The Soviet Union: The Risks of Reform
WITH its modern marble fac,ade and its sleek steel-and-glass lines, the Palace of Congresses seems out of place amidst the ponderous 15th century walls and onion-shaped domes of the Kremlin. In the palace's vast, streamlined auditorium Russia's rulers next week will stage one of the regime's most important political extravaganzas in some time--the 24th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party. The Congress was to have been held in early 1970. It was delayed for a full year, indicating that the eleven-man Politburo, which constitutes Russia's collective leadership, has been locked in debate over some issues of major significance to the future direction of the world's second most powerful nation. The most important of these issues is bound to be whether and how the Soviet Union, in order to fulfill the rising expectations of its 242 million people, can reform its economy without risking unacceptable changes in its political system.
The vast majority of the 6,000 delegates who will file into the Palace of Congresses next week will have no say about how the problem will be resolved. But they will be given some clues--as will the rest of the world--about what the men in power may do. The Soviet delegates do not debate issues. They are elected to their posts only after careful screening and final Politburo assent. When a resolution is presented, they automatically approve it, for they know that the Politburo has already accepted it. Yet they perform a significant if largely ceremonial function. The rulers of a dictatorship need an apparatus that seems to confirm their legitimacy, a formal link to the party rank and file, and a sounding board, however limited, for their pronouncements. For the leadership, a Party Congress is an occasion to defend its record, assess the country's condition and chart the course ahead.
Congresses have frequently served as watersheds in Soviet history. At the Tenth Congress in 1921, Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, which for a time allowed the peasants to sell their produce on a free market. At the 15th, six years later, Stalin consolidated his hold on power by purging Leon Trotsky from the party. At the 20th in 1956, Nikita Khrushchev delivered the famed "secret speech" that started the wave of destalinization.
Politburo Gerontocracy
The 24th Congress may also find its way into history, for a number of far-reaching problems are coming to a head at once:
>The economy, which according to Khrushchev's boast was to have surpassed the U.S. economy last year, may stand half a trillion dollars behind America's G.N.P. by the end of 1971. More important, the Soviet consumer wants more and better goods, and he is not getting them.
>Political dissent, long forbidden in the Soviet Union, is being openly expressed not only by students and intellectuals but also by such pillars of the regime as scientists and even nuclear submariners.
>The Soviet Union has scored some impressive foreign policy successes, but they have entailed huge costs and new, perhaps dangerous responsibilities. Furthermore, in Eastern Europe it faces a potentially explosive situation.
Party Congresses also provide rare glimpses into the process of renewal within the leadership. As results of factional fights begin to appear, new faces emerge from the shadows, others fade. The present Soviet leadership changes at a glacial pace. But shifts do take place, and from a purely actuarial standpoint, the present Politburo is not an insurance man's dream. Eight of its eleven members are well into their 60s, making the body something of a gerontocracy (average age: 65).
Party General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev is going into the Congress stronger than ever. A year ago, when his leadership was under attack because of grave shortcomings in the economy, Brezhnev managed to consolidate his power with the help of the KGB (secret police) and Marshal Andrei Grechko, the Defense Minister. As a sign of Brezhnev's ascendancy, his was the only signature to appear on the draft of the new five-year plan (1971-75). It was the first time such a document was signed by a single person since 1952--when the sole signature was Joseph Stalin's. Still, Brezhnev is 64, overweight, and has had one heart attack.
The Soviet Union has no machinery to ensure a smooth succession. Theoretically, of course, any member of the Politburo can be voted out of office by the Central Committee, but for that to happen would require a major upheaval. Nor can anyone predict with certainty who will emerge as the next party boss--or when. Perhaps it will be a now faceless regional bureaucrat or young technocrat whose name today is unfamiliar in the West. More likely, it will be someone who is not yet in his 60s but is already positioned in the upper reaches of the power structure. There are four Soviet politicians who fit this description particularly well. Three are the youngest members of the Politburo; the fourth is a rising newcomer who may well be given an alternate Politburo seat during the present Congress. The four:
KIRILL MAZUROV, 54, a First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union, is a tough and wily political infighter. Born in Byelorussia, he received a technical education and, during World War II, fought with guerrillas behind German lines. In the postwar period, he began a rapid rise through provincial Byelorussia's bureaucracy that led to his election to the Politburo. In March 1970, he reportedly joined fellow Politburo Members Mikhail Suslov and Aleksandr Shelepin in criticizing Brezhnev for his handling of the economy. As a result, Brezhnev would probably be happy to see him removed from the Politburo. But Mazurov seems likely to retain his position, largely because he has too much support within the party hierarchy for Brezhnev to remove him.
