25X1
abroad. The population's resentment of exports is 25X1
indicated by the defensiveness of public lecturers, who 25X1
have played down the dimensions of foreign aid in
recent years, assuring their audiences that it places no
serious economic burden on the Soviet Union. 25X1
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Many Soviet citizens begrudge East Europeans the
material advantages they enjoy. The wife of a Soviet
diplomat remarked that
Soviet people were "enraged" by the inequity between
the Soviet and East European standards of living.
According to a recent emigre
sentiment is strong
among middle-level officials for making East Euro-
pean countries pay their own way: "They are very fat
now; it wouldn't be terrible if they took less." Most
Soviet citizens, however, evidently see Eastern Europe
as a legitimate part of the Soviet Union's historic
domain. This apparently attenuates their resentment
over having to shoulder the "burden of empire."
More distasteful is aid to remote areas like the Middle
East, Vietnam, Cuba, and Africa. Aid to these areas is
seen as mindless spending which gains the Soviet
people nothing. The man on the street dislikes aid to
the Third World not only because of the perceived
economic drain but also because of the "ingratitude"
shown by some recipients of Soviet largesse, particu-
larly the Arabs. This attitude reflects a racism that
charactericizes the thinking of many even well-
educated Soviet people.
Concern about spending for foreign aid does not extend
to military spending in general. Most Soviet citizens
appear to underestimate the level of military spending
and its impact on other spheres of the economy. In any
case, fear of external aggression since World War II,
together with fear of China in recent years, has been so
strong as to make most people willing to believe that
whatever amount is spent on armaments is necessary
for survival. According to one emigre:
Fear of war was so widespread that official
announcements of new weapons programs were
usually greeted with deep satisfaction.... In
fact, these announcements were made in the
spirit of "Christmas presents" and were almost
universally applauded.
In addition to concern about foreign aid, there is a fair
amount of popular envy of the special privileges
enjoyed by Party and government elites, privileges
which are widely seen as flying in the face of
Communist egalitarian principles. A Party member-
Secret
ship card is sometimes called a "bread card," since it
gives one access to specially stocked stores.
Criticism of these privileges and jokes about them
abound. Some are directed at Brezhnev personally. A
story making the rounds, for example, has Brezhnev
inviting his mother to Moscow to show off his luxurious
quarters. After the grand tour, she responds: "It's
good, Leonid, but what if the Reds come back?" Some
people believe that the reason for the meat shortage
after the 1975 harvest failure was that the best meat
was reserved for Party and government leaders.
More common than criticism directed at the top
leadership is criticism of rampant corruption and inept
management within the country at large. It is
popularly believed that wheeler-dealers and black-
market operators skim off the best products before
they reach the stores. Corruption is seen sometimes as
taking the form of a well-organized, Mafia-like
conspiracy, sometimes merely as a matter of every
little man trying to get a piece of the action (the
butcher selling choice cuts of meat at inflated prices
under the counter, for example). In any case, many
people apparently believe that the distribution of oods
is determined lar el b ?ersonal connections.
CAside from corruption, managerial inefficiency and
technological backwardness of the transportation and
distribution system are often blamed for enormous
waste of products. The ordinary citizen realizes that
distribution of goods is chaotic, with one city experi-
encing a shortage of a particular item while a
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neighboring region has a surplus
Emigres also indicate awareness that inadequate
storage and refrigeration facilities at-esresponsible for
considerable spoilage.
Soviet citizens occasionally express the view that the
regime's failure to establish better trade relations with
the West has had an adverse effect on their standard of
living. At the dawn of the detente era many Soviet
citizens had high hopes that improved relations with
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the United States would bring about a dramatic
change in the quality of their lives. Their hopes have
faded considerably. Most of them are aware that the
United States sells grain to the Soviet Union, but they
are generally disappointed that detente has brought
more Western computers than Western consumer
goods into the Soviet Union. Some of them believed
Brezhnev was to blame for the rejection of the trade
agreement of 1975, "causing Soviet stores to remain
empty." Others accuse the United States of deliber-
ately restricting trade and denying them access to
coveted Western merchandise. A visitor to the ICA
exhibit in the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhe expressed
the frustration, as well as the continuing hope, of many
when he told American guides: "In future, there will be
more trade with the US. if you don't do it freely, we'll
impose it on you." 25X1
Attitudes of Different Groups
25X1
Urban and Rural
Discontent over the standard of living appears to be
greater in major cities, perhaps because of the greater
contact of city dwellers, especially in tourist centers
like Moscow and Leningrad, with the outside world.
Their dissatisfaction is tempered, however, by the
Soviet Citizens Grinning and Bearing It
Soviet jokes illustrate consumer frustrations:
"If someone breathes on you and has onion on his
breath, he is living beyond his means."
"If you knock and they don't answer, they are
drinking coffee."
Question: "What is 50 meters long and eats
cabbage?"
Answer: A line outside a Russian butcher shop."
Question: "Is it possible for a horse to gallop from
Leningrad to Moscow?"
Answer: "In theory yes, but in practice no, because
the horse would be eaten along the way."
Question: "What was the worst thing about the
Tsars?"
Answer: "They left only enough meat to last for 60
years."
Question: "How is the neutron bomb different from
other bombs?"
Answer: "If the neutron bomb were dropped on
Moscow, all the buildings would be left standing.
Everything would remain the same, only no lines."
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widespread perception that residents of small towns,
not to speak of collective farmworkers, are much worse
off than they. Soviet visitors to the United States have
expressed amazement that in the United States there is
no significant discrepancy in the supply of material
goods in cities and in small towns. City residents of all
social classes are generally aware that the Soviet food
supply system has several tiers, with major cities (and
cities designated "Hero" cities because of their roles in
World War II) in the most-favored category. There is
a rationale for this preferential treatment. Residents of
large cities, who live in apartments and therefore are
unable to plant gardens or keep poultry, are harder hit
by shortages of fresh produce. They are comparatively
blessed, however, with regard to all processed foods
and consumer goods, as evidenced by the large
numbers of people from outlying areas who come to
major cities to shop on the weekends. The significance
of this influx of shoppers is not lost on city residents. A
popular joke making the rounds in Moscow this year is:
Question: What is long, green, and smells of
sausage?
Answer: A suburban train pulling out of Mos-
COW
(Residents of smaller cities, particularly isolated Sibe-
riari towns dependent on outside supplies, are aware of
the relatively poor quality of their lives. Their higher
salaries and longer vacations, which facilitate
long-distance shopping trips, only partially compensate
for their unattractive living conditions.
Secret
In some small towns resentment of the privileges of the
urban centers is apparently less serious
as far as food supply is concerned, at least
some residents of small towns feel lucky in having
access to local produce and actually "pity the poor
people who live in cities,"
We
generally concur with dissident Andrey
Amalrik that "how this class views itself, and what it
wants, is known, I think, to nobody." It is clear,
however, that mass education, improved transporta-
tion, and the movement of large numbers of peasants
into the industrial work force have gone far toward
bringing the villages out of their past isolation and
ignorance. Pravda noted in 1975 that 30 percent of
rural Soviet adults had lived for at least a year in cities,
while two-thirds of rural residents visit cities regularly.
