The quality of Soviet consumer goods was not as bad as the pro-bourgeois press now likes to make out. At any rate, there was no reason in principle why the quality of these goods should be any worse than those produced in the West. In those sectors where quality received due attention, very good products were made. This was the case in the defence industry, where the generals insisted on high quality and got it. The same was true of the space programme. But not only that. An article that appeared in The Guardian in 1986 revealed surprising data about the success of certain Soviet exports to the West:
When we think of Soviet excellence in technology, we are accustomed to their achievements in space, and to the high quality of many of their military products. The titanium armour in the Hind combat helicopter, or the titanium hull of their new submarines, for example, are said to be significantly ahead of Western metallurgical skills.
But somehow space and military hardware can be tuned out of our appreciation of Soviet technological capacity. We can file it all under the general heading of military superpower, and continue with our cosy and complacent belief in a general Western superiority in the things that really matter, like computers and cars and consumer goods.
Maybe we should think again. In the first six months of last year, Britain imported 30,000 Snow-cap refrigerators and 32,000 TV picture tubes from the Soviet Union. Belgium bought TV sets and electric razors, and France bought coffee grinders, electric irons and air conditioners. The Dutch bought 60,000 cameras and electric hair clippers, and even the Japanese bought Soviet TV sets. In the third world, the Chaika sewing machines and Orbita electric fans are steadily creeping into traditional Western and Japanese markets.
In fact, the picture was contradictory. For example, the actual recorded sound of Soviet LP records was very good – as good as anything in the West, if not better – but was let down by poor pressing. In an article in Pravda (28/11/95), one Russian commentator pointed to the greater durability of certain Soviet products when compared to Western equivalents. The author correctly ascribes the difference to the contrast between a planned economy, essentially based on production for need, and a market economy, based on profit, which includes such phenomena as ‘conspicuous consumption’, advertising, and all kinds of waste:
What our economy produced as a final product suited precisely the Soviet society and was absolutely unsuitable in principle for the Western market, for the ‘consumer society.’ For instance, efforts were directed into achieving product durability rather than design. The market, on the contrary, aims at shortening product life, thus forcing people to ‘consume’ both goods and services.
And he continues:
Look at the difference between two cars of the same class – one produced for a thrift economy, the other for a chrematistic one. In a Zhiguli, all the main engine components where problems usually arise are positioned in such a way that they are accessible without the aid of an auto shop. One can use the car for a decade without turning to a mechanic – you fix the problems yourself. In a Citroen – a car of the same class – the same components are completely inaccessible. You have to pay for a service for every little thing. If you need to replace the breaker contacts – it costs $80; if a generator brush is worn out – you pay $300 for a new generator; if you need to replace a pump belt – you have to take out the engine.
As is known, exactly half of the effort and cost in the production of consumer goods in the West goes into packaging (also a part of design). What does it mean to create in Russia industries capable of competing on the ‘market’? It means creating production oriented to the criteria of strangers, people of a different lifestyle, which in itself is absurd (or means consciously turning Russia into a colony). Without a doubt, 90 per cent of the Russian population would prefer to bring their own bags to buy sugar and their own bottles to buy unbottled oil rather than buying a ‘competitive’ product at twice the price because of the packaging.
However, undoubtedly, the general level of quality lagged far behind Western standards. Colour television sets had to be taken back for repairs on average twice in their first year of use. They also had a tendency to explode. Shoes were, for some reason, of a particularly poor quality, and so on. For the privileged officials, who had access to special shops, this was not a problem. The quality of goods destined for the consumption of ordinary working people was a matter of indifference to them, while the factory managers were interested only in meeting the targets of the plan in terms of volume. If that meant cutting corners on quality, so what?
Additionally, in other respects the conditions of life left a lot to be desired. Even in Moscow there was a shortage of places of recreation such as decent bars, cafés and restaurants. There were queues for all these, and this actually made the problem of drunkenness worse. It was common to see men drinking in the street. The situation in the provinces was worse still. Nizhnevartovsk in Siberia, a town of 200,000 inhabitants, still did not have a single cinema in the early 1980s. Town planners did not pay much attention to the recreational needs of ordinary people. Needless to say, the officials had no such problem.
