ABSTRACT

Our main conclusions are as follows:

We closed Chapter 1 with a reference to Gorbachev’s impeccable Party apparatus pedigree. Nothing has happened since Gorbachev became General Secretary to suggest that he intends to attack, or even question, any of the main assumptions of Party rule. As Iain Elliot points out, the new leader’s sweeping personnel changes were overdue and biologically inevitable, and reversed a trend to absolute security of tenure which had only developed under Brezhnev. Gorbachev’s new men are all from an apparatus or technocratic background — there are no ‘outsiders’ — and all have been nominated to their positions in that peculiarly Bolshevik (perhaps we should say Stalinist) way which seems to reflect so faithfully the tradition of authoritarian arbitrariness. The intimation of a more open approach to leadership changes which Khrushchev’s ouster in 1964 brought has found as little response in the Gorbachev era as it did during the Brezhnev era.

We may have to modify this general conclusion to a degree under two headings:

The policy of glasnost′ — media openness — must be taken seriously, and it does represent a real break with the past. The period in which news of great disasters circulated in the Soviet Union through the media of rumour and gossip may have ended for ever. But the Chernobyl′ and Daniloff cases illustrate that there are definite limits to this new media openness. And as Iain Elliot emphasises, there are no signs that media openness is going to shade into, or even facilitate, political openness.

Gorbachev is more pragmatic about private enterprise than perhaps any of his predecessors have been. We can see this in the history of Stavropol′ province under his prefecture, and we can see it in the agricultural policies enshrined in recent documents. The implicit notion of developing the collective contract idea as a bridge between private and socialist agricultural sectors is genuinely radical, and indeed goes right against two basic principles of the traditional Bolshevik approach — the condemnation of private enterprise and the power of arbitrary command. As we saw in Chapter 4, there are plenty of obstacles, political and administrative, to be overcome before the new line on private subsidiary agriculture can really come through. Outside of agriculture, Gorbachev’s less jaundiced view of private enterprise is likely to mean the legalisation of part of the grey economy, with the shabashniki, particularly those involved in house maintenance, being encouraged to come out into the open. But the fact that Gorbachev is more enlightened about private enterprise in subsidiary areas does not mean that he is in favour of market socialism within the state and collective sectors.

Rather his approach to the planning problems of Soviet industry and collective/state farming alike is that of a rationaliser and disciplinarian. He perceives that productivity is the biggest weakness of the Soviet economy as a whole, and seeks to attack that problem in two main ways: by following Andropov’s example in clamping down on slackness, poor time-keeping and drunkenness at the place of work; and by seeking to ensure that the Soviet worker is much better equipped than he has been in the past. There can be no doubt that he means business on both those counts. Over the first half of 1986 output of alcoholic beverages fell by 35 per cent, while that of non-alcoholic drinks rose by 41 per cent (‘Ob itogakh …’, 1986, p. 5). The unequivocal commitment to the extension of the Sumy experiment and the provisions of the March decree on agriculture underline Gorbachev’s determination to turn over a large proportion of medium-scale investment decisions to the enterprises and farms involved, and to insist that they find the finance for these investments from their own profits. The changes in the foreign trade system, actual and projected, described by Alan Smith are clearly intended to underpin this strategy. On the one hand, associations and enterprises are to be allowed more direct contact with foreign suppliers of equipment, to shorten lead-times and ensure that they get the machinery they really want. On the other, production organisations are to be permitted to retain some of their hard-currency earnings from exporting — so that they can themselves finance the import of machinery.

But there is a problem here. As Andropov saw clearly in his time, behind discipline problems are often to be found planning problems. Uneven supply of inputs means layoffs, and that is when the men start drinking. In conditions where consumer goods are short in supply and poor in quality rubles may be convertible only into vodka, and we can refer back to the key resource-allocation role played by vodka in the village of Zakharovka — how, one may ask, is it possible for a tractor driver to stay sober under these circumstances? On the investment side, there is the fundamental problem of marrying up decentralised investment funds with centralised investment supplies. This was one of the difficulties which wrecked the Kosygin planning reform of 1965, and it could do the same to Gorbachev’s reforms.