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The spread of radio and television to the countryside
has also had a great impact. Izvestiya in 1971 drew
these conclusions:
Under the influence of all these processes, a
profound reorganization is taking place in the
very nature of the rural personality, a change
that is evening out people's requirements and
demands and forming identical social norms of
behavior for the city and the countryside. As a
result, each new generation of rural residents
has a sharper perception of the same (or
somewhat diminished) differences between liv-
ing conditions in the city and the countryside.
In this sense, the "revolution" of rising expectations
has reached the peasant population. Just as moderniza-
tion and mobility make the city dweller more inclined
to compare his living conditions with those of the West,
the peasant compares rural conditions with city life in
the Soviet Union itself. According to a 1975 study, 59
percent of the rural workers in the Novosibirsk area
believed that life in the city was better than on the
farm. Unlike the city resident, however, the peasant
has a remedy for his dissatisfaction; he can move to
town.
Intelligentsia and Workers
By bestowing perquisites and privileges on the upper
stratum of society, the regime appears to have "bought
off' the intelligentsia,* giving it a stake in the
preservation of the status quo. Through a special
system of stores and other special benefits for different
groups of the elite, Soviet citizens with high incomes or
privileged status have access to consumer goods and
foods not available to the "common run" of Soviet
citizens.
Reduced social mobility, in recent years, however, may
be working to increase the dissatisfaction of both the
intelligentsia and skilled workers. In the early years of
Soviet rule the changes in social structure, rapid
industrialization, Stalinist purges, and manpower
losses of World War II created huge numbers of job
openings at managerial levels. The existence of broad
* White collar workers with higher education.
11
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economic and social opportunity softened the impact of
deprivation for many individuals. 25X1
CAs the economy matures and economic growth slows,
'Soviet society is losing some of its fluidity.
' Literaturnaya gazetta noted recently that "the times
for soaring careers are past." The intelligentsia, in
particular, is beginning to resemble a self-perpetuating
elite. Recent Soviet sociological studies suggest that
workers are encountering increasing difficulty in
propelling themselves or their children into the intelli-
gentsia. For many in the intelligentsia merely holding
their own is becoming difficult. Soviet schools are
evidently turning out more engineers and other profes-
sionally qualified people than the economy can absorb.
As a consequence, large numbers of new graduates are
forced to work as manual laborers or to work in their
area of specialization at substandard pay.
...J 25X1
A stringent job market for those with skills and
education may in the short run result merely in 25X1
heightened competition between individuals. The scar-
city of jobs for engineers, for example, in a sense 25X1
enables the regime to employ "negative" incentives for
fidelity, to play on the fear of losing the job one has
rather than the hope of gaining a better one. Engineers
are reportedly much less assertive than many manual
laborers, who in this current period of labor shortage
do enjoy job security. Ultimately, however, the shrink-
ing opportunities for upward mobility and the tendency
for the intelligentsia to become a closed group may
have the effect of making skilled workers and intelli-
gentsia lose faith in their ability to improve their
material circumstances. 25X1
Nationalities
In general, members of each Soviet nationality assume
that their group is not getting its fair share in the
allocation of resources. Discontent over the standard of
living is evidently highest in the Western
borderlands?especially in the Baltic republics and the
Ukraine. Not only are these areas more susceptible to
Western influences because of geographic proximity
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and historical association, but they have greater access
to Western radiobroadcasts. They also have more
contact and familiarity with conditions in Eastern
Europe.
In the Baltics the majority of the population probably
believes that the wealth of their republic is being
siphoned off by the Russians. Members of the older
generation remember the 1920s and 1930s as a period
of prosperity, and they appear to resent bitterly what
they view as economic exploitation at the hands of the
Russians in subsequent years. Many Estonians are said
to believe that their standard of living would be on a
level with that of Finland were their republic allowed
to consume what it produced rather than export goods
to other Soviet republics. Russian shoppers waiting in
food lines in Latvia have been jostled and told that
"We [Latvians] were better off before you came." Last
year in Kaunas, Lithuanians draped a pig in a banner
that read "You have taken all my relatives to Russia,
take me too!" and released the animal in the main
street.
The Baltic people are aware, of course, that their
standard of living is the highest in the Soviet Union.
Many appear to believe that the regime is especially
fearful of provoking unrest among them and that
consequently they are allowed to keep a higher
percentage of their agricultural output than would
otherwise be the case. Many Baltic residents take
comfort and pride in their conviction that a "Baltic
priority" offers them some immunity from deprivation.
Some Russians are jealous of the higher standard of
living of the Baltic area. They also apparently envy
what many see as great wealth obtained by illegal
means by black market operators in the Caucasian
republics. And many Russians resent the burden they
have been given to help develop the relatively disad-
vantaged Central Asian republics.
Secret
Discontent over living conditions occasionally erupts
into serious ethnic friction. Consumer discontent and
national grievances apparently combined to produce
the major riots which took place in the Dnepropetrovsk
area of the Ukraine in 1972. Last year a large-scale
demonstration lasting several days took place in
Abkhazia, which is administratively part of the Geor-
gian republic. Among other grievances, Abkhazi
nationalists protested what they regarded as economic
exploitation of their area by the Georgians. Among
their wide-ranging demands were improved consumer
services and products. In 1977 in Vilnius, the capital of
Lithuania, thousands of young people participated in
an anti-Russian demonstration in which economic
themes were voiced: "We want to eat Lithuanian bread
again, and our own meat." Again in 1977, a Tallin
warehouse containing meat scheduled for shipment
elsewhere in the Soviet Union was reportedly burned,
and a Latvian food train bound for Russia was
sabotaged. In 1976 Riga dockworkers refused to load
food products slated for export on Soviet ships. In
Lithuania this year there has reportedly been consider-
able resentment of Latvians coming to Lithuania to
shop. Latvian cars have been spra ed at ni ht with the
words, "Don't take our meat."
Consumer interests of national groups are manifested
more often in political competition for resource alloca-
tions than in active unrest. This kind of competition is
incessant and endemic to the Soviet system; a republic
leader responsible for his republic's economic perfor-
mance naturally defends its interests in Moscow.
Republic leaders, presumably in response to pressure
from below, have occasionally pressed their cases so
vigorously that they have incurred the wrath of central
authorities.
The classic case of economic "localism" was in the late
1950s, when the top Latvian leaders were purged amid
accusations that they had pressed unduly for increased
investment in the republic's light industries and food
processing plants and for increased local consumption
of local produce. The former head of the Party in
Lithuania, before he died in 1974, had gained a
reputation for pushing various sorts of local develop-
ment and for successfully fending off Moscow's efforts
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to increase meat procurement from his republic. In
1963 the chairman of the Ukrainian Council of
Ministers was rumored to have resisted Khrushchev's
demands for increased grain shipments out of the
Ukraine.
As the Soviet economic pie spreads more slowly in the
1980s, dividing it up will be more difficult. The
approach of "hard times" will probably aggravate
ethnic conflict and intensify lobbying at the center for
local interests.
Youth
Without a doubt the most materialistic group in Soviet
society are young people, especially those in the cities.
A construction worker in Kishinev and a chauffeur in
Frunze, in separate conversations with US Embassy
officers, both used the same term to characterize
Soviet youth: "acquirers." Urban young people of all
classes, not excluding the children of the elite, are
apparently strongly motivated by a pursuit of pleasure.