DMITRY POLIANSKY, 53, is Communism's true child--he was born Nov. 7, 1917, the day of the revolution. He is also the most polished and urbane of the four contenders, and one who can chat easily with Westerners. On a visit to New York City in 1960, he delighted American dinner companions by saying, "We think the socialist horse is younger and faster than the capitalist horse. If you disagree with that, it's your business, but let's not fight about it. Even at horse races, nobody proposes to determine the winner by a fight between jockeys." Poliansky comes from the Ukraine, where he was educated as an agricultural specialist. His skill as an agricultural troubleshooter in the Crimea and the Urals attracted Khrushchev. He joined the Politburo in 1960 and managed to survive Khrushchev's fall, becoming a First Deputy Premier (along with Mazurov) in 1965. Poliansky, who supervises government agricultural policy, was reported to be a leading candidate for the premiership last summer when Aleksei Kosygin, ailing with liver trouble, wanted to resign but was urged to stay on. Poliansky's obvious ambition and his success in greatly increasing allocations for agriculture have made him some powerful Central Committee enemies, who blocked his ascension.
ALEKSANDR SHELEPIN, 52, is the most intriguing--and perhaps the most ominous--of the four. His name is very close to the archaic Russian word for long lash. He went into Komsomol work, made an early reputation for ferreting out "traitors" during Stalin's great purge, and ultimately rose to become boss of the Soviet youth organization. At 40, Shelepin was appointed by Khrushchev to head the dreaded KGB. But he apparently took his duties too seriously. One day he called in Nikita's rambunctious son-in-law, Izvestia Editor Aleksei Adzhubei, and dressed him down for heavy drinking and womanizing. That soured Nikita on Shelepin, who then began plotting against his former mentor. After Nikita's ouster, Shelepin was rewarded with full Politburo membership and several key party jobs. Gradually, Brezhnev has whittled away his power, leaving him only the leadership of the trade unions. But Shelepin, an extreme hardliner, is so wily that he cannot be discounted as a contender even if he is less powerful than before.
KONSTANTIN KATUSHEV, 43, is one of the first of the truly post-Stalinist politicians to emerge on the national Soviet scene. He is one of only twelve members in their 40s on the 195-member Central Committee, and he is expected to be elected an alternate Politburo member at the Congress. His main liability may well be his close identification with Brezhnev, who has furthered Katushev's rise. Born in Gorky, he was educated as a metallurgical engineer and went to work in the auto-and-tank works there. In 1961 he switched over to full-time party work and rose to regional party director in Gorky before Brezhnev selected him in 1968 to come to Moscow as Central Committee secretary for relations with other ruling Communist parties. In that role, Katushev was instrumental in putting down Alexander Dubcek's "Springtime of Freedom" in Prague and overseeing the "normalization" of Czechoslovakia. Katushev is not brusque and bullying, like Brezhnev, but persistent and demanding. "He is a tough negotiator with a steel-trap mind," reports a Rumanian diplomat who has dealt with him.
The Company Way
Unless the Kremlin roulette wheel takes an unexpectedly fast turn, the other Politburo members are already too old to be serious contenders for power. No outsider is privy to the deliberations of the Politburo, and members most likely form different alliances on different issues. Even so, Brezhnev's main supporters appear to be Andrei Kirilenko, 64, who acts as his deputy, Ukrainian Party Boss Pyotr Shelest, 62, an ultra-hard-liner, and possibly Gennady Voronov, 60, Premier of the Russian Federation. Arvid Pelshe, 72, the Latvian party leader, and Ideologue Mikhail Suslov, 68, are both ailing and might possibly be replaced at the present Congress. Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny, 68, will probably stay on. So too will Kosygin, 67, whose support comes mainly from the government bureaucracy and managerial class.