This brings us on to two key political problems:

Why is it that Soviet leaders, even razor-sharp ones like Gorbachev, seem to find it so difficult to learn from the past? Is it because they perceive, but find it impossible to act? Is it because they see ‘reforms’ and ‘experiments’ in purely token terms, and actually feel safer in the knowledge that internal contradictions will inevitably bring them to nought? Such explanations might do for some of the General Secretary’s predecessors, but they will not do for a man as energetic and intent at least on change as Gorbachev himself. It is hard not to feel that there is something inherent in the political system which ensures that the Soviets, like the Bourbons, never learn anything and never forget anything. Marxist-Leninist modes of thought make it difficult for Soviet policy-makers to think in any other terms except those of a smooth progression — however long it takes — towards Full Communism. Certainly the new Party Programme, which bears a strong personal Gorbachev imprint, breaks fresh ground in admitting that the economic slowdown of the Brezhnev period reflected a general failure to grapple with basic planning problems (‘Programma …’, 1986, p. 7). But there is still an overwhelming tendency in the Soviet Union to blame past foul-ups on incompetent and/or self-seeking individuals. Gorbachev’s new broom policy has done nothing to counter that tendency. Such a political environment cannot but be inimical to the study of recent history as an exercise in ‘learning by doing’, to the assessment of errors and failures as legitimate pieces of experience, with perhaps more to teach the student than successes and victories. Again, we should maybe restate the obvious in reminding the reader that very few scholarly works on recent Soviet history are published in the Soviet Union. Soviet Studies as a serious discipline exists only in the West, and its lingua franca is English, not Russian. Of course, Soviet leaders do have access to Western materials — even if they have neither the time nor the linguistic accomplishments to use them directly — through the medium of specialised academic units which scan the ‘bourgeois SovietologicaT output. But if the Soviet authorities are to think more deeply and more systematically about the recent history of government measures in the USSR, they will have to be prompted by their own scholars and think-tanks. Here is one respect in which Gorbachev’s glasnost′ policy, with all its limitations, could make a substantial difference in the long term. But it may be Gorbachev’s successor, rather than Gorbachev himself, who benefits from this.

How big a risk is Gorbachev running of becoming critically unpopular with the masses? Iain Elliot draws our attention to the special dangers of a glasnost′ policy which exposes the incompetence and corruption of individuals, always Party members and often Party administrators, but does not allow anyone from outside the Party to become involved in bringing these individuals to book. Philip Hanson remarks, tongue in cheek, but with a serious purpose, that ‘the … danger for Gorbachev is that on one of his Western style walkabouts he might get lynched … by an alcoholics’ revolt’ (EIU, 1985, pp. 6–7). Again to underline one of Iain Elliot’s key points, the campaign against corruption and unearned incomes hits primarily the ordinary folk, the outsiders. While many Party activists clearly are corrupt, particularly in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the insider is much less dependent on outright bribery to get what he wants — he can use political influence, political blackmail etc. — in a word blat. Now Gorbachev’s more pragmatic policies on the private sector are aimed to counter this difficulty and ensure that ordinary folk can get their cars fixed and their parties organised without breaking the law. But of course even if car maintenance shabashniki are prevailed upon to come out into the open, there is still the question of where they will obtain oil, spare parts, etc. And an approach which seeks to instil discipline by forcing the workers themselves to pay for the effects of foul-ups, however complex the origins of these foul-ups, is hardly calculated to endear.

Certainly we should not assume that Gorbachev is terribly concerned to endear. The sustained emphasis on the importance of slimming down workforces, at factory and brigade level, the readiness to introduce a savagely moralistic tone into this policy dimension through the Leningrad experiment, the open discussion at the Congress of the likelihood of 20 million redundancies by the end of the century — all this suggests that Gorbachev is seeking to develop a constituency among top workers, manual and managerial, and is frankly contemptuous of those who fail to make the grade. The new ideology of self-management is surely aimed at the achievers, not the masses. Economically, this makes sense. At the present stage of development, amorphous, unskilled labour is of little use to the Soviet Union. Better, as Ota Šik in his time would have argued, to have a smaller number of highly efficient industrial production units, whatever the implications in terms of unemployment, than a string of overmanned, obsolescent capacities. But politically, it must be a slightly dangerous game. Brezhnev ruled, and survived, by serving the constituencies of the Party apparatus and the Soviet working class at large. The new General Secretary must already have upset at least some sections of the apparatus, and he seems intent on upsetting large sections of the working class. However much Gorbachev may have consolidated his position at the XXVII Congress, he will clearly have to continue to cover his political rear.