Their desire for things Western has approached a
mania. ICA exhibit guides have encountered many
young people who seem to think that the United States
is a land of milk and honey.
Loyal members of the Soviet establishment have
complained privately to American diplomats that their
own children simply do not appreciate the enormity of
the advances in the living standard since Stalin's day,
and official spokesmen have expressed considerable
concern about the matter. Brezhnev, for example, said
in a 1973 speech that
We people of the older generation have the
opportunity to see and compare the contrasts of
the past and the present. Our young people, who
were born after World War II, cannot see these
contrasts themselves; it is so difficult for them
to visualize the poverty and misery we have
seen.
Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolay Shchelokov
complained in a 1978 article that youth take their
standard of living for granted:
People have begun to live better and have more
material goods. In certain families these goods
are undervalued in the eyes of adolescents. . . .
Secret
The adolescent does not connect these goods
directly with the labor efforts of the family.
Soviet youth's material self-indulgence is accompanied
by a pronounced lack of interest in public service and
political studies. Soviet officials have privately and
publicly bemoaned youth's lack of direction and
responsibility, associating these with an overall decline
in public morality. Various public opinion polls suggest
that increasing numbers of young people find Party _
propaganda boring and irrelevant to their personal
lives. Respondents to questionnaires display declining
interest in civic-minded activities, such as work on a
new construction project, while openly acknowledging
the importance they attach to such goals as the
acquisition of an automobile or a better apartment.
According to one Soviet study, only 3 percent of
students in their final year of university study are
engaged in voluntary public work. Of 1,200 students in
the central Russian city of Voronezh who were asked
what they liked about their Komsomol (Communist
Youth) club, almost 1,100 responded "nothing." Ac-
cording to
one unpublicized sociological study of youth in 12
cities revealed that the dominant views were:
? Civic and political work is pointless; truthful infor-
mation is impossible to get, and the information
available is not worth bothering about.
? Social life is chaotic, structureless, and senseless;
truth is subjective and arbitrary.
? The collective is a fiction; everyone thinks of himself
and pursues his personal aims.
? Creativity and pleasure are the only things worth
bothering about.
That Soviet young people are extremely cynical about
living conditions is supported by much anecdotal
evidence. A US Embassy officer, for example, reported
that during a visit to a famous monkey farm on the
Black Sea, one Soviet tourist remarked that the
pampered monkeys seemed to eat mostly what people
ate. A swaggering youth in the group then asked if the
monkeys were given meat. "No," replied the atten-
dant. "Ah," said the young man, "then there is no
difference.'
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Such attitudes do not make Soviet youth politically
rebellious. If the price for the satisfaction of their
material desires is passive acceptance of the regime,
they seem willing to pay. If the system does not deliver,
their reaction is not to confront it but to circumvent it
by personal connections or forays into the black
market. Official discussions of juvenile delinquency
stress the link between a "consumer mentality" and
"antisocial" behavior.
The passion of youth for things Western is generally
limited to the externals, the superficial aspects of
? Western civilization. The young people covet Western
goods and imitate Western fashions and lifestyles
rather than Western ideas. Thus far, by lowering the
standards of approved conduct and incorporating the
more innocuous elements of the youth's subculture into
the system, the regime has succeeded in preventing
them from becoming alienated from Soviet society.
Even the Komsomol has bent its standards to sponsor
once taboo activities, such as Western-style fashion
shows and rock concerts, and some effort has been
made to adopt Western fashions in the manufacturing
of clothing. Several years ago, for example, the Soviet
Union began to produce jeans, once thought to be a
symbol of the "decadent" West, and is currently
negotiating a contract with American jeans manufac-
turers. In the face of mounting economic difficulties,
however, the regime doubtless regards the growing
acquisitiveness of Soviet young people as a problem
that will bear watching in future years
Social, Economic, and Political
Costs of Consumer Discontent
Unrest and Active Opposition
Discontent in recent years has largely been expressed
"--iii7elatively harmless ways. Audiences at public
lectures, for example, have apparently become more
assertive in exchanges with official spokesmen. "Why
has there been no meat for some time now in several
cities, including Arkhangelsk?" asked a man at a
Leningrad lecture in 1978. At a Moscow lecture in
1972 an irate citizen subjected the speaker to questions
about living conditions which were unrelated to the
lecture topic. "I want to talk about the standard of
living," he insisted. "You are annihilating us.'
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Another forum for criticizing shortcomings are citi-
zens' letters to various official bodies. According to a
recent article by Politburo member Konstantin
Chernenko, who supervises the Central Committee
General Department, the number of letters to party
organs increases every year. It is possible that the
increase in letters reflects increased hope of official
responsiveness to demands from below, but the letters
also testify to considerable disgruntlement.
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In theory the economic grievances of the population
could be tapped by the small circle of active political
dissidents. Such a convergence of economic and
political dissent would have significant implications for
the future of Soviet society. Thus far, however, worker
participation in even the basic "human rights" move-
ment has been minimal. Workers, for example, made
up only 40 of the 700 signatories of petitions protesting
a major dissident trial in 1968.
Few of the economic disruptions in recent years have
had political overtones. During a 1977 strike at a coal
mine in a West Ukrainian town, placards reportedly
carried the slogan "Down with Brezhnev." Last spring,
according to persistent rumors, an attempt was made
against the life of Avgust Voss, First Secretary of the
Latvian Communist Party. A few months later rumors
surfaced of a similar attempt against the Estonian
Party chief.
Typically, however, disturbances have taken the
form of brief strikes with limited and localized
economic objectives. Invariably, such strikes have
ended with the authorities taking temporary measures
to alleviate food shortages in the troubled area.
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Cooperation between dissident intellectuals and work-
ers is impeded not only by the workers' lack of political
"consciousness," but also by the intelligentsia's dis-
trust of the lower classes, whom they have traditionally
seen as a "dark," potentially destructive, and uncon-
trollable element. Only rarely have intellectuals di-
rectly addressed popular economic concerns. Anton
Koval, a Ukrainian dissident, in 1969 called for
increased wages and consumer goods for the lower
paid. A 1970 "samizdat" (unpublished) booklet by one
V. Severnyy, who examined the food supply problem in
detail and predicted that by the end of the 1980s "the
country will find itself faced with a universal food
shortage," advocated the development of a mixed
economy. Dissident Andrey Sahkarov has advocated
the expansion of private plots for collective farm
peasants. In 1978 Sergey Cheremukhin wrote criti-
cally about spending money on space exploration:
"Why all this, with our poverty? With our yearly
increasing shortage of food supplies?" In general,
however, samizdat writers pay scant attention to the
economic grievances of the masses. Except for some
non-Russian dissident nationalists, dissident
intellectuals are preoccupied with cultural freedom
and civil liberties to the exclusion of economic themes.
The intelligentsia's condescension toward the
"masses" and their wariness of reform initiatives
emanating from the working class were clearly shown
in the case of the "Free Trade Union" organized in
1977 by Vladimir Klebanov, a coal miner from the
Ukraine. Klebanov, who wanted to protest various
ways in which he believed workers were ill treated,
initially tried to join a Moscow-based organization of
dissident intellectuals but was reportedly cold-
shouldered. After Sakharov and others expressed
reservations about Klebanov, indicating concern that
he was somehow not a legitimate dissident, Klebanov
launched a separate organization of his own, announc-
ing that intellectual "champions of human rights"
turned out to have little concern for ordinary workers:
"They consider themselves above us."
