Very interesting pieces on:
The (Soviet) Russian anthem
Private land
Public health emergency (substantial article)
Russian naval missiles (substantial article)
Shlapentokh on the collapse of the Soviet Union
(a re-interpretation)
Happy New Year..
Andrew Jameson
Chair, Russian Committee, ALL
Reviews Editor, Rusistika
Listowner, allnet, cont-ed-lang, russian-teaching
1 Brook Street, Lancaster LA1 1SL UK
Tel: 01524 32371 (+44 1524 32371)
----------
From: David Johnson <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipient list suppressed
Subject: 5006-MT/Anthem,Poll/Trust,Poll/Army,Land Ownership,Nukes inBaltic,Armstrong/Confusion,Smith/Health Care,Guarding
KurskSub,Shlapentokh/The Collapse of the Soviet Union
Date: 04 January 2001 02:12
Johnson's Russia List
#5006
4 January 2001
[log in to unmask]
[Note from David Johnson:
1. Moscow Times editorial: This Hymn Is Supposed To Move Us?
2. Itar-Tass: Russians trust Putin, not courts -- opinion poll.
3. Itar-Tass: 30 Percent Russians Say Army Cuts Will Weaken Country:
Poll.
4. Itar-Tass: Russia: 130m hectares of land becomes private property.
5. AFP: Russia denies US report of nuclear deployment in Baltic sea
port.
6. Patrick Armstrong: HIGHER CONFUSION.
7. Cameron Smith: Re: 5003-NYT/Health Care Emergency.
8. BBC Monitoring: Northern Fleet "on permanent alert" guarding Kursk
sub's "top-secret" missiles.
9. The Times Literary Supplement (UK): Vladimir Shlapentokh,
A normal system? False and true explanations for the collapse of the
USSR.]
*******
#1
Moscow Times
January 4, 2001
Editorial
This Hymn Is Supposed To Move Us?
It seems odd that after spending so much time and energy debating which
music to choose as the national anthem, Russia proceeded to adopt lyrics
with hardly any public discussion at all. Rather than agonizing over what
sort of message the country wanted to send with the words to its official
hymn, the government just covered over the obvious ideological anachronisms
in the Soviet anthem with some frankly banal patches.
"O Party of Lenin, the strength of the people/ To Communism’s triumph lead
us on" has metamorphosed into "Popular wisdom given by our forebears/ Be
glorious, our country! We are proud of you!"
What are we to make of the line "You are unique in the world, one of a
kind"? Sounds like something that an "anthem-generating" computer program
might come up with.
Sadly, the new lyrics merely confirm that Russia is a country that has lost
its vision and sense of self.
And this is really a shame. Russia had a unique opportunity to enter the
21st century with an anthem that showed it had learned something from the
trials of the 20th century. It could have produced lyrics that moved beyond
the glorification of the state and the government and actually inspired
people to be proud of their country.
One of the best lines to come out of Hollywood in recent years came when
Jack Nicholson complimented Helen Hunt in "As Good As It Gets" by telling
her, "You make me want to be a better man." At the risk of trivializing a
serious issue, we would argue that a modern national anthem should make us
want to be better citizens. Such a message would serve Russia very well now.
Russia might have taken inspiration, for instance, from Western protest
singers of the 1960s. Accused of being unpatriotic, many of them countered
by writing powerful songs that expressed both a love of one’s country and a
commitment to improving it.
Take, for instance, "The Power and the Glory" by Phil Ochs. In traditional
anthem style, Ochs’ chorus runs, "Here is a land full of power and glory/
Beauty that words cannot recall." But the real punch comes in the final verse:
Yet she’s only as rich as the poorest of her poor
Only as free as the padlocked prison door
Only as strong as our love for this land
Only as tall as we stand.
Russia, it seems, has missed its chance to adopt an anthem that would make
us stand tall.
*******
#2
Russians trust Putin, not courts -- opinion poll
ITAR-TASS
Moscow, 3 January: Russians trust President Vladimir Putin more than the
judicial system, a poll suggests.
The poll was conducted by the Russian Centre for Public Opinion Research
(ROMIR) in late December.
Its findings, which were published on Wednesday, say 72 per cent of
respondents were inclined to trust Putin and 26 per cent approved anything
he does.
Only a fourth of those asked said they had trust in the judicial system.
Almost 30 per cent of the respondents had no faith whatsoever in the
possibility of finding the truth in court.
Only the Church has a credibility comparable to that of the president. A
total of 66 per cent of those polled said they had some or another degree
of faith in sincerity of priests.
As for the mass media, only six per cent of Russians believe them without
reservations; 37 per cent "rather do not trust" the media, and 16 per cent
do not believe newspapers and television at all.
The poll results are consistent with findings of other sociological
studies. Thus the leader of the Public Opinion Fund, Aleksandr Oslon, said
at a roundtable meeting in December that sociologists had analysed reasons
of trust of Russians in Putin, to conclude that he looked to the nation a
"psychotherapeutist" who was destined to heal bruised national self-identity.
*******
#3
30 Percent Russians Say Army Cuts Will Weaken Country: Poll.
MOSCOW, January 4 (Itar-Tass) - Opinion pollsters said 32.7 percent
Russians fear that the Security Council's decision to cut the number of
troops will weaken the country and lead to disintegration of its army.
