SOVIET RUSSIA: MORE GOODS, MORE PROBLEMS

...and a bitter November wind made me take refuge behind a huge canvas portrait of Lenin, erected fcr the annual celebration of the revolution...

...On the one hand they believe that millions of Americans eat garbage and sleep in the gutter, on the other, they conjure up a glossy image of large single-family homes and two-car garages...

...The shortwave has been a tremendous asset to the Soviet dissident movement...

...The consumer sector of the Soviet economy has been markedly upgraded since 1970, particularly with respect to clothing, home furnishings, appliances, and housing...

...She had known Brodsky and claimed the poet richly deserved his sentence to forced labor in the mid-1960s: such people are parasites who have nothing to offer society...

...This frequently requires membership in 93 the Communist party, since opportunities for swift upward mobility are commonly reserved for party members...

...IN CONTRAST to 1970, there now is a larger selection of goods in the stores, though the overall impression is still dismal...

...Political conformity, of course, has always been a condition for advancement in the Soviet system, but now it is traded as an above-theboard item in open barter between aspiring citizens and the state...

...And now, significantly, for the first time major improvements have actually come within the reach of many Soviet citizens...

...Continuation of this incipient movement will depend on the workers' ability to establish links with other branches of the dissident community...

...Now that Russians themselves are traveling abroad in greater numbers than at any time since the 1920s, they bring back impressions of the world beyond Soviet borders, whether of Budapest or New York...

...Evidence of inequality in large urban centers is paralleled by even more striking contrasts between rural and urban life in the Soviet Union (nearly half the population still lives in rural areas) and between provincial towns and such major cities as Moscow and Leningrad...

...Toward the end of my stay, I was introduced to a woman who represented a very different aspect of the religious movement in the 1970s...

...The mother and daughter resolved this problem by traveling thousands of miles to a distant city in order to perform the baptism—on the assumption that the Soviet bureaucracy operates so inefficiently that the daughter will have graduated and found a job by the time the information reaches the city where they live...

...Since 1970, 1 have spent nearly a year and a half living in the Soviet Union and have grown to appreciate the rare opportunities to converse at length with "ordinary" Soviet citizens...

...In Leningrad I was stopped several times by Gypsies who offered to sell me eye shadow and other cosmetics...

...Since the death of Stalin, pressure has been mounting to upgrade the appallingly low standard of living...

...When I first spent time in Moscow eight years ago, my exchange with the policeman probably would'not have taken place...

...Careerism, not idealism, induces educated young people to join the party these days, and political subservience is the price they pay for social mobility...

...Crime in the Soviet Union is concentrated in urban areas (three-quarters of all juvenile crime occurs in cities), and most criminal offenders belong to educationally and economically disadvantaged segments of society—the people who most vividly experience relative deprivation...

...I was frequently asked whether massive unemployment really exists in the U.S...

...The official response has been swift and savage...

...My appearance had not changed...

...One acquaintance of mine—herself a baptized but inactive member of the Russian Orthodox Church—recently decided that her grown daughter should be baptized...

...The network of special stores reserved for the Soviet elite and for foreigners also serves as a conduit for distribution through the black market and informal networks...

...The plastic sumka symbolizes the Soviet obsession with quality consumer goods, a virtual synonym for products manufactured outside the Soviet Union...

...In January 1978, 43 workers drew up a charter for the Trade Union for the Defense of Workers, the first independent labor organization in Russia since the 1920s...

...They are a new force, amorphous perhaps but quite real, and they will play a decisive role in shaping the country's future...

...I replied that they would undoubtedly have suffered the same death as Mandelstam and Babel, or perhaps the fate of the great living writers, Brodsky and Solzhenitsyn, who have been persecuted by the regime and exiled against their will...

...The appeal of Russian Orthodoxy more importantly reflects the need these people feel for independence from the official belief system and for a positive identification with their Russian heritage...

...Provincial visitors flocking to Moscow now seem to belong to another century...