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Klebanov's organization, which claims to represent
several hundred workers from different parts of the
Soviet Union, has offered the most coordinated and
articulate expression of workers' grievances in recent
years. The agitation of this group, which continued
even after Klebanov himself was thrown into a
psychiatric hospital, eventually led the dissident CSCE
Monitoring Group to issue a guarded statement
expressing an "interest" in the activities of the Free
Trade Union and a hope that such spontaneous unions
would be tolerated by the authorities, as required by
17
law. The Klebanov incident suggests that class barriers
are strong enough to prevent an effective alliance
between disaffected workers and intelligentsia.
Internal Migration and Labor Turnover
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of the 18 million Soviet
citizens who annually migrate from one place to
another within the Soviet Union, more than 70 percent
move in search of better jobs and better living
conditions. The boredom and desolation of provincial
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life, created in part by low standards in everyday life
and by inadequate educational and cultural facilities,
probably provide the greatest impetus to the exodus
from country to city, judging from polls of people
moving out of rural areas.
Migration and urbanization, as natural consequences
of industrialization, have traditionally been seen by the
Soviet regime as progressive trends. In recent years,
however, much internal migration has been economi-
cally counterproductive. Generally speaking, people
are moving out of areas that already suffer from
manpower shortages and are entering areas that have
labor surpluses. This is true not only of movement from
country to city within republics but of the population
flow between republics. Rural dwellers in under-
populated areas of Siberia are more inclined to move to
town than their counterparts in overpopulated areas of
Central Asia, Moldavia, and the Caucasus. By the
same token, there is a net out-migration from the
labor-short Russian Republic, while the Ukraine, with
an adequate labor force, has a net in-migration. In the
words of one Soviet economist, "The pattern of
migration is at odds with the manpower needs of
agriculture." According to Viktor Perevedentsev, the
leading Soviet demographer, "The net population
outflow from areas with a manpower shortage" is not a
response to labor market forces but "an index of the lag
of those areas in terms of the living standard."
Rural out-migration has other consequences that are
undesirable from the regime's standpoint. Those un-
willing to stay "down on the farm" tend to be young,
educated males. Their departure depletes the able-
bodied rural work force more than the actual numbers
of migrants would seem to indicate. An increasing
proportion of the collective and state farm population
is made us of women and relatively unproductive social
"dregs.'
Dissatisfaction with living conditions also fuels labor
turnover, a problem closely related to internal migra-
tion. Soviet sociologists see a change in jobs, like a
move from one area to another, as "a special way of
criticizing certain shortcomings in the sphere of work
and daily life." One sociological survey showed that
only 40 percent of workers on the Baykal-Amur
Mainline in Siberia who lived in trailers planned to
stay on the job, compared with 79 percent of those
living in apartments. Other surveys have confirmed
that discontent with the overall standard of living is
often as important as factory conditions in causing job
shifts.
The high rate of labor turnover suggests that workers
are becoming more conscious that the country's
increasing labor shortage enables them to "bargain"
for better job and living conditions, simply by leaving
one job for a better one. lzvestiya, discussing the
problem of labor discipline, has quoted a conversation
with a farm machinery operator in southern Siberia
that reveals the worker's heightened awareness of his
independence:
You can't scare me. People aren't exactly
rushing to our steppes?it's a hard life out here.
I have the money to pick up and move to a place
more to my liking. . . . There's no sense trying
to influence me with threats. That would be all
right if there were 10 unemployed workers
standing in line for my ob?then fear is the
best teacher.
Factory managers, scrambling to find workers, com-
pete with each other in offering benefits.
1 t)
Pravda has reported that about 70 percent
of those who change jobs get wage boosts. In addition,
emigre reporting indicates that some desperate factory
managers provide illegal inducements, such as allow-
ing workers to keep a portion of the gods they produce
for sale on the black market.
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This competition, by creating uneven benefits, merely
has the effect of providing greater incentives to move.
lzvestiya in 1971 pinpointed the problem:
The motives for quitting jobs are engendered
not so much by the level of pay and production
conditions, the possibility of obtaining housing,
and the like as by the presence of differentiated
conditions in various spheres of the national
economy, enterprises, and economic regions. If,
for example, it is possible at one plant to obtain
an apartment after working there for one year,
while at another plant it takes two years, this is
a motive to quit. The point is not that a man is
not able to improve his housing conditions at his
previous location, but that he can do so more
quickly on another job.
Some economic managers try to increase wages
above the socially necessary level in order to
attract manpower and to achieve a temporary
labor influx. But then the pay is raised at the
other plants, and a reverse movement begins. In
simpler terms, some managers have taken the
path of "luring" cadres away from their neigh-
bors. Obviously, this does nothing to increase
labor resources.
Labor turnover is not, in and of itself, disadvantageous
to the regime. It is in the country's economic interest to
attract workers to new, high-priority industrial areas
suffering from acute labor shortages. In many cases,
however, it is precisely these new industrial towns that
lack the housing facilities and the consumer conven-
iences needed to induce workers to remain on the job.
A recent article in Plannovoye khozyaystvo observed:
Opportunities for higher earnings can be
depended on to bring workers to regions where
labor is in short supply. Getting them to stay,
however, depends on living conditions.
Dissatisfaction with those conditions is the
main reason why people leave a place, fail to put
down roots.
During his trip to Siberia last year Brezhnev directly
addressed the problem of labor attrition, which he
attributed to "the insufficiency of housing and the lag
in cultural and personal service construction."
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Since job turnover appears to be virtually unregulated
by Moscow, Soviet economists regard it as a serious
drain on the economy, in terms of both decreased
productivity of workers new to a job and in unemploy-
ment between jobs. One Soviet economist has esti-
mated that each job chan e results in an average of 28
days' working time lost. 25X1
In spite of its economic cost, high labor turnover does
perform one function that is desirable from the
regime's standpoint. The right to quit one's job is a
safety valve for labor tension and probably prevents
labor unrest from becoming more serious.
Labor Shortage
Shortages of consumer goods and services are one
cause of the rising divorce rate and the declining
birthrate in most parts of the European Soviet Union.
The drop in the birthrate, in turn, is creating a serious
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Almost all urban mothers are employed, and most also
do the bulk of the housework, shopping, and child care.
Not only do Soviet mothers have to get along without
such conveniences as disposable diapers, clothes dry-
ers, dishwashers, and convenience foods, but they also
are burdened with the task of shopping, made more
time-consuming by chronic shortages and by the
general lack of consolidated supermarkets. According
to Soviet statistics, families spend an average of 1.9
hours a day shopping. In 61 percent of the families
women alone do the shopping; in 17 percent another
family member does the shopping; in 19 percent
husband and wife share the duty; in only 3 percent do
husbands do the shopping by themselves. The net
result, according to one Soviet sociological study, is
that the Soviet woman's work load is, on the average,
20 percent higher than that of the Soviet man. Mothers
work one and a half hours for every hour that childless
women work. The time expended on "woman's work"
has discouraged large families and has created frustra-
tions that contribute to a climbing divorce rate.