Just 7.8 percent of the respondents were confident that the proposed cuts
in the army and navy will improve their combat capability, the independent
research center ROMIR told Itar-Tass on Wednesday.
It said 10.8 percent of those polled believe that combat capability will
improve slightly after personnel cuts, while 11.3 percent said it will
slightly decrease.
As many as 20.7 percent of the respondents said they do not expect any
changes in the armed forces, and 16.2 percent were undecided.
ROMIR conducted the poll in late December, which involved 2,000 respondents
across Russia.
*******
#4
Russia: 130m hectares of land becomes private property
ITAR-TASS
Moscow, 3 January: Over 130m hectares of land in Russia became private
property over the years of reform, the Russian Federal Land Cadaster
Service announced on Wednesday [3 January].
There are over 43m landowners, proprietors and users of plots of land in
Russia now. They hold about 8 per cent of the country's land, which is more
than the area of all the ploughland in Western Europe.
Russia's entire land resources are estimated by experts of the Federal Land
Cadaster Service at 1,709m hectares of land, or 12.5 per cent of the
habitable territory on earth.
All owners of plots of land have been issued with documents certifying
their right either to use or to own land. The collection of payments for
land in 1999 amounted to R18.1bn and its share in the federal tax receipts
from the use of natural resources makes up over 70 per cent, it was
stressed by the Federal Land Cadaster Service.
*******
#5
Russia denies US report of nuclear deployment in Baltic sea port
KALININGRAD, Russia, Jan 3 (AFP) -
Russia's Baltic fleet rejected Wednesday a US newspaper report that it had
deployed tactical nuclear weapons in the Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic
Sea in a bid to step up pressure on NATO.
"There are no nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the navy in the Baltic sea,"
navy spokesman Anatoly Lobski told an AFP correspondant in Kaliningrad, a
Russian Baltic port located between Poland and Lithuania.
"The Baltic Fleet respects agreements on nuclear non-proliferation in the
Baltic sea."
Citing "US intelligence officials," the Washington Times newspaper reported
the movement last June of new battlefield nuclear arms to Kaliningrad.
Officials in Moscow had issued flat denials of the report earlier Wednesday
to national news agencies.
"This information absolutely does not correspond with reality," Russian
defence ministry sources told Interfax, adding that none of Russia's nuclear
weapons had been moved from their permanent sites.
"This report can only be a political provocation," said Lobsky.
The Pentagon had declined to comment on the reports, the Washington Times
said.
It cited US intelligence officials, who claimed the weapons movement was "a
sign Moscow is following through on threats to respond to NATO expansion with
the forward deployment of nuclear weapons."
Lithuania's Foreign Minister Antanas Valionis told journalists in Vilnius
"similar reports have been appearing several times a year but after raising
public concern, after some time they are usually forgotten."
"To date none of these reports have been confirmed, so I would like not to
comment on the recent reports too," he added.
Russia and the United States announced in 1991 and 1992 a non-binding
agreement to reduce stocks of tactical nuclear weapons.
The Soviet and Russian governments announced in 1991 and 1992, respectively,
that all tactical nuclear weapons had been removed from eastern Europe to
more secure areas in Russia. It was not clear whether that included nuclear
weapons based in Kaliningrad.
Cuts in US and Russian tactical nuclear arsenals are due to be discussed in
new US-Russian negotiations on a START III arms treaty.
Some analysts believe that the admission of Poland, Hungary and the Czech
Republic to NATO in 1999 has provoked Moscow, which is now responding with
this deployment, the Washington Times said.
*******
#6
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001
From: Patrick Armstrong <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: HIGHER CONFUSION
Dear David
As to your question, yes I think that there is a sort of higher
confusion now with Russia. I would say that the principal reason is that
there are more ACTORS in Russia than there were before. There are a lot
of players in Russia today, a lot of opinions, a lot of things happening
and we have to feed all this into the calculations. This means that
Russia is increasing in pluralism/complexity and that’s what it’s all
about.
******
#7
From: "Cameron Smith" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: 5003-NYT/Health Care Emergency
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001
The NYT article on the Russian health care system (JRL #5003) isn't
particularly helpful in understanding the problem that the system faces.
1. Tuberculosis, AIDS, alcoholism and many other such diseases overwhelming
the
system are not solved by better health care, but by solving the problems of
poverty and social instability. Death rates and illness rates in general are
far less connected with the quality of the health system than are partly the
wealth but more importantly income inequality and social conditions of the
country in question (thus the previous - economically poor - communist
countries could maintain life expectancy at a far higher rate than the size of
their economies would otherwise produce through stable and more equal social
conditions, and West Europeans continue to do the same in comparison with
other
similarly-strong economies.). Furthermore the disaggregation of the state
socialised economy has led to fewer general health checks (profosmotr) and
fewer people who could be subject to them. Alas, prophylactic work is the one
part of a health system that could have any great influence of death and
illness rates, and little to do with the
2. The article confuses best medical practice with best medical organisation.
It is laudable that Dubna and other cities and regions are encouraging
exchanges of knowledge and practice. But that is no grounds for calling for
"private hospitals and clinics...to be nurtured and made more accessible to
poor and rural Russians". Those I have interviewed in Russian healthcare have
no wish to pursue an American model of healthcare organisation - where around
20% have little or no access to healthcare through being neither rich enough
nor poor enough to receive treatment, and where costs are far higher than
anywhere else in the developed world. State guaranteed universal access is
still sacred and this is a motivational resource that should not be
squandered.
