Russian Presswatch/Who Will Pay?
Young, Cathy
Who Will Pay? by Cathy Young Even as Richard Nixon argues for more aid to help Russia stay the Yeltsin course, debate continues over whether that course is the correct one. At the Cato Institute's...
...Or are they simply more inclined to support whoever is in power...
...A columnist in the ultra-nationalist weekly Literaturnaya Rossiya had fun skewering the democracy crowd...
...As a result, price decontrol without privatization has led to dizzying inflation and a drop in production (food production is down 31 percent), since monopolies are determined to keep supply low enough to maintain high prices...
...The St...
...32 percent, 34 percent, and 36 percent respectively said no...
...Throughout January, wrote Institute director Nuzgar Betaneli, polls had registered an alarming growth in people's dissatisfaction with their lives: 64 The American Spectator May 1992 from 61 percent on January 9 to 71 percent on January 16 to 81 percent on January 30...
...inquires Mitrofanov, urging victims to contact a group of researchers launching Russia's first study of sexual harassment in the workplace...
...on the contrary, Comrade Perov is indignant at the Russian government's seizure of party assets, including his own hard-earned rubles...
...0 The American Spectator May 1992 65...
...A poem nearby, by Rostov resident V. Dyachenko, entitled "Open Letter to the General Secretary," advises all Communists to take similar action against Gorbachev...
...But the question arises: What happened To the money that was my own...
...On February 10, Izvestia reported an improvement in the public mood, based on polls conducted in Moscow by the oddly named Institute for the Sociology of Parliamentarianism...
...It's not that he has any regrets about paying his party dues...
...More curious is that he got high ratings from students and professionals working in the humanities—i.e., people whose fortunes these days are presumably far from stellar...
...Or Old Russian Fatalism...
...In the interesting weekly Nasha Rossiya, or "Our Russia," a front-page appeal 'from one D. Loseva, "a reasonable woman of sound mind raised according to Soviet standards and morals," urging that Mikhail Gorbachev be put on trial for crimes including "the treacherous destruction of the Great Soviet State," the corruption of youth, and neglect of presidential duties, is followed by the text of a suit filed by one Andrei Perov against the Russian government and President Yeltsin...
...In Moscow and in Samara, the gap actually went the other way...
...Writing under the nom de plume of Obyvatel ("Philistine"), he scoffed at some of its signs, such as "Ex-Prisoners of Psycho Wards Support Yeltsin"—which, one must admit, could have been worded a bit less ambiguously...
...Your dachas, too, are all right...
...An Independent Gazette commentator had noted, writing about Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, that the typical ex-Soviet lady "gets nervous and starts showing a decline in productivity" if no one has pinched her behind by the end of the workday...
...But is this an actual decline, or merely a transfer of resources to private-sector production, not included in the official statistics...
...and the rest were undecided...
...The Independent Gazette published a January poll of about 7,500 people in Moscow, St...
...Petersburg, where 36 percent of respondents over 60 expected positive change from Yeltsin's reforms, as opposed to 40 percent of the under-30 crowd and 42 percent of those 30 to 45...
...Yeltsin's approval rating stood at 54 percent, and confidence in his economic policies was up four points...
...As far as I know, this is the first time that a democratic Russian newspaper has implied that anti-homosexual comments are beyond the bounds of civility, which indicates—to the chagrin, no doubt, of some of the people who wished for the downfall of the Soviet empire—that the meaning of the word "progressive" is at least sometimes beginning to coincide in Russia and in the United States...
...The Communist-nationalist alliance, according to the Independent Gazette, mustered about 40,000 people on Manezh Square, while the pro-democracy rally in front of the Russian White House drew 60,000...
...Only 10 percent sided with those demanding the resignation of the Yeltsin government, while 56 percent took the side of its defenders, 16 percent said they weren't sure, and 18 percent wished a pox on both their houses...
...Comrade Perov, a Communist party member since 1958, wants his party dues reimbursed—or at least the 2,287 rubles and 90 kopecks paid since 1973 for which he has exact records—now that the CP has been dismantled...
...catch on that their largest revenues are coming from the sale of food and consumer goods at exorbitant prices, they won't be very eager to let go of the food trade...