The housing shortage in a country where an estimated
one-fourth of the urban population lives in communal
apartments also discourages large families. The USSR
Institute for Sociological Research
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isolated two major causes for the
declining birthrate?the perceived inability to support
a large family financially and difficult living condi-
tions, especially cramped housing.
One Soviet poll has indicated that urban Soviet women
want two or three times as many children as they have
now. A survey of city dwellers in the European Soviet
Union showed that while only 19 percent of the women
polled had more than one child, 97 percent thought two
or more children was the ideal number. Most husbands
in the European Soviet Union also want more children,
according to another attitudinal study. The implication
is that people would act on these preferences, thereby
raising the birthrate, if their material circumstances
were more comfortable
Illegal Economic Activity
The great reservoir of unsatisfied consumer demand
provides a powerful impetus to private economic
activity. Since the regime, presumably for political
reasons, keeps prices on many commodities artificially
low, individuals who manage to acquire wanted goods
can sell them privately for much more than is charged
in state stores
Official spokesmen acknowledge, at least indirectly,
that consumer discontent feeds private economic
activity. In 1977 a high-ranking police official, writing
in Komsomolskaya Pravda, blamed the flourishing
black market on the failure of Soviet industry to satisfy
the intense desire for fashionable goods. As he put it,
"We ourselves create the conditions for speculation"
by failing to respond to consumer demand. A 1978
article in Voprosy filosofii stated that "the unbridled
thirst for enrichment gives rise to the readiness to
strive for material prosperity by any means, even
parasitical and illegal ones."
The private sector is a very significant part of the
Soviet economy. In one way or another almost the
entire Soviet population participates in the "second
economy," which embraces a wide range of both legal
and illegal activities, all of them undesirable to the
regime in ideological terms. The largest role is played
by private agriculture. Private plots of collective farm
peasants account for only 3 percent of the national
total of cultivated land, but for more than one-fourth
the gross output of Soviet agriculture.
Secret
The great bulk of the population evidently condones
economic crime, including theft from the state. A
popular joke has it that Russia is the richest country in
the world, because no other could afford to be robbed
for 60 years and still have something remaining. Those
who steal state property run the gamut from ordinary
citizens pilfering from their places of employment to
organized gangs of entrepreneurs engaged in
large-scale operations. The Party chief in Georgia,
traditionally a hotbed of illegal economic activity, has
publicly stated that the salaries of large numbers of
workers in enterprises manufacturing consumer goods
are mere "appendages" to their more substantial
black-market earnings. A popular curse in Odessa is
"Let him live on his salary."
Economic crime in turn breeds corruption, since illegal
activities invariably require the bribing of officials.
Corruption is most frequently encountered at the lower
levels of the system, but the upper echelons are not
immune. A number of high-ranking officials have been
involved in bribery scandals in recent years. Since 1972
a massive purge of corrupt elements within the
Georgian leadership has taken place. This year the
USSR Minister of Fish Industry was reportedly fired
because of involvement in the black marketing of
caviar.
The prevalence of economic crime and official corrup-
tion has serious negative consequences for the regime.
It tends to erode the authority of the Party, raise
questions about the efficacy of the Soviet economic
system, undermine public respect for law and order,
and create morale problems that lower economic
productivity.
But, from the regime's standpoint, the "second econ-
omy" also has positive features. It imparts a degree of
flexibility to the system and introduces market forces
that work to bring about an equilibrium between
supply and demand. Speculators, for example, perform
the service of counteracting government miscalcu-
lation and inefficient geographical distribution of
goods. Private economic activity adds to the consum-
er's well-being by enhancing the flow of goods and
services and by providing many people with additional
income. In this sense, unofficial transactions can be
seen as a stabilizing influence.
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Problems of Productivity and Inflation
In various ways, dissatisfaction with the living stan-
dard appears to lower productivity and promote
economic inefficiency. City dwellers take long lunch
hours to shop in order to avoid longer lines after
working hours. People from the countryside clog the
transportation network by traveling to cities to shop on
the weekend, often to repurchase produce earlier sent
to the city from their farms.
More generally, material deprivations and incon-
veniences contribute to a general malaise in the work
force which lowers productivity. A 1974 lzvestiya
article, discussing primitive conditions at a Siberian
construction site, touched on the effect of poor living
conditions:
No one has ever proven. . . that labor produc-
tivity would have dropped. . . if better
provisions had been made for everyday life. . .
Common sense and. . . the history of many
major construction projects leads us to believe
differently. Quite differently, in fact.
It is likely, too, that wage incentives lose force when
quality goods are scarce. On at least one occasion in
1976, workers in Tula reportedly refused to accept
their pay bonus, asserting that there was nothing to
buy with the money. In general, wage incentives
appear to be weaker in small cities, where the supply of
consumer goods is more limited. At the 25th Party
Congress Brezhnev noted that "increased incomes
alone do not mean a real increase in living standards."
In his view, "The shortage of a number of goods,
together with limited services, reduces the possibilities
of material labor incentives." Premier Kosygin, in a
July 1979 article in Plannovoye khozyaystvo, observed
that "the creation of normal conditions for spending
monetary incomes by the population is an important
aspect of. . . strengthening stimuli for raising labor
productivity."
It is not that Soviet stores are empty, but that people
since about 1960 have been buying selectively. Once
the basic needs of the population were met, the seller's
market came to an end. The consumer's refusal to buy
shoddy goods has contributed to a huge buildup of
savings accounts at the same time that unsalable goods
21
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accumulate in stores.* In 1972 Gosplan reportedly
concluded that one-third of the currency in the Soviet
Union was unspent "surplus" which either made its
way into the black market or went into savings
accounts. Savings deposits grew more than sevenfold
from 1965 to 1978, reaching a sum equal to 55 percent
of the value of retail sales in that year, compared with
43 percent as late as 1975. This accumulation of
savings presumably further weakens wage incentives,
making the ordinary worker more independent of state
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In addition, the rapid buildup of liquid asset holdings
suggests the presence of a sizable and perhaps growing
amount of repressed inflation in the Soviet Union. In
other words, people are evidently being "forced" to
save by the government's failure to provide the goods
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LArticles in the Soviet press frequently air the problem
f a glut of inferior merchandise in Soviet stores.
* The large overhang of liquid assets in the hands of the population is
also the result of lack of credit, which requires people to save lar e
amounts of money before purchasing major durable goods.
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A Soviet trade journal estimated in 1978 that the losses
incurred by marking down unsalable goods cost the
state hundreds of millions of rubles every year.
Consumption of Alcohol
The consumption of alcohol is connected in a general
way with dissatisfaction about living conditions. The
official Soviet position is that there are and can be no
socioeconomic causes of alcoholism in the Soviet
Union, but the fact that alcoholism has its highest
incidence among working class males with little
education suggests otherwise. Soviet specialists occa-
sionally come close to contradicting the official view by
citing as chief causes of alcoholism the "psychological
and material debasement of jobs and the monotony
of. . . daily lives." Crowded housing conditions also
contribute to the problem, literally driving many men
to drink as an escape from a stultifying home
atmosphere.
Alcoholism poses a social problem of growing propor-
tions. The per capita consumption of hard liquor in the
Soviet Union is the highest of any country in the world,
and consumption is growing at the rate of about 5
percent a year. Although the state derives substantial
revenue from the sale of spirits, one Soviet economist
has estimated that the overall economic cost of alcohol
consumption, because of its correlation to industrial
accidents and absenteeism, exceeds the net revenues.