Moreover if private healthcare institutions could flourish in Russia for the
benefit of anyone else but the very rich, they would have to be able to
compete
with underfunded and cross-subsidised state institutions. As with attempts to
introduce self-financing co-operatives in the late 1980s and early 1990s these
would almost certainly fail because they wouldn't match prices. All they would
do is temporarily misdirect resources or retreat to "specialise in diseases of
the wealthy". Any problems of poor medical training would not be solved, as
entrepreneurial doctors are simply better entrepreneurs, not necessarily
better
doctors.
3. As for philanthropic oligarchs, it is not widely broadcast that the
Russian
criminal class does sponsor healthcare. It has been known to ensure that
particular hospitals (out of very many) and especially their trauma units are
better funded on the condition that any wounded hoods will receive priority
treatment and confidentiality from the law enforcement agencies. I'm not sure
this is what the editorial intended, but there is nowhere near as strong a
private philanthropic tradition in Russia as there is in the US (indeed, I
imagine nowhere has such a strong tradition as the US). Furthermore, it is
hard
to see why any oligarchical philanthropists would prefer to fund capital
investment in far flung rural areas when there's no one important to show them
to. It is important to work with the grain of the society, which is a more
collective, and statist tradition.
4. The article curiously remarks upon "the passivity that paralyzes efforts to
revitalize Russia's heath care system elsewhere". First of all, the Dubna
exchange is far from being a rare circumstance, and the World Bank among
others
has indeed sponsored similar technical assistance. But more generally and
surprisingly the article doesn't mention Compulsory Medical Insurance, which
has been in operation for seven years and is moving towards being the dominant
source of healthcare funding. Despite initial difficulties - corruption and
incompetence on the part of many insurance companies, resentment on the
part of
medical staff at suffering the innovation of medical audits sometimes
undertaken by poorly qualified or unsympathetic people, and also continuing
debate as to the complexity of the system and the wide regional variations in
how the system operates, it is now widely agreed that the system has helped to
stabilise funding (albeit at too low a level, although at least now there is a
partly-fixed rate of funding as opposed to Soviet residual funding). It also
allows some degree of co-ordination between healthcare institutions which has
been made difficult by other democratic innovations such as the law on local
self-government. It has also prompted greater consideration of the focus of
healthcare - on end results of treatment as opposed to intermediate output
(numbers of beds and doctors), and on the value of general practice as opposed
to over-specialised polyclinic primary care. Although there has been little
success in achieving reductions, there is at least now widespread debate in
lowering excess hospital capacity (which eats up resources). There is also
better information gathering necessary for the system to operate. All this
points towards ultimately positive development, probably more so than
immediate
piecemeal technical assistance here and there in specific areas.
This is not to say there are no problems. The system is in most places
chronically underfunded, with often only pay and pharmaceutical costs being
covered - and then often through operating regional-wide barter-exchange
systems (vzaimorashchet) and debt notes (vekselya). But these are problems of
economics and politics - of cash shortages, and of official corruption. These
often involve white knight foreign companies giving personal incentives for
doctors and administrators to purchase their more expensive products -
something I understand is also a problem in the US, as well as the problems
you
might expect in Russia in awarding state contracts to one group over
another. I
agree with the article that raising doctors' pay is necessary, not least to
lessen the burden upon them to act as informal means-testers - effectively
judging how much they feel they can charge a patient by his or her appearance.
There is also a public lack of confidence in the abilities of the doctors.
And
it would be criminal to ignore the serious health problems of the population
which would overwhelm ANY system.
However I feel that the general tenor of the article places far too much
emphasis on the need to change healthcare without realising it IS changing,
and
not enough on the real issues affecting the system - poverty and inequality,
the problem of raising adequate revenues for any activity year after year
(rather than any temporary assistance) and social-economic instability.
Cameron Smith
Dept of Social Policy
University of Edinburgh
George Square
Edinburgh
EH8 9LL
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)131 650 3920
Fax: +44 (0) 131 650 3919
[log in to unmask]
******
#8
BBC Monitoring
Northern Fleet "on permanent alert" guarding Kursk sub's "top-secret"
missiles
Text of report by Russian newspaper Izvestiya on 30 December
"Post No. 1" - that is what the men of Russia's Northern Fleet have dubbed
the spot in the Barents Sea. Here lies the body of the Kursk nuclear
submarine, shattered by the explosion, at a depth of 100 meters. Warships are
on permanent alert over the scene of the disaster. Guarding not so much the
deceased seamen's resting place as quite tangible state secrets.
Izvestiya was told by the navy's central command post that a change of guard
recently took place at the Kursk submarine crash site: The Admiral Kharlamov
ship has handed over to the Pyotr Velikiy missile-carrying cruiser. The wind
in the Kursk disaster region is currently reaching a speed of 11 meters per
second and there is a force three swell; it is snowing and the visibility is
less than 1 km. These are the conditions in which the crew of the Pyotr
Velikiy will be celebrating New Year.