In addition to alignments within the Politburo, each member also has support among special constituencies within the Central Committee. When the Politburo cannot resolve a dispute, the Central Committee is convened to debate and decide the issue. The leaders, in turn, attempt to pack the Central Committee with their supporters.
As far as those young enough to be considered serious contenders for leadership are concerned, no one can predict exactly how they would behave once the power was finally in their hands. Alexander Dubcek, for example, had no reputation for liberalism before he came to power in Prague. By training and temperament, Mazurov, Shelepin and the others appear no more inventive or flexible than Brezhnev.
Hack v. Technocrat
Much the same applies to the next layer of Soviet leaders--the 150 or so party first secretaries of the regions and republics. More than half of them have no direct experience whatsoever in managing economic enterprises. They generally have spent most of their lives in the party apparatus, which the University of Toronto's Lewis Feuer aptly describes as "the ambitious mediocracy." In party ranks, advancement is awarded most often to the wily and tough, not to the thoughtful or the innovative.
The most recent newcomers to the group, however, include individuals who have had lengthy service as industrial administrators. The younger men are also better educated, often holding college degrees in specialized fields. Harvard Kremlinologist Leon Smolinski neatly distinguishes the older party hacks from the young technocrats by referring to the rivalry between "the professional Communists and the Communist professionals."
Professional or not, whoever succeeds Brezhnev as the Soviet Union's first among equals may find himself confronting some of the problems that will preoccupy the present Congress. Open dissent, a new phenomenon in the Soviet Union, is one of them. It involves only a relatively tiny number of people, leaving the vast majority of Soviet citizens untouched, but the identity of the protesters is significant. They include not only famed artists like Nobel Prizewinning Novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Cellist Mstislav Rostropovich but also scientists such as Andrei Sakharov, father of the Soviet H-bomb, Physicist Pyotr Kapitsa and Geneticist Zhores Medvedev. A mimeographed bimonthly chronicle of dissident events circulates among thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.
In the past, any vestige of dissent was ruthlessly rooted out. But the present regime has chosen to invoke only selective terror against its critics. Some have been jailed or incarcerated in mental institutions. But others who continue to speak out or sign petitions remain free. Last week, for example, Sakharov sent a telegram to the Soviet Minister of the Interior in protest against the handling of two Soviet dissenters who are being subjected to drug treatment in a Soviet mental hospital to "cure"' them of their political abnormalities.
The ubiquitous KGB could undoubtedly arrest all the key members of the protest movement in one sweep. Why don't they? One explanation may be that the regime does not wish to offend the scientific community, whose members ensure a flow of sophisticated weapons. Another explanation may be that the leaders have learned that large and powerful nations can tolerate a certain amount of internal dissent without coming apart at the seams.
The regime seems to be following that line of reasoning toward Russia's 3,500,000 Jews, of whom some 30,000 have applied for exit visas to Israel. Since the Soviet Union denies its citizens the right to emigrate, the assumption has been that the Kremlin could not sanction a Jewish exodus without arousing other dissatisfied minority nationalities. Nonetheless, rather than openly crush the Jews and incur bad publicity abroad, the Soviets apparently have decided to take the risk. From a mere handful, the number of Jews allowed to leave Russia has now grown to 25 a day.
Decline of Ideology
Even as repression has become more muted in the Soviet Union, social and economic forces are at work in the society to temper ideological fundamentalism. A fervent, unashamed patriotism is still evident, as is a certain loyalty to the ideal of Communism. Still, mass education, one of the system's most laudable achievements, has created legions of men and women who are less inclined than their unlettered peasant parents to accept without question the necessity for class warfare or some of the other brutal simplicities of Communism.