Alcoholism is also a major factor in the growing crime
and divorce rates and contributes to the falling
birthrate; many women cite their husband's drinking
as a reason for their unwillingness to have children.
Alcohol consumption, however, as in the case of job
turnover and private economic activity, serves as a
safety valve and thus performs a positive function.
Vodka is both cheap and plentiful in the Soviet Union.
In making it easily available, the regime provides its
citizens an escape from the grimness and tedium of life
and diverts consumer demand away from nonexistent
consumer goods.
Leadership Perceptions and Policies
Present Concern
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Official apprehension has been especially suggested by
the prompt attention, often with high-level involve-
ment, given to particularly acute problems of food
supply. Brezhnev traveled to Tula to make a speech in
January 1977, reportedly in response to worker
dissatisfaction with food supplies. When Abkhazi
nationalists staged a demonstration in late 1978,
Central Committee Secretary Ivan Kapitonov rushed
to the scene and made a conciliatory speech that
acceded to wide-ranging demands for various types of
economic aid to Abkhazia. A number of other strikes
and demonstrations protesting food shortages during
the last several years have reportedly brought rapid
improvements in the food supply of the affected areas.
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Public statements by some leaders?and by Brezhnev,
in particular?have also suggested growing concern
about morale problems. During his trip to the Soviet
Far East in early 1978 Brezhnev spoke of the
population's "justified dissatisfaction" with food short-
ages and paid special attention to the need to upgrade
housing and overall living conditions. In several
speeches that year, he made unprecedented references
to the "mood" of the people. His most explicit
reference was at the November Central Committee
plenum, where he pointedly remarked:
The question of losses of grain, vegetables,
fruit, and cotton is not only an economic
matter. It is also an important political matter
which has a direct effect on the mood and the
labor activity of the Soviet people.
In his election speech in March 1979 he emphasized
the need to increase meat production. 25X1
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Other leaders have articulated their concern less
clearly, but Politburo member Mikhail Suslov dis-
cussed meat shortages in his 1974, 1975, and 1979
election speeches. Masherov in a recent speech ex-
pressed serious concern about the attitude of the people
as the country faces yet another harvest shortfall. He
spoke of the "people's completely understandable
feelings" in this "unusually serious situation," made a
plea that there be "no shirking or losing of your
temper, no moaning and groaning, no loud complain-
ing," and noted that "individual negative incidents"
tend to "undermine peoples' faith in the real achieve-
ments of the economy."
Politburo member and Leningrad Party chief Grigoriy
Romanov in an early 1977 speech alluded to food
shortages in his area, blaming a breakdown in the
distribution system and lamenting that "some citi-
zens" exploited the situation to "spread rumors."
Georgian Party head Eduard Shevardnadze, a Polit-
buro candidate, observed in a 1977 speech that the
supply of consumer goods and services "is the sphere in
terms of which broad circles of the population base
their evaluation of our reality as a whole." In short, the
Soviet leaders give every indication of believing that
they face a grave situation if their performance in
satisfying consumer needs does not improve.
Traditional Attitudes
For reasons deeply rooted in Soviet history and in the
leadership's psychology, successive regimes have,
nevertheless, chosen not to reorder economic priorities
to benefit the consumer. In theory, consumption holds
unchallenged primacy as the legitimate goal of eco-
nomic activity in a socialist state; supposedly, the
maximal satisfaction of the wants of society is the
direct aim of production. In practice, the regime's
commitment to the expansion of Soviet economic and
military power has been the reponderant influence on
economic priorities.
For psychological reasons too, Soviet leaders have
found it difficult to place primary emphasis on the
mundane goal of raising the population's material
standard of living. Their ethic, born of years of
struggle, has been one of discipline and self-denial.
Brezhnev described the traditional attitude toward
consumer goods in his report to the 24th Party
Congress in 1971:
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Comrades, we have behind us long years of
heroic history, when millions of communists
and nonparty members consciously accepted
sacrifices and privations, were prepared to rest
content with the bare necessities, and denied
themselves the right to demand any special
comforts of life. This could not but have an
effect on their attitude toward the production of
consumer goods....
Historically, Soviet leaders have associated material
richness with moral laxity. Meshchantsvo (petty,
grasping philistinism) was one of the alleged features
of the capitalist West most hated by the early
Bolsheviks. That these attitudes persist was illustrated
by a recent critique of American consumer-oriented
society published in SShA:
In capitalist society the.. . desire of the masses
to improve their lives ... takes on a one-sided
and deformed nature, distorting the human
personality.... People make a fetish of things..
.. turning the individual into the kind of
Philistine who, in V. I. Lenin's words, is capable
of demanding the impossible from society:
"unlimited quantities of truffles, automobiles,
pianos, and so forth."
Aside from being morally reprehensible, emphasis on
consumption has been seen as politically dangerous. In
Lenin's day the fear was that the working class would
be satisfied with the purely material gains won through
trade union activity and would abandon the higher
revolutionary objective of seizing political power and
establishing a new social order. Today the fear is that
catering to the wants of the population will cause a
slackening of discipline, encourage a tendency to place
self-interest above collective interests (as defined by
the leadership), and nourish an uncontrollable pursuit
of material goods that the state is ill-prepared to
provide. Soviet leaders have been apprehensive that, if
left alone, the consumer will follow "bourgeois"
consumption patterns. Thus, a 1975 article in
Plannovoye khozyaystvo maintained:
24
A one-sided orientation toward the satisfaction
of consumer demand, especially when it is not
followed by the necessary indoctrination, is
fraught with the danger of spreading social
"ills" such as individualism, egotism, and
greed.
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A 1978 article in Voprosy filosofil concurred:
Emphasis exclusively on raising the level of
material welfare, with a failure to pay attention
to other social aspects of the way of life, can
lead to a deformation in social mores that is
difficult to correct.
Consequently, Soviet propagandists have taken pains
to persuade the population that material well-being is
desirable only as a means of arriving at pure Commu-
nism, which is really more a spiritual than a material
state.
The Soviet leadership's lack of responsiveness to
popular desires has reflected its elitism. Historically,
the leadership has considered the party the repository
of "consciousness" and has distrusted the "spontane-
ity" of the people. As a result, the leadership believes
that it knows what is best for the masses. The party's
mission has been to shape public opinion, not to follow
it.
All Soviet leaders today are influenced by this
traditional approach to consumer issues, but it is senior
party secretaries Andrey Kirilenko and Suslov, along
with Belorussian party chief Masherov, who are its
closest adherents. Their attitudes were most clearly
expressed in 1971, when the regime set ambitious
consumer goals for the Ninth Five-Year Plan
(1971-75). Suslov, apparently a long-time advocate of
military spending, warned at that time that "increas-
ing the people's prosperity is a task which is very wrong
to approach in a purely consumer-minded manner." At
the same time, Masherov, in what was probably the
strongest published anticonsumer statement by a
Soviet leader in the 1970s, warned that the increase in
the population's well-being could lead to parasitical
attitudes, especially among those under the influence
of Western "bourgeois" propaganda. An advocate of
"moral incentives" (socialist competition,
nonmonetary awards, and recognition), he warned
against the "absolutization" of "material incentives"
(wages) and went on to declare:
We have never linked and we never shall link
our tomorrow, our future, with an affirmation
of the cult of things, of the standard of the
notorious consumer society.. .. We are against
25
a consumer attitude toward socialism. ... It is
essential to see and to draw a definite line
between real material interest for the worker
and the petit bourgeois passion for
money-grubbing.