To make matters worse, he may find that his industrial and agricultural policies offend and upset, without producing the required results. Picking up the argument laid out under (4) above, on the internal inconsistencies in Gorbachev’s productivity strategy, brings us back to one of the most fundamental leitmotifs of this whole work. The Soviet system is grossly overcentralised. In the economic sphere it is that overcentralisation which imposes impossible tasks on the industrial supply system and makes supply breakdowns inevitable. It is because successive Soviet governments have not been prepared to bite the bullet and marketise large sectors of investment supply that the strategy of increasing the role of decentralised investment has never worked. All of this brings us back to the theme of wholesale trade in the means of production. As we saw in Chapter 3, Gorbachev has still not really got beyond the stage of making polite noises on that most pressing issue. Of course, he may have plans for the future, but if so he is certainly advancing very cautiously indeed.

The other key technical planning issue is stable norms. The March 1986 decree on agriculture does make some progress in the direction of de-emphasising the output target as the linchpin of the planning system, and thus removing the built-in incentive to capacity concealment and disincentive to innovation which bedevil all attempts to transform the economy into a high-productivity one. In industry, on the other hand, not even the Sumy experiment releases enterprises from the obligation to fulfil output targets. The persistence of output targets does not, of course, necessarily mean that the stable norms principle cannot be maintained in relation to the link between profits and bonus funds. And as East German and Bulgarian experience indicates, output targets in themselves may do little damage — as long as they are slack rather than taut, and subject to a reasonable degree of free negotiation. Now this is precisely the direction that Soviet agricultural planning is moving in, with the general emphasis on the collective contract and the special price provisions of the March 1986 decree. But the analysis of Chapter 4 illustrated just how many problems this approach runs into in practice, and how uncomfortably it lies with a political tradition which has trained the apparatchiki to think that when output trends are unfavourable the only proper response is direct pressure to improve them.

Finally, Gorbachev’s plans to bring the second economy out into the open may backfire. The sharp cutback in state production of alcohol must involve some danger that the moonshine industry, already in a fairly healthy state, will start to develop with renewed vigour. The general emphasis on decentralised investment will certainly produce a lot of pressures for informal procurement — informal wholesale trade in the means of production in fact — which might well outrun cautious steps in the direction of legalising the shabashnik. We could end up back in the situation of the early 1970s, with the pushers destabilising central priorities and the apparatchiki seizing the opportunity to dig their heels in on all sorts of issues.

But things are not so very bad on the domestic economic front. Net Material Product is still officially reported to be growing at around 3 per cent per annum (that probably means about 2 per cent in GDP terms), and the rate may if anything rise a little through 1987 and 1988, as industrial output continues to grow in a fairly buoyant way. Agricultural prospects are less clear, though the 1986 harvest was the best since 1978. But that perennial crisis sector apart, there is nothing in current Soviet production trends to give Mr Gorbachev a big fright. To the extent that this creates complacency, or induces the leadership to think they have all the time in the world to solve their problems, it may be a mixed blessing.

On the international front, by contrast, pressure is building up in a big way. As Alan Smith argues cogently in Chapter 5, the whole pattern of Soviet industrial development has been fundamentally based on the acquisition of foreign machinery and technology, and that is not something that can be changed overnight, whatever Mr Ryzhkov says. But with the collapse in the price of oil, and the likelihood of a need to continue with large-scale food and feed imports, there is no immediate prospect of a recovery in the currently low rate of machinery imports, which could spell technological disaster in a few years’ time. Assessment of medium-term prospects must focus on possibilities for increasing Soviet exports, rather than any chance of a sharp recovery in energy prices.