USSR — Land of Privilege (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the ever-increasing participation of the Soviet Union in western trade, more information about the way the Russians live is coming to hand. We suspect that much of the information was always available but for their own purposes the western capitalist press suppressed the information which would have destroyed the myth they wished to keep alive, namely that Socialism was established there. They back it both ways. Friendship with the Soviet Union will produce pro-Russian propaganda, and will gloss over the numerous shortcomings in the Soviet system. At other times when there are differences of policy with the western powers, anti-Russian propaganda will expose and exaggerate these shortcomings. Eventually truth, like Hamlet’s ghost, will out, and now that the Russian workers have been indoctrinated in the cause of capitalism, the Soviet authorities will relax their censorship up to a point, because they cannot keep the lid on the kettle. Censorship makes an expensive form of administration.

The SPGB have always maintained that there is no essential difference in the class system in the Soviet Union from that elsewhere. The ruling class enjoy the same privileged existence, and use the same means to stay on top. The common features of western capitalism, exploitation of wage labour and production for profit, are present — with the resulting social inequality. All the propaganda by friend and foe alike cannot contradict or obscure this real situation.

One of the most obvious signs of social inequality is the wage differentials between the higher and the lower paid workers. The Daily Telegraph (2nd June 1976) on the occasion of the visit of the Soviet missile destroyer Obraztsovy drew attention to the enormous discrepancy in pay between officers and ratings. A Russian naval rating is paid £4.70 a month, and a full captain’s pay is £202.00 a month, more than 40 times greater than that of the ratings. This differential is quite considerable when it is taken into account that the Russians have over 8 million men in the armed forces. The British equivalent is that a captain receives approximately 8 times that of a rating.

Graft & Corruption

The city column of the Sunday Telegraph (18th April 1976), gave numerous examples of the corruption practised by high-ranking government officers, top scientists and members of the Soviet Politburo. Otari Lazfishiyili, the head of the government synthetics laboratory, was renowned for throwing lavish parties costing thousands of roubles. He enjoyed the luxury of a mansion, and had two country homes with swimming pools. Apparently he was running a black-market nylon business on the side, with over 100 accomplices. He made a million pounds before they caught him.

Another government official, the chief of the agricultural equipment purchase department in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Trade, Uri Sosnovsky, planned to take a cut of a 30-million rouble contract with a Swiss firm — he was hanged. The then Minister of Culture, Yekaterina Furtseva, was alleged to have spent about £60,000 in having an exclusive country dacha built for her daughter; this was in addition to the two owned by the Minister herself. The scandal lost her her seat on the Supreme Soviet in 1974. In the same article, a reference was made to petty corruption. Izvestia, the State newspaper, last year published figures to the effect that one-third of the relatively small number of private motorists in the USSR drove their cars on petrol paid for by the State. About 150 million gallons were estimated to be stolen or siphoned off from State vehicles.

There are as many instances of graft and corruption in the USSR as there are elsewhere. There is also a colossal black market. The fact that the penalties are high only underlines the extent of the problem. If the name of the game is capitalism, then the aim of the game is privilege. Those nearest the till are in a better position to get their hand in it, as are high Communist Party officials, government officials, and other socially privileged groups. The difference with the black marketeer, the corrupt official, and the stealer of state property, is that they do it through the back door. But many more obtain their privileges through the front door.

In a capitalist society people will always behave in a capitalist way, and Russia is no exception. Chief among those who receive and confer privileges through the front door are the Communist Party hierarchy. According to a book recently published, The Russians by Hedrick Smith, for three years Moscow correspondent of the New York Times, life at the top in Moscow is based on privilege (Sunday Times 16th May 1976). The most conspicuous symbols are the numerous grey-curtained chauffeur-driven cars containing VIPS doing their shopping and ignoring all traffic laws. There are special shops which sell Russian delicacies like caviar, smoked salmon, and the best canned sturgeon, vintage wines, and other luxuries well beyond the reach of the average Russian worker, and only accessible by special pass to the politically anointed. Perquisites are handed out according to rank; top leaders get home delivery, or use stores right inside the Kremlin, and the Supreme Soviet executive group have their special shop in the government buildings, Versenevsky Embankment Road. Soviet marshals, admirals, top scientists, senior editors of Pravda and Izvestia and other important publications, Lenin prize winners, actors, writers, dancers, economic managers — all have their special shops where cut-rate food is available, and these shops are debarred to the general Russian public.

