The New Soviet Man

Miller, Stephen

THE NEW SOVIET MAN Ivan feels terrible. The great Marxist-Leninist project was the creation of new man. Purged of bourgeois traits, this new man would be free of petty ambition and greed. He would...

...More alarming is the increasing number of women, especially young women, suffering from alcohol abuse, which is in part the reason for the extraordinary increase in infant mortality-up 36 percent since 1971...
...Life may be gray in Uzbekistan, but not as gray as in Gorky...
...appalling domestic situation, will turn inward, cutting its military budget and perhaps making a deal with the West on Afghanistan...
...Corruption-a complex array of bribes, tributes, and kickbacks-is the oil that greases the sluggish Soviet economy...
...But then again, two cheers may be too many, for ultimately the story of corruption in the Soviet Union is very sad-the story of people who must scheme all the time in order to survive...
...The American press continually carries graphic accounts of corruption in such countries as Indonesia, the pie who use their wit and imagination to beat the system...
...The Soviet leadership will tell its citizenry that such a command economy is necessary in view of the military threats the USSR faces, especially the threat of a Chinese invasion...
...When Andropov took office, there was a good deal of talk in the West about the Kadarization of the Soviet economy...
...In other words, Party officials are saving for a rainy day...
...A dash of economic "freedom" may work in Hungary, a small country composed of a homogeneous population disciplined by the "lessons" of 1956, but would it work in the Soviet Union, a vast empire composed of many different nationalities...
...They are well aware that their perquisites do not belong to them, and that in a purge they would be left with nothing...
...There is a serious labor shortage in the industrial north...
...Simon and Schuster, $14.95...
...According to Jerry Hough, a well-known American scholar of the Soviet Union, even Party officials are coming to see the connection between socialist control and corruption...
...Soviet political and military leaders are very worried about this development, for most of them are of Slavic descent and they clearly do not put a great deal of faith in the loyalty of Soviet Muslims...
...More rooted in their traditional culture than Russians are in theirs, Soviet Muslims can better resist the corrosive aspects of Communist life...
...Treml points out that in recent years approximately 50,000 Soviet citizens died from alcohol poisoning as opposed to 400 such deaths in the United States, and this does not include alcohol-related deaths...
...Those who survive are in poor shape...
...All manner of illegal wheeling and dealing is necessary just to put food on the table, fix their appliances, and educate their children...
...As Murphy points out, the population is being eaten away by infant mortality and by premature deaths among 20- to 44-year-old males...
...We know, of course, that such a new man has not been created...
...Simis argues that "it is the power of the party apparat that has turned the Soviet Union, in the sixty-three years of its existence, into a country eaten away to the very core by corruption...
...What is happening in the Soviet Union is grotesquely ironic: it is not the State that is withering away, but the Russian people...
...Corruption, after all, is an old story...
...It could attack the problem indirectly-reducing the grayness of socialist life by allowing more private incentive, in effect bringing more of the underground economy above ground...
...But often overlooked is that the imposition of Communism makes a society more corrupt, not less...
...and Uzbeks-or other Muslim peoples of the Soviet Union -suffer less from boredom, self-contempt, and alienation...
...Two cheers, then, for corruption in the Soviet Union, for it reveals that Marxist-Leninist ideology has not taken root...
...There is a shortage in the Soviet Union of x-ray film, surgical instruments, even aspirin...
...Perhaps because Soviet Muslims have greater cultural resources...
...They face no shortages...
...To do the opposite would require the Party to reduce its power voluntarily-an unlikely prospect, needless to say...
...He would be someone dedicated to the general welfare, to giving each according to his needs...
...Communist rhetoric wails about the social Darwinian aspects of capitalism, but life under Communist rule is much more of a rat race than is life in the democratic West...
...Paradoxically," Hough said recently, "the market, which once was looked upon as the cause of all social problems, becomes in this view the solution to a severe moral problem____" High Party officials, one would think, have no reason to be corrupt...
...Only by committing theft," Simis writes, "by cheating the government and their customers, and by falsifying the accounts are officials and managers of state farms, collective farms, food stores able to bear the burden of the tribute system...
...Most people in the Soviet Union, Simis says, are corrupt out of necessity...
...To blame this entirely on Communism is probably wrong, since Muslims living under Communism don't have the same drinking problem that Great Russians do...
...Yet the Stephen Miller is executive assistant to the Board of Radio Free Europe, and the author of the forthcoming book...
...and, as Cullen Murphy reported in a fascinating article in the February Atlantic, the Soviets are "pulling in thousands of 'guest workers' from fraternal socialist neighbors: Bulgarian lumberjacks, North Korean coal miners, Vietnamese laborers...
...And likelier still, he will continue to escape the dreariness of Communist life by drowning in drink.â William R. Havender...
...If it raises the already high tax on alcohol, as it did a few years ago, people turn to moonshine, or even brake fluid, with what effect one can imagine...
...No doubt the Soviet leadership will try to make a deal with Western Europe, in order to drive a wedge between it and the United States...
...What other choice does it have...
...it did not arrive with Communism...
...Decentralization of power would tend to increase the power of non-Russian elites, a threatening prospect for the Soviet rulers [emphasis mine...
...What can the Soviet leadership do about the terrible condition of Great Russians...
