Gorbachev’s reforms – like those of Khrushchev – gave an initial fillip to the economy. Even so, the target of 4 per cent was a miserable travesty of what could have been achieved by the economy under a regime of workers’ democracy. Soviet industrial output rose 5.6 per cent by September 1986 compared to a year earlier, largely as a result of Gorbachev’s ‘efficiency drive’. This was an improvement on the figures achieved under Brezhnev, but still did not even reach the growth of the capitalist economies in times of boom. This was in a country with 25 per cent of the world’s engineers, technicians and scientists, and the resources of a sixth of the world at its disposal! The relative improvement was achieved in part by chopping away some of the dead wood, eliminating the most scandalously inefficient and corrupt officials. About 50 per cent of government ministers and chairpersons and 30 per cent of Party secretaries were removed. Some 200,000 officials were sacked. Compared to a total of 19 million bureaucrats, this was chicken feed. Yet it provoked a fierce resistance on the part of that section of the bureaucracy, headed by Ligachev, which opposed the reforms. Without the check of workers’ democracy, the bureaucrats had a thousand and one ways of getting around perestroika.
In fact, the reforms, far from solving the problems of the bureaucracy, exacerbated and intensified them. Gorbachev was forced to balance between the different wings of the bureaucratic elite to move along the ‘reform’ road. On a number of occasions, he threatened resignation if his reforms were blocked. This was intended as a warning to the more conservative layers of the bureaucracy. But the bureaucracy would never de-bureaucratise itself. On the contrary, they were trying to reinforce their privileged position.
As for ‘democracy’, apart from some secondary concessions, nothing much had changed. The masses were well aware that everything was rigged from top to bottom. The introduction of more than one candidate in elections was an attempt to camouflage the existence of a one-party totalitarian system. But all candidates either belonged to the Communist Party or else had to agree to the programme of the Party, which amounted to the same thing. Instead of proceeding from bottom to top, the system worked from top to bottom, like an inverted pyramid. Gorbachev leaned upon the growing discontent of the masses with the system, which was tolerated as long as there was no revolutionary pole of attraction in the West. But Gorbachev’s appeasement of US imperialism had far reaching consequences at home. The ‘threat from without’, which for decades had been used by the bureaucracy to paralyse any opposition on the part of the workers, was undermined.
The impasse of the bureaucratic regime, manifested in the slowdown of the economy, had an effect on the psychology of all strata of Soviet society beginning with the bureaucracy itself. The ruling elite became conscious of the fact that it was no longer able to carry society forward. Increasingly it felt itself to be a brake on progress, and this malaise pervaded the whole of society. There was a constant ferment of discontent among the intellectuals. The youth, who were the standard bearers of the October Revolution, had been the most heroic fighters in the civil war, and had flung all their energies into the first Five-Year Plans, were now completely disaffected. Discontent manifested itself by an epidemic of hooliganism and drunkenness, reflecting the despair of the most inert layers. The situation of the youth in the Soviet Union up to the recent period constituted an annihilating commentary on the role of Stalinism. After more than three generations, we saw all the signs of demoralisation: drunkenness, lumpenisation, thieving, hooliganism and anti-social behaviour of all kinds.
Of all the barbarous features of tsarism, one of the most retrograde was the fact that half of the state budget was derived from the vodka monopoly. There is, of course, a long history of hard drinking in Russia going back to a surprisingly remote period. In the Chronicle of Bygone Days, written in the twelfth century, Vladimir prince of Kiev, in rejecting Islam in favour of Christianity, is supposed to have said “drink is the joy of the Russian people”. But the role of vodka in Russian life is all too often associated with phenomena that are far from joyful. The excessive consumption of hard alcohol is more a reflection of hopeless demoralisation. The Bolsheviks at first attempted to combat the consumption of vodka. But the state vodka monopoly was reintroduced under Stalin as a useful source of revenue, a measure which was openly in contradiction with the assertion that ‘socialism’ had been built in Russia.
The consumption of alcohol quadrupled in the four decades after the Second World War: one in seven of the population was classified as alcoholic; heavy drinking was starting in the schools; the numbers of babies born with mental and physical defects increased – which was drink related. In 1985 Izvestia reported that as many as 27 million workers had serious problems with alcohol. They were so drunk, or ill from drinking, that at least two days a week they did not show up for work. An investigation into 800 Moscow factories found that in the last hour of each shift, only 10 per cent of workers were still at their job.
Gorbachev ordered a crackdown. In 1986, nine out of ten vodka shops in the capital were closed and alcohol consumption initially fell by 40 per cent. However, in the absence of a genuine regime of workers’ democracy, even measures that in themselves might have been correct, had the opposite result to what was intended. The attempt to curb the consumption of alcohol actually did result in an improvement of health, but it proved a two-edged sword, leading to a collapse in the state’s revenues. There was a 30 per cent drop in taxes in 1985. Nor did this measure totally remove the scourge of alcoholism, an evil rooted in the conditions of a bureaucratic totalitarian regime, which provoked increasing frustration and alienation in broad layers of society. In these years, the Soviet press was full of cases of people who had been made ill by consuming cologne. The number of arrests for illicit distilling doubled in 1987 compared with the year before, to reach 440,000. By 1988, the illicit stills were producing 40 to 50 per cent more spirits than the state plants. There were reports of pilots stealing alcohol-based fuel and anti-freeze to use as drink. This was a clear indication of demoralisation and despair on a massive scale.
The weight of the repressive regime bore down hardest on the youth, who displayed an open cynicism and frustration at the totalitarian rule of the so-called Communist Party. The Soviet Weekly (8/11/90) published a poll which claimed that only 14 per cent of young people in the USSR trusted the CPSU. Having had a formalistic parody of Marxism-Leninism rammed down their throats at school, they reacted against it. Scandalously, the same poll concluded that only 15-20 per cent believed in socialism. The widespread scepticism and disillusionment among people was reflected in political jokes such as “have we reached real communism yet, or is there worse to come?” Of course, these young people had never had access to the real ideas of socialism and Marxism, only a lifeless and mind-numbing caricature. The only ‘socialism’ they ever knew was a totalitarian monstrosity. Given the lack of any alternative, they tried to find a way out through escapism.
An article in the trade union paper Trud presented this phenomenon in an exasperated but semi-jocular tone. But the subject matter is too grim to provide much real humour:
Hair lotion is particularly popular among Moscow alcoholics, but if this is not available, there is Kara Nova eau de cologne, at 65 kopeks a bottle. Avoid at all costs a perfume known as Carmen which makes the customer feel as if his throat has been cut.
Gorbachev’s measures in the end fooled no one. The universal scepticism was reflected in the following anecdote:
A man walks into a shop and asks for a bottle of beer which the day before cost 50 kopeks. The shop assistant charges him one rouble.
“But it was only half that price yesterday.”
“Yes, but you have to pay 100 per cent extra for glasnost.”
The man reluctantly pays the rouble, and is astonished when he is given 50 kopeks change.
“But didn’t you say it cost one rouble?”“That’s right. The 50 kopeks are for glasnost. We don’t have any beer.”