Diplomats, trusted journalists, poets and the like, who have worked abroad, are issued with certificate roubles, a special currency, and can buy imported goods at bargain prices at the hard-currency Beryozka shops in Moscow. Many Moscow people are infuriated at the existence of these special stores because they don’t even accept Soviet currency. One white-collar worker fumed that it was a “violation of socialist principles”.

The cream of the élite, Politburo members and National secretaries, use black Zil saloon cars, hand-tooled and worth £40,000 apiece. In addition to car and shopping privileges, the Kremlin leaders enjoy special travel facilities, including a special airport Vmukoy 11. They also have exclusive health clinics, clubs, and even certain universities are regarded as the province of the government, for the offspring of the military and diplomatic élite. Many of the Party leaders have large guest houses. Brezhnev takes his guests boar-hunting. Many have mansions with exclusive grounds, private beaches, and recreational areas provided by the state, and their privacy ensured by state guards.

Top Dogs

Hedrick Smith tells a funny story about Brezhnev who was showing his mother round his various possessions and trying to impress her. Apparently this is a Muscovite joke. “He invited her up to see his town apartment. She looked nonplussed, so they sped off in his Zil to his dacha near Usovo, one previously used by Stalin and Khruschev, but still she said nothing. So he called for his personal helicopter and flew her straight to his hunting lodge at Zavidovo. There he escorted her to the banquet room, grandly displaying the big fireplace, his guns, and unable to restrain himself any longer asked: ‘Tell me Mama, what do you think?’. ‘Well’, she hesitated. ‘It’s good, Leonid. But what if the Reds come back?’ ”

The Soviet élite do not advertise their privileges, but the workers in Russia are left in no doubt that there is a special class of person upon whom everybody else dances attendance. All railroad trains, Aeroflot airlines, theatres and hotels, always reserve accommodation or seats in the event that these “important” people may drop in. Even state officials are given priority in any allocation of tickets at sports fixtures. Apparently at the 1972 hockey inter national competition between Canada and Russia, a Canadian diplomat was waiting to obtain his allocation of tickets when a young man walked in, went to the head of the queue, and identified himself as a member of the Central Committee. He asked for, and received, 3,000 tickets per game, a quarter of all the available seats. The diplomat commented that by the time other influential people got their cut, there was nothing left for the genuine hockey fan except perhaps a few dozen tickets forming a token box office. This, according to Smith, happens every time a big foreign sports team or cultural show visits Moscow. (Sunday Times 16th May 1976).

Nobody who really understands the nature of class society will be surprised at the way it operates in Russia. What is the point of a society based on the exploitation of workers for the purpose of private gain, unless the exploiter reaps the benefit? To say that no capitalist class exists in Russia is playing with words. The system is riddled with inequality from top to bottom, apart from the corruption and graft which are inseparable from government by dictatorship where officials wield immense power.

To describe the system as Socialist, or anything remotely connected with Socialism is a deliberate and, as we have seen, a calculated distortion of words and meaning. We can well understand the intense hostility from Russian diplomats and politicians against those who criticise the Soviet Union. It certainly is a good system for them. We cannot understand the almost pathetic adulation from the underprivileged propertyless dupes of the Left in this country who look to the USSR as the “socialist oasis” in a capitalist paradise. This confuses the issue of Socialism, and to that extent holds back the genuine revolutionary movement.

Jim D'Arcy