Izvestiya was told by the Mashinostroyeniye [Machine-building]
Science-and-Production Association in Moscow Region that the loss of the ship
was also a tragedy for the many people who were involved in its construction,
testing, and handover to the navy. The science-and-production association
itself developed the submarine's principal weapons - the Granit supersonic
long-range antiship missiles. A top-secret Russian navy weapon, against which
no navy in the world has an effective defence.
Gerbert Yefremov, the Mashinostroyeniye Science-and-Production Association's
general designer, believes that the appearance of Project 949 Antey-type
boats in the Soviet navy was due to the need to counter US carrier forces and
any surface strike groups. In the early 80s the Mashinostroyeniye
Science-and-Production Association put the idea of an "asymmetric" response
into effect. It consisted in developing a powerful group of attack submarines
with long-range supersonic antiship cruise missiles. The latter being the
Granit supersonic long-range antiship missile (NATO classification SS-N-19
Shipwreck).
Granit is still a secret for Russian seamen also, few of whom have seen the
actual missile, The procedure for loading the munitions on onboard ships has
always been arranged in accordance with the best traditions of Hollywood
blockbusters - the area would be cordoned off and all outsiders would leave
the wharf. Dummy missile launches never exceeded more than four missiles at
once - so that foreign spy ships could not determine the launch technical
parameters and tactics.
The Granit's main advantage lies in its unique guidance method. The missile
has made full use of the science-and-production association's experience in
developing electronic artificial intelligence systems which makes it possible
to operate in accordance with the "one missile-one ship" principle against a
lone ship or to use a group of missiles against several ships. The missile
itself classifies targets in terms of importance and ascertains what it is
dealing with - a convoy or an assault element - and attacks the principal
target. After this the "surviving" missiles attack other ships, which
precludes the possibility of two missiles hitting the same target.
Last year the Kursk left for combat service in the Mediterranean. And, as the
navy Main Staff says, the command of the US 6th Fleet put a great deal of
effort into hunting for the boat. But they failed to find the Kursk. And a
circle 500-km in diameter was drawn on US naval maps which US ships were
strictly forbidden to enter.
"There is reason to believe," Yefremov said, "that the US navy will not miss
an opportunity to obtain detailed information about the missile, notably in
order to develop a defence mechanism against it. One should harbour no
illusions about international treaties and ethics."
******
#9
Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2001
From: Vladimir Shlapentokh <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: A normal system?
False and true explanations for the collapse of the USSR
The Times Literary Supplement (UK)
December 15, 2000
[for personal use only]
A normal system?
False and true explanations for the collapse of the USSR
By Vladimir Shlapentokh (Professor of Sociology, Michigan State University)
Analysts of twentieth-century Russian history vary wildly in their opinions.
Moral assessments, which have polarized all branches of the social sciences,
have exercised a heavy influence. The strongly opposed "totalitarian" and
"revisionist" schools have both proved quite incapable of capturing the
essence of Soviet society, and hence of predicting and interpreting the
system's failure. We need to reject any pre-established criterion for
studying Soviet and post-Soviet society, whether it be "true" Marxist
socialism or liberal capitalism, or some ideal Russian society based on
national traditions. Sovietologists must free themselves from the remnants
of cold war ideology and rid themselves of moral prejudice.
Just such a "detached approach" is now becoming common among the historians
of the British empire. In his The Rise and Fall of the British Empire,
Laurence James writes, "I have been as careful as possible to sidestep the
quagmire of post imperial guilt, that peculiar angst which has troubled the
British and American intelligentsia for the past 30 or so years. Wherever
possible, I have avoided battles over the rights and wrongs of empires."
Another British historian of empire, Andrew Porter, contends that the James
is less original in his approach than he thought, because this approach "is
now widespread in universities where the subject is discussed...neither in
simplified terms of ‘right' or ‘wrong' nor according to the partisan post
imperial presumptions."
The detached approach may conflict with the relativism of postmodernists,
but it finds support from Max Weber, who called upon his colleagues to
observe the "imperative requirement of intellectual honesty." In his On the
Methodology of the Social Sciences, Weber insisted that a scholar "make
relentlessly clear to his audience, and especially to himself, which of his
statements are statements of logically deduced or empirically observed
facts, and which are statements of practical evaluation."
Without minimizing the horrors of the revolutionary period, which lasted
until Stalin's death, the USSR might instead be considered a "normal"
system, one which employed the tools of socialist ideology for the purposes
of technological and military modernization, to preserve its empire, and to
enlarge its geopolitical role in the world. In the course of history, it
reproduced itself several times and endured the transition from one leader
to the next without bloodshed. With its glorification of the totalitarian
state and its nationalist fervor, Lenin's Marxism functioned as a steadfast
ideological justification for the totalitarian state and its imperial goals.
The USSR experienced two peaks in its history: in the late 1940s after the
glorious victory over Germany when the empire expanded enormously, and in
the mid 1970s when it reached military parity with the West.
The concept of the USSR as a "normal totalitarian society" departs from the
two major schools of Sovietology in the United States. The idea of the
regime's normality challenges the conservative school headed by Richard
Pipes and Martin Malia. In his Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime, Richard
Pipes asserts that the Soviet Union was a dangerous, criminal society
created by a band of power-thirsty adventurists, who were indifferent to
ideology. Martin Malia does not agree with Pipes about the role of
ideology, but like Pipes he denies the normal character of the society. In
The Soviet Tragedy: A History of Socialism Malia sees the USSR as a utopian
construction built like a house of cards by dreamers and lunatics. Soviet
society was the "grim mistake of Columbus," "the greatest triumph of
ideology over real life," and he claimed that "the logic of history does not
work this way."