Polls conducted by Soviet sociologists show a surprisingly low degree of ideological fervor among the educated young. When 2,204 graduate students in Leningrad were asked "What are your desires for the near future?", 60.6% replied that they wanted interesting jobs, while only 18.4% chose the good Communist option of wanting to participate in the construction of a new industrial complex. In a sampling of workers attending political study groups in the Estonian capital of Tallin, less than 1% said they were interested in learning about the philosophy of Communism.
If such statistics from the home front are discouraging to Russia's old-school Communists, they can take comfort from the Brezhnev-Kosygin record in foreign affairs. The Soviets have extended and consolidated their position in the oil-rich Middle East. They have signed a treaty with West Germany that, in effect, recognizes East Europe's Soviet-drawn borders and tacitly pays homage to Soviet hegemony in the eastern half of the Continent. Soviet military power has increased so dramatically that the Soviet fleet now rivals, and in some areas has practically neutralized, the U.S. Navy. The huge Soviet ICBM buildup has enabled the Russians to reach approximate parity with the U.S. and thus negotiate as equals in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, which last week began the fourth round in Vienna.
Even so, the Soviet Union's attitude toward the U.S. and toward its own responsibilities as a superpower is still ambivalent. Although Moscow has not responded to Secretary of State Rogers' extraordinary proposal for a joint U.S.Soviet peace-keeping force in the Middle East, the Russians have at times talked and acted as if they wanted the two superpowers to join in keeping order. At the same time, Moscow has pushed its influence against the U.S. wherever the opportunity arose, and professes to be highly suspicious of the Nixon Administration on the ground that it is trying to renew the Cold War. Many U.S. officials reciprocate the suspicion because of what they describe as a "trilogy" of events in the past year: 1) The Soviets sent not only missiles but also crewmen to Egypt's aid along the Suez Canal; 2) they gave at least tacit permission for a Soviet-equipped Syrian armored column to invade Jordan during King Hussein's showdown with the Palestinian guerrillas; and 3) they covertly tried to set up a nuclear sub base at Cienfuegos, Cuba. Still, in his last "State of the World" address, President Nixon made the most positive statement of the evolving attitude toward Russia by acknowledging its status as a global power with legitimate interests in many parts of the world.*
Despite the successful 1968 suppression of Czechoslovakia, Eastern Europe remains potentially explosive, as the December riots in Poland demonstrated (see page 36). A new exchange of denunciations between Peking and Moscow last week indicated that the Sino-Soviet schism remains as gaping as ever. Furthermore, Brezhnev may be having second thoughts about the wisdom of seeking a detente with West Germany (except on conditions that Bonn cannot accept); possibly Moscow does not really want to give up West Germany as a convenient propaganda whipping boy. Significantly, the Soviets toned down their calls for a Conference on European Security that would approve present borders and set up a framework for cooperation between European nations, East and West. The Soviet lack of enthusiasm may reflect a realization in the Kremlin that the Communist countries are still not secure enough domestically to afford easier exchanges with the prosperous and magnetic West.
The Metal Eaters
Whatever the regime's record abroad may be, however, the fact is that Soviet leaders do not rise and fall on foreign policy issues but on the economy. The present leadership has done fairly well--but not well enough. Soviet agriculture, which employs about 26% of the work force v. less than 2% in the U.S., has picked up considerably and the Soviets have not had to buy wheat abroad for two years; but there are still shortages of meat, fruit and fresh vegetables. Industry is lagging badly. Technological advance is falling even farther behind the West. The consumer remains ill cared for.
For the first time in history, the new Soviet five-year plan, which will be approved at the present Congress, assigns a fractionally higher growth rate to the consumer-oriented industries than to the "metal eaters" of heavy industry. Even so, the metal eaters will continue to receive the great bulk of Soviet industrial investment. The new plan also envisages great advances in worker productivity, increased use of computers, and the application of modern managerial methods.