...In contrast to women in the United States, Soviet women are trying hard to become "sex objects," accentuating their femininity through cosmetics and clothing...

...The continued availability of color television sets, single-family apartments, and automobiles are probably essential if social stability is to be maintained...

...The Soviet media attempt to counteract the effects of these contacts by presenting an official version of Western life...

...His outlook reflects the tremendous improvements in the standard of living for many Russians...

...An upsurge in tourism, expansion of economic relations with Western countries, and the enlargement of various scholarly exchanges all have augmented the number of foreign vistors...

...The major one centered on the availability of options, such as the right to choose one's place of residence (internal mobility in the U.S.S.R...

...I struck up a conversation...

...The Moscow policeman readily volunteered that he listened to the Voice of America and knew "all about" life in the United States...

...The key question is whether the Soviet economy with its deficit agricultural sector and its gross inefficiency can meet the massive demand for quality goods and services...

...In Leningrad, I spent a whole evening roaming through the vast department store, Gostinnyi dvor, a two-storied structure extending the length and width of four city blocks...

...The growing appeal of religion must therefore be interpreted with caution...

...It seems that the energy consumed earlier by attempts to reform society is now feeding the newly acquired religious fervor...

...IN THE FUTURE, Soviet leaders will have to reckon with a society in which the popular aspiration for material progress has intensified, official control over information has declined, and a new generation that never experienced the gut fear of the Stalin years is moving to the foreground...

...Near my hotel, 150 people waited three hours to purchase women's face powder manufactured in Hungary...

...During my recent visit, I was informed that at least in the major cities, workers listen to shortwave Russianlanguage broadcasts and discuss these programs openly...

...At the Lenin Library, I saw women as well dressed as any in London or Paris...

...AntiSemitism, she insisted, was merely the reaction of many people to the Jewish demand for emigration...

...Now he earned an adequate living, and even dreamed of owning an automobile...

...annual scholars exchange...

...Born in 1955 in a village, he had gone directly from secondary school into the army (a common fate for those who do not go on to higher education), and from the army he had been recruited into the Moscow militia, a job native Moscovites generally disdain...

...There is reason to suspect that more than a few Russians share some of the basic attitudes displayed by this woman, and it is not farfetched to imagine that future disappointments on the consumer front might be channeled by the authorities into precisely this sort of chauvinism and anti-Semitism—much as the Czars did before 1917 and Stalin in the late 1940s and early '50s...

...More than anything else, the mass availability of the shortwave radio and the cessation of most jamming in the early 1970s put millions of Soviets in contact with the West for the first time...

...Unlike involvement in the dissident movement, involvement in the Church generally does not entail severe punitive measures...

...This 22-year-old Soviet policeman is a product of the post-Stalinist era, a member of a new generation unfamiliar with the fears created by the Stalinist terror...

...Merchandise is entering the economy through other channels...

...Under present conditions of scarcity, those who have recently acquired a car, a dacha, or a trip to the West are not likely to take political risks that would jeopardize their newly won privileges...

...One night, in a Moscow taxi, I noticed that a shortwave radio was mounted on the dashboard and tuned to the BBC Russian-language news...

...As they rise in the ranks of the Soviet middle class, these people are likely to contribute little to the liberalization of Soviet society...

...some samizdat literature is said to be in circulation among them...

...At the time of my first visit to the Soviet Union, there were few visible signs of economic inequality...

...It is significant that the largest single category of adult and juvenile crime involves offenses against property...

...Russians generally give guarded credibility to these officical accounts, even while simultaneously imagining the West as a land of affluence and opportunity...

...The policeman had little doubt that in material terms his life would continue to improve steadily, but he did have complaints...

...In 1977, very little meat was available, and there was an inadequate supply of milk...

...When I first arrived at Moscow's Belorusskii railroad station in August 1970, a crowd of onlookers gathered as I waited for a taxi...