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Masherov's attitudes may be influenced by his location
in a border republic susceptible to influence from 25X1
Eastern and Western Europe. During this same period
the head of another regional party organization,
Politburo member and Ukrainian First Secretary Petr
Shelest also warned against "harmful consumer ten-
dencies," complaining that "it is becoming the
style. . . to speak exclusively about benefits, about 25X1
some sort of 'horn of plenty' from which goods and
blessings pour by themselves." 25X1
Kirilenko* has never employed this sort of moralistic
language to condemn consumerism. On many occa-
sions, however, he has reaffirmed the priority of heavy
industry and particularly of machine building; his
background and current responsibilities lie largely in
this area. It may be inferred that he has not been 25X1
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sympathetic to consumer interests.
Proconsumer Advocacy in Recent Years
For all its elitism, the Soviet leadership has always
believed that the legitimacy and continuation of its
rule is ultimately dependent on popular acceptance of
its policies. Stalin's death left Soviet leaders feeling
more insecure and more vulnerable to popular criti-
cism than previously. As a consequence, Khrushchev
turned to a program of increased benefits for the
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Khrushchev's concentrated effort to raise agricultural
production was continued by Brezhnev, and in 1971
the Brezhnev leadership endorsed an historic shift in
priorities. For the first time, the Five-Year Plan
projected higher growth rates for the production of
consumer goods (Group "B" industries) than for the
production of producer goods (Group "A" industries).
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This priority for consumer goods was short-lived. The
1972 and 1975 crop failures created a shortage of raw
materials, making the consumer goals unattainable.
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The Tenth Five-Year Plan (1976-80) restored the
traditional Group "A" priority. Agriculture, however,
which constitutes about half of consumption, contin-
ued to fare well in the plan. Overall, consumption has
declined slightly as a share of gross national product
since 1970.
Since 1975 the advocates of consumer-oriented plan-
ning have not remained silent. Arguing that the pursuit
of material well-being is a legitimate, respectable aim
in socialist society, they deride the notion that in-
creased consumption necessarily leads to spiritual
impoverishment. While acknowledging that the Party,
in its rise, advanced the principle of ascetic morality,
they insist that continued renunciation of material
pleasures is no longer necessary or desirable. Rejecting
arguments that increased consumption will lead to an
erosion of the population's commitment to Communist
ideals, they counter that ignoring the population's
needs is certainly more dangerous, both in political and
economic terms, than meeting those demands.
A 1977 Kommunist article?one of the boldest cri-
tiques of anticonsumerism in recent years?summa-
rized many of these arguments. The author asserted it
was immoral to "exploit mercilessly" the "self-
sacrificing and revolutionary devotion" of the people,
to claim that popular criticism of shortcomings in
consumer goods implies that the people have "lost'
past revolutionary traditions and succumbed to a petit
bourgeois psychology." He went on to deliver the most
telling argument for raising the standard of living:
Behind this reasoning lies a failure to realize
the simple fact that the satisfaction of what
used to be the working people's needs can no
longer suffice as an effective incentive today,
particularly for new generations that take the
present standard of living for granted as some-
thing natural?as a point of departure.
It has also been argued that productivity has been
higher in Group "B" industries and that economic
performance can therefore be improved by shifting
resources to consumer goods industries. A blunt article
by L. A. Kostin, first deputy chairman of the State
Committee on Labor and Social Questions in the
November 1977 Plannovoye khozyaystvo, took this
position. Kostin termed investment in Group "B"
insufficient and investment in Group "A" enormous,
and implied that the huge volume of investment in
Group "A" had the effect of lowering efficiency in that
sector. Noting that "the share of Group 'B' sectors in
our country is lower, while that of Group 'A' sectors is
higher than in many foreign countries," he called for
the study of foreign experience of both capitalist and
socialist countries, and argued that it was "fully
possible" to transfer more resources to Group "B."
While the traditional view has been that expanding
contacts with advanced Western countries threatened
to infect Soviet society with consumerist notions,
consumer advocates have emphasized the positive
domestic benefits of detente. Rather than focusing on
the growth of consumer expectations as a corollary of
increased contacts with the West, they have argued
that relaxation of international tension will permit a
beneficial expansion of foreign trade and a greater
diversion of resources to satisfy domestic needs.
The most consistent advocate of consumer goods in the
Soviet leadership, before he was dropped from the
Politburo in late 1978, was First Deputy Premier Kiri11
Mazurov.
Mazurov's last public state-
ment published in Soviet media before his dismissal
was an article in the November 1976 issue of
Kommunist, in which he made an unusually strong
defense of consumer goods industry. Making a rare
reference to raising the population's material and
cultural standard of living as the "main task" of the
10th Five-Year Plan, he criticized "central planning
and economic organs" for being unable "fully to
overcome their attitude toward the production of
consumer goods as something of secondary impor-
tance," even though "such an approach contradicts the
demands of the times." Referring to Group "B" targets
as the "minimum," he also stressed the importance of
food production and noted that the performance of the
public catering system has a direct effect on the mood
and labor productivity of the population.
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Mazurov's removal left Premier Kosygin as the leader
with the longest record as a defender of consumer
interests. As early as 1972 Kosygin publicly argued
that improvements in material welfare "are not only
the result of production development but also an
important precondition for further growth and im-
provement in production." In late 1973 in two speeches
in Minsk, Kosygin pledged that the preferential
growth rate for Group "B" output would be restored
and urged that housing construction be given a higher
priority. Although in his 1979 election speech Kosygin
stressed the importance of developing heavy industry,
it seems unlikely that he intended to relegate the
consumer goods industries to its former low status.
Probably more than any other Soviet leader, he
understands the economic requirements of a balanced
system.
Brezhnev has been the chief proponent for continued
heavy investment in agriculture, but he was a late
convert to other consumer interests. It was not until
1971, in his speech at the party congress, that he made
a fairly strong case on behalf of elevating the priority
of consumer goods. Noting that "well-known historical
reasons" had prevented the Party from turning full
attention to the question of improving the people's
lives, he called for a change in thinking about
consumer goods and the elevation of living standards
as the "main task":
That which was explicable and natural in the
past?when other tasks and other undertakings
stood in the forefront?is unacceptable in
today's conditions. . . . There still are officials,
and not only in local areas but at the center as
well, who contrive to "peacefully coexist" with
shortcomings, who have somehow gotten used
to low quality in a number of consumer goods
and are developing their production at an
impermissibly slow rate. . . . That is how short-
ages arise of certain goods that are customarily
called "trifles." But there can be no trifles when
it comes to items in daily demand.
In Brezhnev's December 1974 speech to the Central
Committee he admitted that the development of light
and food processing industries depended on the priority
growth of heavy industry?the "backbone" of the
economy?but promised that increased productivity
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would permit "an increase in the share of the national
income allocated to the satisfaction of social
requirements"?that is, an increase in the share for
consumption. At the 25th Party Congress in 1975 he
referred to heavy industry as "the foundation of the
economy," but he also spoke at great length of "the
need decisively to change attitudes" toward meeting
the daily demands of the population. 25X1
In the latest round of leadership election speeches in
February and March 1979, attention to consumer-
oriented programs seemed to pick up somewhat.