...Particularly rattled by Petrakov's remarks was Czechoslovakia's legendary finance minister Vaclay Klaus, the hardcore Friedmanite, who remarked that competition was impossible without free prices...
...Petersburg, and the provincial town of Samara (until recently Kuibyshev), revealing mixed feelings on Yeltsin...
...Why did I feed you and clothe you And give my modest mite So you could have personal limos...
...The number of people dissatisfied with their lives was back at 71 percent, and "only" 39 percent felt that inflation was beyond endurance...
...and Poland's vast agricultural private sector...
...She noted, however, that the sign belonged to someone in a group of young people in punk outfits...
...This poll was taken on the eve of the two rival demonstrations in Moscowpro-Yeltsin and anti-Yeltsin—and the respondents were also asked which rally they sympathized with...
...Is it time, perhaps, to stop choosing between the loss of dignity and the loss of a job...
...The mood in Russia may be less desperate than the doomsayers suggest...
...On the question of whether the president's policies were conducive to the country's economic revival, 43 percent in Moscow, 40 percent in St...
...Moving further in the direction of political correctness, American-style, Moskovsky Komsomolets (February 14) ran an article on the problem of sexual harassment...
...And while it is the most conventional of wisdoms that older people are not only nostalgic for Communist ideals but also the hardest hit by the lifting of price controls, an "age gap" in Yeltsin's disfavor showed up only in St...
...In Moscow, these groups were even more supportive of Yeltsin than private-sector employees...
...Given that Russian women have always had plenty of legitimate complaints on this score, it's a laudable idea—provided it doesn't reach the point where Russians once again have to wonder if there's an informer in their midst before they tell a heretical joke...
...Petersburg sociologists who helped conduct the poll note that Yeltsin's negative ratings are only 4 percent higher than they were last November—a small price to pay for reforms that allowed only 15 percent of those surveyed to maintain their usual diet...
...The demonstrations took place as scheduled, without incident (the beating of pro-Communist, red banner–wielding protesters by police, eerily suggestive of the final years of Czarist Russia, occurred two weeks later...
...Meanwhile, some Communists have discovered a very Western political weapon: the lawsuit...
...A February 8 survey, however, brought pleasant surprises...
...Sensitivity Lessons The mystifying sign carried by one of the pro-democracy demonstrators on February 9, "Curses on the Stalinist Homosexual Communists," invited not only ridicule from Obyvatel but censure from Independent Gazette reporter Anna Ostapchuk, who wrote (February 11) that such a slogan "certainly did not attest to open-mindedness or democratic views...
...What's going on...
...I do not want my property to be handed over to the new bureaucracy," he states, adding that he reserves the right to file other suits based on the same thorny problem—for the reimbursement of his pre-1973 dues and even for the inflation-adjustment of the monies in question...
...The number of Muscovites who said current price levels were "beyond endurance" grew from 25 percent on January 2 to 46 percent in late January...
...Could it be that the elderly—who lived through Communism's darkest years—are less favorably disposed to Marxian ideology than is commonly supposed...
...Optimism...
...Moskovsky Komsomolets columnist Alexei Mitrofanov takes a more gentlemanly view, lamenting the wiles of managers who ask their secretaries to work late and "bald-headed toothless professors" who invite women students home for tutoring before final exams...
...Worst of all, she said, if the authorities in Russia Cathy Young is the author of Growing Up in Moscow (Ticknor & Fields...
...Predictably, the better-educated and those employed in the private sector were more likely to view Yeltsin's economic policies favorably...
...Petersburg, and 36 percent in Samara said yes...
...At the Cato Institute's tenth Monetary Conference in Washington this March, economist Nikolai Petrakovwho resigned from Gorbachev's advisory council in January 1991 to protest the Vilnius crackdown and the general "rightward" turn—argued that Yeltsin's reformers had been wrong to think Russia could replicate Poland's "shock therapy" without taking into account two crucial factors: the bloated military sector of the Soviet (and Russian) economy, which had no counterpart anywhere in Eastern Europe...
...No translation can do justice to the angry versifier's genius, but one can try: I paid my dues without skipping, Of course I wasn't alone...
...Judy Shelton of the Hoover Institution (and author of The Corning Soviet Crash) took Petrakov's side, noting that privatization should have followed right on the heels of the lifting of price controls...
Vol. 25 • May 1992 • No. 5