...Letters and phone conversations have probably provided more detailed information about life in the West than any other source except the shortwave...

...In many instances, religiosity coincides with political dissent, but nationalism, anti-Semitism, and authoritarianism can also coexist with religious belief...

...He insisted that our countries must be very much alike: everywhere one could find both rich and poor...

...I asked...

...He knew all about America, he said, because he listened to the Voice of America, but he doubted that life there could be much more prosperous than in the U.S.S.R...

...Insofar as organized opposition continues, it is carried on mainly by national and religious groups: Jews, Ukrainians, Baptists, Seventh-Day Adventists, Lithuanian Catholics, and others...

...Large numbers of American businessmen and technicians now are in the Soviet Union, some of them on longterm arrangements...

...My appearance (brown corduroys and a Marimekko blouse) was certainly odd from their point of view...

...Prosperous Moscovites and Leningraders are becoming as fastidious as New Yorkers in protecting personal property against theft (including the routine removal of windshield wipers from automobiles, since these are in great demand and short supply), and although the Soviets withhold publication of crime statistics, there is evidence that criminal activity is on the upsurge (see V. Chalidze's recent study, Criminal Russia...

...A growing crime rate is likely to be another consequence of the changing economic scene...

...Driven by rising expectations, people compete ferociously to acquire positions that will guarantee access to a better life for themselves and their children...

...Notwithstanding persistent and often severe food shortages, a consumer leap forward has taken place...

...Seven years ago the Soviet Union had a dissident movement of remarkable proportions, involving hundreds of activists and many thousands of sympathizers who read and circulated underground (samizdat) publications...

...The envious and resentful gaze formerly directed at foreigners is now directed at other Soviet citizens...

...they are threatened, intimidated, and pressured to halt their activity...

...Of the former leaders only Andrei Sakharov remains at liberty...

...In the winter of 1976, food stores ran out of two staples in the Russian diet: potatoes and onions...

...The increase in Soviet tourism to East European countries and the West—a very recent phenomenon—has accelerated the flow of foreign goods...

...Undoubtedly, the most important and surprising recent development concerns the involvement of workers in open dissent...

...Did these restrictions exist in my country...

...is severely restricted), to travel abroad or even to train in a favorite sport as a pastime (such training is geared to producing champion athletes...

...The interest in religion (including Hinduism and Buddhism) dates back to the 1960s, but the trend toward Russian Orthodoxy gained real momentum with the disintegration of the dissident movement...

...It would be a mistake, then, to assume that religious conversion necessarily implies a critical stance toward the Soviet political system...

...Economic inequality, then, is more evident today than at any time since the 1920s, and there is reason to believe that class differences will become increasingly visible...

...Today, shortwave radios of Soviet make can be purchased in major department stores in Moscow and Leningrad for about 100 rubles...

...The 1970s have thus brought about two major changes in Soviet society: a qualitative improvement in the material standard of living and a disruption in the regime's monopoly on information, especially about life beyond Soviet borders...

...These items can, however, be found in peasant markets, though at prices far higher than in state stores...

...They are still a tiny minority, but seven years ago such people were not in evidence at all...

...The authorities must also face a continuation of the dissident movement—which is in decline but has not disappeared—as well as the steadily increasing appeal of institutional religion among the young and educated, a development with complex political potential...

...But given the chronic setbacks in the Soviet economy and continuing failure to achieve economic detente with the U.S., this solution to the consumer problem may not be viable in the long run...

...The only other person in sight was a Soviet policeman on his beat, assigned to guard the Lenin portrait...

...Yet she subscribes to a "law-and-order" approach to the dissident movement and has no sympathy for the victims of official injustice...

...These people are now called to the secret police for interrogation...

...On two recent trips to Moscow, in 1976 and 1977,1 found that foreigners no longer attract special attention...

...Indeed, I was frequently mistaken for a Russian and asked to furnish directions...

...Delivery of the goods now ranks as a leading factor in the system's equilibrium...