The "revisionist" school, by contrast, perceived the USSR as a system
imbued with "political pluralism" and "group conflicts," and sharply
disputed its totalitarian character. Revisionists opposed the idea that a
single leader, or a small group of rulers, maintained political and economic
supremacy in the USSR until 1989-1990, and denied that the system "relied on
mass coercion." Several revisionists, such as Sheila Fitzpatrick and Jerry
Hough, often accepted the official version of the country's developments
after 1917, and downgraded the atrocities of the regime, or attributed them
to the masses.
In the early 1960s, however, the idea of the Soviet Union as a "normal
totalitarian society" had already emerged among several Russian
intellectuals, notably Vasilii Grossman in his Life and Destiny and later
Alexander Zinoviev in his Yawning Heights. In the 1970s-1980s, many Russian
intellectuals believed in the strength of the Soviet society and its
developed structure, while recognizing at the same time its various chronic
diseases, particularly its economic problems.
One of the best ways to understand the character of the Soviet system is to
consider the possible causes of its death. As Roger Martin du Gard wrote in
his Le Famile du Tibault, we can only fully understand a person after his
death, when he is "isolated." "Only then is it possible to look at him from
all sides, see his insides and make a general judgement." The same is true
for societies.
As a sort of coroner of the fallen state, I will begin by clarifying the
factors which did not cause the death of the Soviet Union in 1991, drawing
comparisons between the post-Soviet and Soviet societies, but excluding the
period of perestroika. We can not compare, for instance, the post-Soviet
economy in 1995 with the Soviet economy in 1990-1991 (though Russian
liberals often do). During perestroika, Gorbachev's reforms had thrown the
economy into complete disarray.
To begin with, the system did not collapse, because the government lost
control of the country. Having won the civil war in 1920, the Communists
used their gigantic apparatus of repression to create order in Russia, and
preserved it effectively until 1989-1991. By 1985, the political elite were
certainly pursuing their egotistical interests more than in Stalin's times,
but they remained concerned with the well-being of the state, the party, and
the nation. Several highly trained and talented managers successfully
implemented major national projects during the times of Khrushchev and even
Brezhnev. Discipline in the party and state apparatus survived the rise of
cynicism and careerism. The army and particularly the KGB were well
organized and effective. Soviet foreign intelligence claimed several
brilliant achievements in the 1980s, including the recruitment of American
CIA agent Aldrich Ames, who became one of the most successful spies in the
history of espionage.
Crime and corruption were "normal elements" of Soviet society, particularly
in the last two decades of its history. Yet the post-Soviet experience made
this society look principled and orderly by comparison. After 1953, the
people could look to various institutions for the protection of their
interests: the central governmental administration, the Central Committee
of the party, the local party, the media, the Soviets, the Komsomol, trade
unions, the police, courts, and attorney offices. Certainly Stalin's terror
was horrible, but after 1953 the repressive apparatus halted the persecution
of loyal citizens and focused only on active dissidents.
In 1990-1991, the people's fear of street crimes, scam artists, gang
violence, and even murder escalated in Russian cities. At the same time,
the people lost all trust in local police forces. Today, Russians are
helpless against the arbitrariness and corruption of bureaucrats and
omnipresent criminal structures.
Throughout its existence, the Soviet empire was strong, and ethnic
relations were quite peaceful. The KGB and the party encouraged the
"friendship of people" which accounted for the high number of mixed
marriages, even between groups that were historically hostile towards each
other, such as Azerbaijanis and Armenians. The nationalist movements in the
country were extremely weak, the empire was calm, and there were no traces
of any serious threat to the country.
The Soviet economic system could not compete with the Western market
economy. In the last decade of the Soviet Union, the rate of economic
growth steadily declined, the quality of goods deteriorated, and
technological progress slowed. Without question, the economy suffered from
serious chronic diseases. However, none of these diseases were lethal and
the society could have lived on for many more years than it did.
Despite these economic difficulties, we should not forget that the USSR
achieved military parity with the United States in the mid 1970s, and became
second only to the U.S. in science. Moreover, the Soviet economy was more
productive and technologically oriented than its successor. By comparison
with the post-Communist experience, the standard of living in Soviet times
was quite high. There were virtually no homeless people and no
unemployment. To evict someone from their apartment was almost impossible,
whatever the circumstances. Housing conditions improved significantly in
the 1960s and 1970s. Almost two thirds of all city dwellers lived in their
own private apartment, though this often meant living with parents or
grandparents. By the 1980s, housing standards were higher than ever in
Russian history.
The Russian people were also well equipped with durable goods. In 1985,
almost every family owned a television set (97 percent) and a refrigerator
(91 percent), two thirds owned washing machines and sewing machines, and one
third owned tape recorders, cameras, vacuum cleaners and other goods.
Never in the past had holidays been so accessible to the masses as in the
1980s. Roughly 50 million people (about one quarter of the adult
population) vacationed in various resort institutions in 1985. The majority
of children spent their vacations in Pioneer camps.