Brezhnev's crony, Politburo member Konstantin
Chernenko, who has rarely touched on economic
priorities in his previous speeches, seemed to emerge as
a supporter of consumer goods on that occasion. In
general, Chernenko was solicitous of public opinion
and apparently concerned about the popular welfare.
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Kirilenko, who usually stresses the priority develop-
ment of heavy industry, devoted special attention to the
subject of consumer goods and housing. In a telling
phrase omitted from the newspaper versions of his
speech, he referred to the Group "B" sector as the
"so-called Group 'B' sector." In the past, consumer
advocates appear to have used the designation
"so-called" to indicate that the term "Group 'B' "does
not imply that this sector of the economy is of 25X1
secondary importance. 25X1
Masherov, in a June 1979 speech, also seemed more
concerned than in the past to placate the population.
While warning against a "consumerist attitude to life,"
he indicated support for efforts to study public opinion
more scientifically, presumably to enable the regime
better to respond to popular demands. He also seemed
to concede that present conditions demand further
advances for the consumer. Noting that consumer
demands constitute a "complex, sensitive, and deli-
cate" area, he acknowledged that demands "are not
static" and argued that "under the conditions of
developed socialism an appreciable turnabout in the
economy toward the increasingly full satisfaction" of
peoples' requirements has become possible.
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Outlook
After long neglecting consumer welfare, Soviet leaders
in recent years have grown more concerned about the
political and economic costs of popular discontent over
living standards. They have promoted consumer-
oriented programs such as the campaign to raise
livestock output, but so far have not allocated a larger
share of resources to the consumer. Moreover, overall
economic growth continues to decline, thus shrinking
consumer gains.
The outlook would not be so grim were it not for the
fact that the return on investment has been poor in
agriculture?one of the few consumer-oriented areas
in which investment remains high. The leadership
evidently perceives?and perceives correctly?that the
population is much more concerned about deficiencies
in the food supply than in other consumer goods and
services, but more than investment is needed to
increase agricultural productivity. The agricultural
sector's low productivity stems from a complex set of
factors, including unfavorable climate, backward tech-
nology, and a poor structure of organization and
incentives.
Thus far, instead of initiating basic reforms in the
economic system, the Soviet leaders have taken a
piecemeal approach to solving consumer problems,
particularly with respect to food. They have used
"firefighting" tactics to rush supplies to areas suffer-
ing particularly acute shortages and have employed
various other expedients?such as decreeing "meatless
Thursdays," closing food stores in the cities on
weekends, dragooning brigades of city office workers
to help with crop harvesting, and ordering grass strips
mown along highways to increase fodder production.
They have also given increased publicity to deficiencies
in the production and distribution of consumer goods
and food, presumably to persuade the population that
they are aware that problems exist and are working to
solve them; fired economic managers, offering them up
as scapegoats for shortcomings in the system; written
endless resolutions and editorials calling on party
officials to be more responsive to the complaints of
individual citizens; talked about improving the man-
agement of the economy; stressed the need for products
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of good quality and varied assortment, but without
providing effective incentives for factory managers to
produce them. And they have relied more heavily than
in the past on special distribution systems that provide
goods to elite groups, including factory workers, at the
expense of the population at large. Some of these
measures?particularly the last one?may be partially
effective as control devices. As efforts to increase
productivity and roduction, however, they are of
marginal utility.
Soviet leaders have endorsed only one idea?the
expansion of the more productive private plots?that
offers promise of increasing agricultural output and
significantly benefiting the consumer. Another reform
that could raise output would be to use unregulated
mechanized agricultural "links"?small teams which
operate on permanent assigned plots of land without
detailed work assignments and with their pay based
considerably on final production results?instead of
the less economically efficient but more ideologically
acceptable farm "brigades," which receive flat wages
regardless of output. This idea, controversial in the
past, has not received much attention in leadership
speeches of late.
It is possible that a reduction in the rate of growth of
military spending would bring relief to the consumer.
Some Soviet leaders have indicated concern over the
burden of military spending. Kosygin, Brezhnev, and
Chernenko have at various times publicly suggested
that an improved international atmosphere would
release funds needed for domestic consumption. Polit-
buro candidate member Boris Ponomarev, head of the
Central Committee International Department, has
occasionally?perhaps self-servingly-
is worried about the economic effect of the
arms race, suggesting that the United States was
trying to bleed the Soviet economy white.
Defense Minister Ustinov is much more
sensitive to economic considerations than his predeces-
sor, Grechko.
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Ustinov, who is first and foremost an economic
manager, is interested in cost effectiveness, sensitive to
consumer needs, and appreciative of the importance of
a balanced approach to economic development for the
long-range development of defense industries
Some fundamental reordering of priorities may take
place in the years to come, as economic growth
continues to decline. It seems unlikely, however, that
the current aged and conservative leadership, on the
eve of a succession, will embark on such a radical
departure from past policies.
The most immediate cost of allowing present trends to
continue is a further reduction in economic efficiency.
A wide range of otherwise negative economic
phenomena?such as excessive consumption of alcohol
and economically counterproductive labor turnover?
provide the positive function of serving as safety valves
for dissatisfaction with living conditions. It is conse-
quently difficult for the regime to take decisive
measures to eliminate these undesirable features of
their society. To do so would run the risk of inviting
serious disorders. More important, the shortage of
consumer goods weakens material incentives and has
an adverse effect on labor productivity.
Politically, the short-run consequences of continuing
present policies will probably not be catastrophic in the
sense of provoking a genuine threat to the stability of
the state?unless the consumption rate declines
sharply instead of growing at the present low rate.
Deficiencies in housing, consumer goods, and services,
however damaging to morale, do not appear to have the
potential for igniting serious disturbances unless they
deteriorate a great deal. Food shortages, by contrast,
have sparked active protest since the harvest failure of
1975, but even here the level of unrest has been
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manageable. With the important exception of disaf-
fected national groups, which tend to blame their woes
on the Russians, most of the existing hostility over the
standard of living is diffuse. Soviet citizens seeking
answers for economic shortcomings usually criticize
peripheral features, real or imagined, of the system?
such as privileges for the elite, corruption and manage-
rial inefficiency, or extensive foreign aid?rather than
the basic organization of the economy or the regime's
economic priorities. Strikes and protests during the last
several years have generally not focused on political
objectives, nor have they, as a rule, been protracted. By
rapidly shifting resources to bring temporary relief to
troubled areas?borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, so
to speak?Soviet authorities have been able to prevent
disturbances from assuming uncontrollable propor-
tions. 25X1
In the long run, however, the political consequences of
consumer dissatisfaction loom large. The Soviet popu-
lation is one of the most politically passive in the
modern industrialized world. More than in the past,
however, this passivity rests on the regime's ability to
satisfy the material demands of an increasingly ac-
quisitive society. The Soviet people have come to desire
strongly?if not to expect?steady improvements in
the standard of living. If, as projected, the regime by
the mid-1980s is unable to improve or even to maintain
the current standard of living, discontent and the
incidence of active unrest will certainly grow.
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