...On parting he asked me to give California the regards of a Soviet policeman...

...All of this calls to mind the "chiliasm of despair" noted by historians in cases where religiosity follows on the heels of political frustration...

...The , appearance of working-class protest in this "paradise of the toiling masses" obviously has immense significance, and recent examples of labor unrest in Eastern Europe serve both to encourage the workers and alarm the authorities...

...This attraction takes various forms, from genuine religious conversion to fashionable conversation...

...The spiritual and social comforts offered by the Russian Orthodox Church have drawn a substantial number of dissidents and a broader circle of alienated intellectuals, including many Jews, into the Church...

...Certainly, the typical merchandise in Soviet stores cannot account for the variety and quality of clothing one sees in Moscow and to a lesser extent in Leningrad...

...Soviet authorities have proposed a substantial enlargement of the official U.S.U.S.S.R...

...More than 150,000 people have permanently left the U.S.S.R...

...People tended to present a uniformly dreary appearance...

...In her view, anyone who emigrates from the Soviet Union is a traitor to the country and destined to wither on foreign shores...

...They stared at me with intense interest and a certain degree of resentment...

...In some respects the shortages are even graver today than they were eight years ago...

...This represents just the tip of the black-market iceberg that extends throughout Soviet soci:ty and makes available to the consumer anything from panty hose to automobiles...

...Nevertheless, his discontent was more than offset by the satisfaction he derived from tangible improvements in his standard of living...

...Friendships are now increasingly formed on the basis of religious affiliation, with the believers drawing closer together...

...Eight years ago, a Western visitor to the Soviet Union was highly conspicuous...

...Membership in the Russian Orthodox Church also fulfills the deep longing people have for a community that stands apart from and in opposition to Soviet society at large...

...Some of these broadcasts are tape-recorded and further disseminated (dissenters call this magnitizdat...

...The policeman talked on about his desire for a more interesting job, his yearning to travel, and his skepticism about the official media ("I don't believe anything I read in the papers...

...For many, Orthodox Christianity offers the only alternative world view in the Soviet Union...

...Propaganda and the 94 secret police are, of course, still ubiquitous, but ideology and coercion no longer suffice to bind people to the regime...

...Occasionally a small quantity of such items goes on sale in regular stores and hundreds of people wait in line...

...The Komsomol (Communist Youth organization) made him put in many hours of voluntary labor and this he hotly resented...

...But now inequality has become increasingly evident in everyday life...

...Clearly, the media image of rampant unemployment, destitution and hopelessness in the West makes an impression on a great many people...

...Soviet contacts with the West have vastly increased during the 1970s...

...The daughter consented with mild enthusiasm, but since she was enrolled in a university, there was a risk of expulsion (an official record of all baptisms and other church rituals is forwarded to the local authorities...

...Those who belonged to the privileged elite concealed their good fortune behind the unimposing facades of their apartment buildings, a custom that continues to this day among the most affluent segments of the elite (see Hedrick Smith's unsurpassed description of Soviet elite living in The Russians...

...I replied that the standard of living of most Americans was vastly higher than it is in the Soviet Union...

...How about Chagall, Stravinsky, and Kandinsky...

...With the decimation of that movement, Russian Orthodoxy filled the void...

...Some years ago, the dissident movement itself created a sense of community among participants and sympathizers...

...since the early 1970s, but they usually maintain close contact with those who remain behind...

...This woman, an instructor of English at a major Soviet university, combined Orthodox beliefs with a nationalistic, anti-Semitic, and authoritarian outlook...

...Since the big crackdown in 1973 with the arrest of P. Yakir and V. Krasin, two leaders of the dissident movement who recanted under interrogation and implicated dozens of others, the movement has been in decline...

...His own life had seen unimaginable material improvements...

...The decline of the human rights movement has coincided with a rise in religious feeling among many former dissident activists and a much larger group of their sympathizers...