Before its demise, the empire commanded some of the most distinguished
educational institutions in the world. Overall, the level of education in
the Soviet Union was almost equal to that of the United States. By the mid
1980s, 89 percent of those with jobs had spent 7 years in school (in the USA
the percentage was 93). This was a significant achievement when measured
against the educational level in Stalin's times (12 percent).
While most Russians were in fact dissatisfied with several aspects of life
(namely, food shortages, long queuing lines and the poor quality of goods),
several surveys in the 1970s and 1980s (some of which were conducted by the
author himself), showed that most people gave a positive assessment of their
material life. The national survey of the Soviet population conducted in
1976 found that on a five-point scale Russians evaluated their life with a
grade of 4. They felt certain that American life did not deserve more than
a 2 or 3. Life in Czechoslovakia scored the highest with a grade of 5.
In the late 1970s, a study of Soviet and American citizens provided a
rather interesting insight into employment satisfaction. According to the
study, residents of Jackson (USA) and Pskov (USSR) gave similar responses to
questions about their occupations. On a scale of 1 to 5 (a score of 5
represented complete satisfaction, 1 represented complete dissatisfaction),
both American and Soviet respondents rated their general job appreciation at
3.9. Forty nine percent of Americans and 44 percent of Russians were
satisfied with the amount of free time they were allowed. Fifty seven
percent of Americans and 61 percent of Russians enjoyed both their work and
free time.
In the 1990s, against expectations, the quality of life in post-Communist
society did not rise, but dropped sharply. There are different estimates
about the current standard of living in Russia, though none dispute that it
is much lower than before 1985. Between 1991 and 1995, real income dropped
by 30 to 40 percent, and then declined again after the August financial
catastrophe in 1998.
Throughout Soviet history, mass discontent was at times quite serious, but
never cataclysmic. Public unrest was not the cause of the Soviet collapse.
The "mass discontent" theory for the fall of the Soviet Union is
particularly amusing in light of the profound passivity we see in
post-Soviet society. Russians remained calm through the economic disaster
of 1992, when their savings were eliminated and their standard of living
collapsed. They also weathered the financial crisis of August 17, 1998
without any sign of public disturbance. Russians tolerated the nonpayment
of their salaries over months and even years. What is more, millions of
Russians suffered through the winters of the past few years with poor
heating systems and a lack of electricity. It is simply impossible to
contend that the people's discontentment in the 1970s and 1980s could have
shattered the totalitarian system and its strong apparatus of repression.
There were no major conflicts between the population and the authorities in
both Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. The passivity in Soviet times derived
not only from the fear of mass repressions, but also from the general
acceptance of most official values. All of the data from the 1960s and
1970s showed that, despite their hatred of the local bureaucracy, the
majority of the Russians (unlike a small part of the intelligentsia)
accepted the political, economic and social order, including such official
values as patriotism, collectivism, respect for the army, the Soviet empire,
national solidarity, and the Communist party. Russians steadfastly
supported Soviet foreign policy including the invasions of Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, and even Afghanistan.
The famous Harvard project of the 1950s showed that even displaced Soviet
citizens maintained rather positive feelings toward the regime. One third
of the respondents, who supposedly loathed the system, admitted that they
"were once in favor of the regime." A similar study was conducted on Soviet
emigres living in America during the early 1980s. While the respondents
were clearly eager to please their American patrons with their hatred of the
Soviet system, only 14 percent assessed the "life they left behind" as "very
dissatisfying"; 25 percent said they were "somewhat dissatisfied."
Today, post-Communist Russia is also calm. According to a recent survey
conducted by the All-Russian Center of Public Opinion Studies (VTSIOM), no
more than one fifth of the respondents reported a willingness to participate
in protest actions. The people's reluctance to protest is combined with a
rejection of the official ideology of liberal capitalism. The absence of
mass disturbances may be attributed to the atomization of society and the
dramatic rise of public apathy. The people feel deeply alienated from
political power. In a 1998 VTSIOM survey, 36 percent of the Russians
considered the Soviet power "close to the people"; only 2 percent said the
same thing about the current political power.
In the early 1990s, Egor Gaidar and other liberals asserted the theory that
the apparatchicks' longing for private property caused perestroika and the
subsequent collapse. Yet before perestroika, the apparatchiks had shown no
sign of holding any such desire. In fact, even during perestroika and up
until 1989-1990, there were no Moscow officials who gave any serious thought
to privatizing state property. Most party apparatchiks were deeply hostile
toward privatization. Gorbachev himself avoided the use of this term until
the last year of his rule.
Nor can we identify the dissident movement as the valiant destroyer of the
Soviet Union for one, very simple reason: at the time, the dissident
movement barely existed. By the early 1980s, Andropov's KGB had more or
less destroyed the movement. Almost all its leading figures resided either
in the West, or in prison and exile. Even the samizdat movement was on the
verge of collapse. By 1985, the liberal intellectuals were so demoralized
that they were in no hurry to support a new, evidently reformist, leader.
Gorbachev virtually had to drag them into public activity. It was not until
1987-1988, when the system moved toward self-destruction, that dissidents
became serious actors in political life.
Many empires in the past collapsed as the result of military defeats and
foreign intervention (in the twentieth-century: the Austro-Hungarian,
Ottoman and German empires). In the case of the Soviet empire, however,
there was no military threat in the last years of its existence. The
troubles of the Soviet army in Afghanistan were no more serious than the
American tribulations in Vietnam. It would be ridiculous to compare the
retreat from Afghanistan with the defeats of tsarist Russia in the
Russian-Japanese war (1904-1905), or World War I (1914-1918) which triggered
the revolution.