...A fair question, I think, because the USSR's Communist Party justifies its dictatorship by pointing to the new man and the new society it is allegedly creating...
...While working as a lawyer in Moscow, Simis collected evidence for this book, which he wrote in 1976...
...the story also of numerous underground capitalists driven not by need or greed but by a desire to exercise their entrepreneurial talents-for whom, as Simis says, the "process of making money-not the money itself-had become the real aim...
...Special Interest Groups in American Politics, which will be published in September...
...It is, after all, the story of peoshrewdness and cynicism of the corrupt than the fanaticism of the true believer...
...Writing in the New York Review of Books, Seweryn Bialer said: "I have yet to meet a Soviet economist or official who believes that installing an extensive market system on the Hungarian model is possible in the USSR-not least because of the diffusion of political power that would result from such a change...
...In the United States, the excise tax on liquor accounts for about one percent of the federal budget...
...they smoke too much, eat poorly, and receive terrible health care...
...Communism always brings about a shortage of goods and services, leading inevitably to a vast expansion of the black market...
...Soviet leadership really cannot do much to curtail them...
...It would be misleading simply to lament the corruption so prevalent in the Soviet Union, because the story Simis tells does have its heartening side...
...The rate of alcohol abuse in Uzbekistan, for instance, is 150 times less than it is in Greater Russia...
...According to some estimates, the unofficial economy accounts for as much as 40 percent of the USSR's GNP...
...In recent years, however, we have learned that a different kind of man now exists in the Soviet Union and that he is not something to cheer about...
...they have access to special stores with Western consumer goods and high-quality food...
...Better the Corruption is the oil that greases the Soviet economy...
...Nevertheless, many Party officials are corrupt if only because of the insecurity of their positions...
...They also enjoy many other perks, including better education for their children...
...Corruption, of course, is not unique to the Soviet Union...
...But as with so much of the surmising that greeted Andropov's accession, there are no grounds to expect Soviet leaders to risk Kadarization, which comes down to a diminution of Party control...
...And the massive consumption of alcohol is an important source of revenue...
...Vladimir Treml of Duke University estimates that the tax on alcohol is the regime's single most important source of revenue, amounting to 12 percent of the Soviet Union's annual budget...
...Philippines, Argentina, and Brazil, and we have no reason to question their accuracy...
...A little more economic "freedom" would be good for the health of Soviet man...
...Perhaps because life is so degrading and boring in the Soviet Union, more and more Russians are taking to drink...
...Indeed, in some respects Soviet Muslims are flourishing...
...If it makes an attempt to fight alcoholism through education and better health care (including detoxification centers), the program is not only costly but leads to a drop in liquor revenue...
...they have access to special hospitals and Western medicines...
...Although the Russian appetite for liquor is well known, alcoholism has become a serious problem only in the past twenty years...
...Fortunately, he already had sent a copy of the manuscript abroad...
...What is the extent of corruption in the Soviet Union...
...Yuri Andropov has declared war on corruption arid alcoholism...
...In USSR: The Corrupt Society,* Konstantin Simis argues that corruption is pervasive...
...More than likely, he will remain-especially if he is a Great Russian-bored, depressed, and indifferent...
...Whether the Soviet citizen will believe such rhetoric is another matter...
...For one thing, corruption prevents the extraordinarily rigid and inefficient economic system from breaking down altogether...
...When the KGB got wind of his project, it confiscated the manuscript and kicked Simis out of the country...
...The answer, she suggests, is that it can't...
...But why should the Soviet leadership be expected to refrain from an adventurist foreign policy, the one arena where it enjoys success...
...Naturally some officials are merely greedy, but that is to belabor the obvious...
...The central question faced by the Soviet leadership is posed by Helene Carrere d'Encausse in her excellent book, Confiscated Power: How Soviet Russia Really Workst- "How can the system be modernized without at the same time weakening the sources of its legitimacy...
...Their birthrate is much higher than the Russian birthrate...
...As Brezhnev once said: "Our foreign policy is our great method for domestic politics...
...The leadership is worried not only about military manpower but also about manpower in general...
...Moreover, corruption is essential in meeting one's quotas at work...
...It is tempting for the West to derive some satisfaction from the terrible state of the Soviet Union- tempting to assume that the Soviet leadership, confronted with such an Harper and Row, $19.95...
...Andropov, it was argued, had been ambassador to Hungary and had seen the workings of the Hungarian economy up close-had seen how an increasing reliance on the profit motive and on wage differentials based on performance had resulted in a successful agricultural sector, so that Hungarians rarely have to stand in line for food...
...As D'Encausse says, because the USSR is on the one hand a domestic failure and on the other a triumphant world power, what we can, expect of Andropov is an attempt not to liberalize the economy but rather to militarize it even further-turning it more into a command economy and reminding "corrupt" Soviet citizens that they will be shot for economic crimes...
...Of course its military might is also a success story-used to intimidate foreign countries, suppress revolts in satellite countries, and, in the case of Afghanistan, prevent a socialist ally from turning away from Communism...
...Indeed, even high Party officials are worried about him, for he is corrupt and, more often than not, a drunkard...
...But what kind of man has the Soviet Union created...

Vol. 16 • June 1983 • No. 6


 
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