...Gradually, the regime's monopoly on information is being eroded...

...In a plush grey and red uniform, this Soviet big-city cop might have stepped out of a propaganda poster featuring youthful builders of Communism...

...So far the consumer problem has been partly solved by resorting to the importation of foreign merchandise on a considerable scale, both officially and through unofficial channels...

...The food situation is the major exception to this pattern of improvement...

...Were American policemen also obliged to work without pay...

...Hundreds of Leningraders strolled haplessly along the corridors stocked with many essentials but few really attractive items (one exception: the bustling record department, which carried Soviet reissues of the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, and several English rock groups...

...On my last visit, I discovered that the cloth sumka (shopping bag), carried at all times by Russians on alert for an unexpected buy, has been partly supplanted by plastic shopping bags, colorfully imprinted with the name of a foreign 92 product or firm or the emblem of the Soviet "Beriozka" that sells otherwise unavailable Russian and foreign merchandise for hard currency (and thus only to foreigners or to privileged members of the Soviet elite...

...but that of many Russians has been so drastically improved that it is no longer so easy to distinguish the foreigner from the native...

...The implications of this development are far-reaching...

...NOW THAT SOVIET CITIZENS are no longer as isolated as in earlier days, they have a growing awareness of living standards outside their own borders...

...In this self-proclaimed "socialist" society, it is ironic that the first major qualitative and quantitative improvement of material standards in six decades has been accompanied by growing social stratification...

...An adult who 95 undergoes baptism may risk serious employment difficulties or expulsion from a university, but not a long labor-camp sentence...

...Some of the good-looking women's apparel that I saw was probably made to order in state tailoring shops or by a seamstress, and surely some women have purchased sewing machines to make their own clothing...

...Today, this movement has been eclipsed by a combination of arrests, forced emigration, and voluntary departures...

...Hard-toget items are sometimes even hawked illicitly on the street...

...The major question is whether the regime can accommodate the rising expectations of its citizens, particularly in light of the economy's poor overall performance in recent years...

...Nor is it likely that new people will soon emerge to take the place of those removed from the scene, for the regime has struck not only at the leadership but also at the second and third echelons of the dissenters—people unknown in the West who have worked quietly and unobtrusively to keep the movement going...

...It presents a challenge to the official Soviet Marxist orthodoxy, but it may also have helped to stimulate retrograde political tendencies within the intelligentsia...

...As differentiation proceeds within the urban population, the contrasts between the major urban centers and the rest of the country become even sharper...

...The accoutrements of the good life—a decent private apartment, attractive furnishings, a car, a dacha (summer cottage)—formerly available only to a small segment of the elite, have now become accessible to a growing number of ordinary people— professionals, engineers, even highly skilled workers...

...They would have been much greater had they remained in Russia," she said...

...Illegal underground publications and news (samizdat) produced by the dissidents have been beamed to the Soviet Union by the Voice of America, the BBC, the Voice of Israel, and other stations, reaching a far wider audience than would have been possible by the written word...

...PERHAPS with the long term in mind, the authorities have moved harshly to repress political dissidence...

...Here one can purchase Italian shoes, English-made apparel for men and women, French cosmetics, fur coats, and sometimes even blue jeans...

...q 96...

...He asked where life was better—in the United States or the Soviet Union...

...Soviet citizens like the policeman and others with whom I spoke represent a new generation in the Soviet Union—people who are less fearful, more hopeful, more cynical, and better informed than their predecessors of the Stalin era...

...In the subways, smartly dressed women in expensive fur coats and imported leather boots sit next to others who wear the coarse and shabby clothing that was standard for the population in 1970...

...This woman is an Orthodox believer and, to that extent, herself a nonconformist in a society that takes a harsh view of traditional religion...

...In 1970 it was difficult to purchase a shortwave radio in ordinary stores, and people who listened to foreign broadcasts did so more or less clandestinely...

...Low-quality, dreary products predominate...