In 1991, when Russia was at its weakest, the country's major antagonists
(the United States, its Western allies, and China) never planned an attack
on the USSR, or plotted to take over its territory. The emergence of
nuclear weaponry made it impossible to take advantage of the country's
weaknesses. All potential adversaries of the USSR were concerned only with
how to coexist peacefully with the superpower that could easily destroy the
entire world.
Perhaps the most ludicrous theories for explaining the country's collapse
were those advanced by the Communists and nationalists in the mid 1990s.
For instance, they contended that the fall of the Soviet Union came as a
result of an elaborate scheme initiated by the CIA and their agents Mikhail
Gorbachev and Alexander Yakovlev.
So if the Soviet Union did not collapse because of either the lack of
order, the faltering economy, the discontent of the masses, ethnic
conflicts, conspiracies, or military defeats, what did bring the mighty
state to its knees in 1991?
The cause lies in Mikhail Gorbachev's unfortunate attempts to reform the
economy in order to maintain and expand the geopolitical status of the USSR.
All of the Soviet leaders—while quite happy with the political system—were
dissatisfied with the economy. They understood its numerous flaws and
chronic diseases and looked for ways, such as the development of managerial
autonomy, to increase economic efficiency in the interests of the country's
military capability. Even Leonid Brezhnev, the symbol of Soviet immobilism,
or "stagnation", played with the idea of decentralizing management in the
first years of his tenure. At the same time, the leaders, who were well
aware of the importance of the central role allotted to the party and the
state, were afraid of the dire consequences of spreading the autonomy of
economic actors too far. In essence, to promote economic decentralization
was to threaten the dominant role of the party apparatus as the single
co-ordinating force, thereby jeopardizing the system as a whole. For this
reason, the Soviet economy, with only a few modifications, stayed mostly the
same until 1985.
The question remains: If the leadership understood the risks of an
economic transformation, why did they go ahead with reforms? The answer is
as old as the Soviet Union itself. The Kremlin had always been chiefly
concerned with the geopolitical status of the USSR and its miliary might.
With the advent of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the
Kremlin watched as the military equilibrium seemed to tilt alarmingly in the
West's favor. The Kremlin perceived SDI as a direct threat to the
geopolitical status of the USSR.
Military experts in Moscow may have doubted whether it was possible to
create a shield impervious to all incoming nuclear missiles, but the Kremlin
believed that SDI, regardless of its success or failure, would mobilize and
integrate the technological resources of all major Western countries. Yuri
Andropov, as the master of the Kremlin in 1982-1983, was the first Soviet
leader to identify the SDI and related projects as a direct threat to the
USSR's military parity with the West. In a special declaration, Andropov
characterized Reagan's SDI as a program "aimed at the disarmament of the
Soviet Union"; he vowed never to allow the United States to achieve military
superiority.
How would the Soviet Union match the great leap forward in Western
technology? In Stalin's day, when the postwar nuclear arms and technology
race began, the leadership completely ignored the basic needs of the people
and mobilized the country's material and labor resources in order to stay on
pace with the United States. Forty years later, Stalin's harsh totalitarian
regime, which had allowed for the sustained technological race with the
West, was gone, and still the Soviet leaders were faced with the same
daunting question, only with a much weaker state machine at their disposal.
Thus by the early 1980s, a crucial decision forced itself upon the Soviet
leaders: whether they should abandon the USSR's status as a superpower—one
of the greatest achievements in Russian history—or take whatever measures
might be necessary to accelerate technological progress and prevent American
military superiority. Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen by the party leadership,
with the evident support of the KGB and the army, in order to halt Russia's
steady decline in the international arena. Gorbachev accepted this mandate,
holding as he did a strong belief in the great potential of modernized
socialism.
Later, in 1989-1991 and particularly after the Soviet collapse, Gorbachev
and other ideologues of perestroika claimed that they had designed the
radical democratic transformation of society before perestroika. They never
publicly accepted the SDI as the provocation for reforms. "The first
impulse for the reforms," as Gorbachev stated at a conference that discussed
the roots of perestroika in 1990, "was the lack of freedom." To which
Margarete Thatcher plainly responded that "There was one vital factor in the
ending of the cold war: Ronald Reagan's decision to go ahead with the
Strategic Defense Initiative." From the American side, many observers and
participants also regarded SDI as the crucial factor, among them Thomas
Power, Strobe Talbott, Paul Nitze and Robert Gates.
Indeed, in his first speech as the new leader in 1985, Gorbachev had said:
"The achievement of military-strategic parity with the aggressive NATO was a
great historical accomplishment of the brotherly socialist countries. It is
necessary to maintain this parity by all means because it holds down the
aggressive appetites of imperialists." Technological backwardness and slow
economic growth (and not the standard of living, economic reforms, or
democratization) were the main topics of Gorbachev's activities until June
1987. Gorbachev's first program was suitably called "Acceleration." In the
beginning, he tried to push the economy ahead with neo Stalinist methods.