Trouble is, the plan fails to cope with the fundamental problems. The Soviet economy does not need minor rejiggering or slight changes in emphasis, but a complete overhaul. To be sure, Communism scored great accomplishments in turning backward Russia into a major industrial power in half a century, with a G.N.P. approaching $600 billion. But the development has been uneven. The Soviet command-style economy, with its rigid planning, central controls and bias against experimentation, simply no longer works effectively. Specialization demands decentralization. No single, central planning agency can fine-tune a diversified modern economy. The industrialized world has passed into a new and more mature technological stage in which, as Wayne State Professor Richard Burks puts it, "Economic growth will depend on releasing the creative energies of an ever more numerous intelligentsia, and on the granting of wide-ranging autonomy to enterprises functioning in a market situation."
In this new stage, individual creativity and enterprise are essential. Yet Moscow, with its insistence on orthodoxy and conformity, rewards the sort of behavior that is needed least in a society challenged by rapid changes. Cross-fertilization of ideas is essential, for example, yet Soviet industry and science are so cut off from each other that there is little interchange. Industries actually resist the inroads of scientists--with the exception of military and space industries--so that only 30% to 50% of all new techniques developed by scientists are actually put into timely use in Soviet factories. As a result, the Soviets are falling ever farther behind the West in the technologies most essential to future growth--computers, automation, petrochemicals and telecommunications. Nor are Western firms overly eager to rush to Russia's assistance. Fiat's auto plant at Togliatti opened two years late and is still convulsed by bureaucratic and labor difficulties. Stuttgart's Daimler-Benz has backed away from a Soviet invitation to build the world's largest truck factory south of Moscow.
As undermotivated as they are underproductive, workers loaf on the job, pilfer the factory's stocks or get too drunk to show up. At present, a Soviet worker produces only half as much as his U.S. counterpart and a Russian farmer one-fifth as much. Shoddy work habits are a regular target for the acerbic cartoonists of Krokodil, the Soviet humor magazine. The workers, in turn, joke bitterly about Communism's unfulfilled promise. What is the difference between an American and a Russian fairy story? goes one joke. The American story begins, "Once upon a time there was ..." The Russian one starts, "Some day there will be . . ."
Facing a Choice
Will "some day" ever become today for the Russian consumer? Not unless the regime decides that it must accommodate to change--which would mean yielding some of its incredibly far-reaching power. At present, the central planners in Moscow set prices for no fewer than 10 million different items. They still establish production goals and determine what products are to be turned out by every factory in the Soviet Union.
In the early 1960s, Kharkov University Professor Yevsei Liberman argued that profit, not production quotas, should be considered the key index of efficiency and that a degree of local managerial autonomy should be permitted. For a brief period, Brezhnev & Co. went along with his ideas. As British Sovietologist Leonard Schapiro notes, "Communist regimes are always willing to yield to economic reform if it will stop the people from demanding political reform. [But] you can't reform an economic system without reforming it politically as well." Brezhnev soon concluded that Libermanism might ultimately lead to liberalism, or something equally loathsome, and the reforms lost all momentum. Liberman has since argued against the "exaggeration" of the importance of profits.
Waiting in Line
In the meantime, the hapless consumer waits . . . and waits. Because only 10% of Soviet food shops are self-service stores, the average Soviet citizen spends no fewer than 400 hours per year simply waiting in line to make purchases. The total amount of time devoted by the nation to purchasing goods and food is estimated to be close to 30 billion hours a year. A Russian joke has someone asking a young boy where his father is. "He's a cosmonaut circling the moon," replies the lad. "And your mother?" "She's waiting in line at the butcher shop."
Mrs. Cosmonaut must first wait outside the store to see whether meat is being delivered that day. Once inside, she must wait on one line to find out how much the meat will cost, another to pay for the meat and a third to pick it up. Nor can Mrs. Cosmonaut complete her shopping at one or two places, since food shops are specialized. Pravda recently complained that "a consumer would not be surprised if he saw shops selling only noodles or bay leaves."
Mrs. Cosmonaut will feel even worse served when she tries to find a bra, an enameled teapot or a new coat. Soviet-made clothing is ill-fitting, poorly made, and fashioned from generally inferior fabric. There is a shortage of meat grinders because the planners cut back output too drastically after production one year slightly exceeded demand. Enamel kitchenware is almost unavailable. Reason: the output of enamelware plants is measured by weight, so the factories meet their quotas by manufacturing a few heavy bathtubs rather than many small kitchen items.
Despite such shortcomings, however, the Soviet consumer has never had it so good. Food shops arrange supplies, while they last, in neat, tempting pyramids. New Soviet shopping centers such as the showplace stores along Moscow's Kalinin Prospekt are virtually indistinguishable in appearance from shops in West Berlin or Amsterdam.
Flea-Market Ethics
Such improvements have only set off the spiral already familiar in the West--of rising expectations. The Soviet consumer is finally beginning to demonstrate that he will not tolerate shoddy treatment forever. Last year private saving rose 20% because consumers refused to spend their money on badly made goods. A million TV sets remain unsold not because Soviet consumers cannot afford them but because they want wider screens.
Outside the official economy is a second, or countereconomy, which functions informally and in the best capitalist tradition. Collective farmers from Georgia and the Caucasus jet to Moscow with loads of fresh vegetables grown in their private plots and unload them for two to three times the price of wilted produce in the official market. Western-made clothing and shoes are available in government-sanctioned "commission" shops. There is also a black market in Western clothing, supplying trendy and kinky threads to modish Russians. Cost of a pair of white jeans: $30. Some items come right off the backs of tourists; they risk arrest for selling a shirt or sports coat to an importunate chap who later turns out to be a KGB man.
Much of the merchandise in the countereconomy is stolen from factories and restaurants by employees and sold at high markups. The fixer thrives in the countereconomy, acting as an entrepreneur who, for a price, knows where to get just about anything from new fenders for a Moskvich sedan to rare Western goods. Officials frown on the countereconomy but are at a loss to do anything about it. As one party paper complained, "Why is it that in our strictly planned economy there sometimes intrudes the ethics of the flea market?"
The Roots of Alienation
Five years ago, Soviet Philosopher Mark Mitin incurred official wrath for daring to suggest that even a good Communist could grow alienated if life were too dreary; this could be overcome, said Mitin, by an abundance of consumer goods. Recently, Moscow's Literary Gazette, one of the leading Soviet exponents of consumerism, reported that Mitin has been supported by psychological studies. "Research proved that shortages of needed goods have a negative effect on human feelings and can become an 'antistimulus' in labor activity," said the Gazette. "Even a nagging thought in a man's mind about wanting something that is not available may affect the productivity of labor and put the man's emotions out of balance." As another writer put it in the Gazette: "The truth, as round as a button, is that frontiers of ideological struggle sometimes go along the seams of jackets and coats and that a pair of well-tailored trousers may conquer feeble minds."
Fat or even well-tailored Communists are not necessarily friendly Communists. It can be argued that if the Soviet Union were more successful at solving its economic problems, it might, at least in the short term, be even more aggressive in extending its presence throughout the world. In any event, as long as Brezhnev or men much like him rule the Soviet Union, it is too much to hope that there will be a significant revision of Soviet priorities. No matter what the speakers may say at the Palace of Congresses this week, defense will continue to enjoy precedence over consumerism for some time to come, and there will be no sudden relaxation of bureaucratic and ideological rigidity in favor of economic pragmatism. About the most that the outside world can reasonably hope for is that some day, if a new generation of leaders does create a more smoothly functioning economy, the result will be Communists who are more contented than contentious.
*One instance where Soviet foreign policy may have been pursuing a less legitimate interest came to light last week. The Mexican government, after 29 years of relatively friendly relations with Moscow, angrily declared five top-ranking diplomats personae non gratae, and recalled its own ambassador from Moscow. Unofficially, the Mexicans charged the Soviet Union with complicity in the case of 50 young firebrands who received guerrilla training in North Korea after visiting Moscow. Twenty of the youths were arrested last week on a wide range of charges including conspiracy to overthrow the Mexican government. The gaffe would seem particularly embarrassing since the Soviets have consistently sought to present a moderate image in Latin America, and even disapproved of the guerrilla tactics of Che Guevara.
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