His first economic initiatives---some decentralization of management,
attempts at increasing worker discipline and morale, and his war against
inefficient bureaucracy---resembled the ideas of Andropov and his aids in
the early 1980s. During the 27th Party Congress in 1986, Gorbachev and
other leaders continued to praise central planning as "a great triumph and
the fundamental advantage of socialism." Vadim Bakatin, a close aid to
Gorbachev, said in 1995, "Perestroika did not set the social, economic, and
political goals for the transformation of our society and state...rather, it
aimed at cosmetically revamping our socialism." In the first two years of
his tenure, Gorbachev looked in many respects like an "enlightened Stalinist."
However, the attempts to jumpstart the stagnate Soviet economy and boost
technological progress through superficial neo Stalinist means completely
failed. In 1987, Gorbachev changed his approach and moved to the radical
expansion of economic autonomy. His team issued several decrees which
diminished the economic control of the party and state. The decrees
included the influential law of cooperatives (March 1988), "the enterprise
law" which expanded the autonomy of production units (1987), the leasing of
enterprises by their workers, the decree which permitted enterprises to set
prices on their products, and the gradual curtailment of the state monopoly
on foreign trade (started in 1986).
By 1990-1991, the role of the party and state as the main economic agents
had decreased significantly. Yet the state economic machine had not been
replaced by corresponding economic mechanisms, such as proper market
regulators, real competition and free prices. Instead, the system gave way
to economic chaos. The function of money was nearly voided by
hyperinflation and the dominance of bartering. Crime and corruption
ballooned, destroying the Russian work ethic while exacerbating semi-legal
and illegal economic activity. The destructive processes brought on by
Gorbachev's reforms culminated in an unprecedented decline in industrial and
agricultural production, accompanied by an acute shortage of consumer goods.
Many calamitous features of the Soviet economy in 1990-1991 continued into
the post-Communist economy.
In his feverish search for ways to modernize Soviet society and its
economy, Gorbachev, as the totalitarian leader until 1989-1990, sacrificed
the official ideology, yielding to the pressure of the nationalist movements
in all corners of the empire and finally consented in 1990 to the formal
demotion of the party. These events made the final collapse of the Soviet
Union inevitable. It was now only a matter of months.
However, none of these developments were preordained for the second half of
the 1980s. With its nuclear shield, its steadfast social order, and even
its floundering economy, the Soviet Union could have continued, and its
eventual collapse would have taken a different form, as would Russia's
future course.
With all of its human horrors and economic flaws, the USSR should be
considered a normal society, because it functioned and reproduced itself
over a long period of time. The same criterion of "normality" should be
applied to the post-Soviet society. Yet many Russian and Western experts
not only evaluate the society as abnormal, but predict radical changes or
even disintegration of the country in the next years. They base these
assumptions on facts such as the low productivity of the Russian economy and
the severe influx of crime and corruption in all spheres of society. In
their opinion, Russia must build a law abiding, liberal capitalist society
or perish.
In reality, Russia is not threatened by collapse. After the anti-Communist
Revolution in 1991, the country adjusted to the new political and economic
conditions. In this period of adaptation, Russia emerged as a heterogeneous
society with four major layers: bureaucratic, liberal (that is, free-market
and democratic institutions), oligarchic, and criminal. These layers now
interact relatively smoothly and function as highly embedded social
structures, whatever the consequences for the Russian people and the world.
The Russian federation, as it exists today, will continue to function
through changes of political leadership and adjustments in the relationship
between the center and the periphery.
The interpretation of the USSR as a normal society is not only important
for studying post-Communist Russia, but for many other countries as well.
This definition is a powerful argument in favor of the civilizational
approach in social science, advanced in the twentieth-century by prominent
scholars like Arnold Toynbee and Samuel Huntington. The approach refuses to
label societies as normal or abnormal, good or bad, moral or immoral, based
on religious, cultural, political or economic criteria.
Throughout the past century, this system of moral judgements of society has
hovered over the ideological debates. Those who considered liberal
capitalism the peak of history have struggled for ideological dominance with
those who ascribed this role to socialist society. At the end of the
century, the ideologues of liberal capitalism seemingly emerged as victors.
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing euphoria in the West
strengthened the belief in the hierarchical approach and in the liberal
model as the radiant future for all mankind.
Yet, despite all the wishful thinking by Western experts like Francis
Fukuyama, only a tiny minority of countries in the world meet the
requirements of the liberal model: a competitive market, effective
democracy and law and order in society. Countries such as Turkey, Mexico,
Pakistan, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Burma and Nigeria do not pass this test.
However, these countries have functioned and reproduced in the past and will
continue to do so in the future, using the same political, economic and
social structures. In some ways, these countries are just as "normal" as
the Soviet society.
In practice, it is extremely difficult for the researcher to follow Weber's
advice and disentangle himself from moral assessments and value judgements.
This task becomes increasingly difficult when studying a social system where
the people lived in misery, the poets and scholars feared persecution, and
crime and corruption flourished. All the more, it is painful to discover
that one of these societies functioned by its own logic for decades.
At the same time, a serious scholar should not indulge in grading countries
on a moral scale, or take sides as an admirer or hater of a given society.
The scholar should take an ethical stance only after he shuts down his
computer and leaves his desk. As a man away from his office, this scholar
was overjoyed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and remains
extremely critical of post-Communist Russia.
Acknowledgment: The author wishes to thank Joshua Woods for his editorial
contribution to this article.
******
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David Johnson
home phone: 301-942-9281
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