The situation in the USSR could not be separated from that existing on a world scale. The reactionary notion of socialism in one country was bound to fail. Despite all the efforts to shut the Soviet people off from the rest of the world, they would inevitably find out about the level of life in the West and compare their own position to it. This was what Lenin warned of when he said that the future of the USSR would ultimately be determined on a world scale (‘Who shall prevail?’). To the degree that people became aware that Western consumers had access to better quality goods at cheaper prices, discontent would inevitably grow. The difference was underlined by the fact that people with access to Western currency could, without standing in queues, obtain superior Western goods in the so-called diplomatic shops (diplomaticheskye magaziny).
The official figures on living standards, in fact, conceal almost as much as they reveal. They tell us nothing about the different levels of wages enjoyed by different layers of the population. In general, Soviet statistics were always very coy about this question. Averages in general can be very misleading. They remind us of the story of the two peasants, one with nine cows, the other with one. ‘On average’ they had five cows each! In practice, the growth of the Soviet economy, which, in a healthy workers’ state should have meant a steady reduction in wage differentials and privileges, here signified the opposite.
Rather than narrowing under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, the gap continued to widen. While the living standards of the masses undoubtedly rose, the income and perks of the bureaucracy (both legal and illegal) increased still faster. This was above all true of the top elite. Brezhnev was well known for his luxurious lifestyle and fondness for expensive cars. When Nixon, who one assumes to have enjoyed a reasonably prosperous existence, went to visit Moscow, he professed to be astonished at the ostentatious luxury of Brezhnev’s lifestyle, with a swimming pool in the basement of his house, and so on.
In a study of Nixon’s fall from power, The Final Days by Woodwood and Bernstein, a small glimpse is given of the life-style of Brezhnev and the top bureaucrats:
The President [Nixon] had his usual present for Brezhnev – an American automobile for the Secretary’s extensive collection. Their first two summits, in 1972 and 1973, had yielded two $10,000 models, a Cadillac limousine and a Lincoln Continental. This time it was a $5,578 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, not very impressive in a garage that already housed a Citroen-Maserati speedster, Rolls Royce and Mercedes sedans, and Brezhnev’s favourite, a new Mercedes 300SL roadster. But Brezhnev had learned that the Monte Carlo was named ‘Car of the Year’ by Motor Trend magazine, and he had let it be known that he would like one.
According to Jan Šejna, a top Czech bureaucrat, who defected to the West and published his memoirs We Will Bury You:
Brezhnev is very fond of vodka, and pilsner beer, which we used to send to him direct to Moscow. He also loves Western clothes… Whenever he came to Prague, the Director of our Politburo shop – where the elite could buy luxuries unavailable to lesser men – would have to fly to Italy and West Germany before his arrival, to lay in a special stock for him.
The same was true of the bureaucratic rulers of Eastern Europe. Writing about his own predecessor, Alexej Čepička, Šejna explains:
He had a huge personal fortune, worth millions of dollars, for which he never accounted, and which he spent on magnificent luxuries – villas, cars, jewellery – for himself and his friends. His wife, for example, owned 17 mink coats.
The Soviet press was full of examples of corruption and economic crime. But it was only the tip of the iceberg. Apart from grossly inflated salaries, Party and state functionaries at all levels were engaged in plundering public resources. In 1974, Mrs Furtseva, the minister of culture, was sacked for misappropriation of state funds. In July 1976, according to Finansy USSR, investigations were made into 300 state enterprises. This revealed that in Belan, “a group of thieves ensconced in the city department store, led by former managers” had stolen Rbs116,500. In Tomsk, Rbs463,000 had been embezzled. In Georgia “thieves in leadership positions” were exposed. When the police raided the flat of one official “…they found his property included 12 cars, 47 tape recorders and colour televisions and 3,000 bottles of cognac and wine. He had three Volga cars, 23 dinner services with 380 settings, 74 suits and 149 pairs of shoes. ‘He had hidden some things away for emergencies,’ reported Moscow Radio, ‘including Rbs735,000 (£668,000) in cash. Rbs18,300 worth of 3 per cent loan bonds, 450 gold coins and 39 gold wrist watches’.”
Again:
The deputy minister of fisheries was executed in 1982 because of his involvement in a swindle whereby caviar was exported from the Soviet Union in tins labelled as containing salted herring…He had dealt with over 30 cases involving the theft of 3m roubles-worth of goods by some 100 management personnel from the capital’s best-known shops. He said officials received 1m roubles in bribes ‘and paid three-quarters of this sum in bribes themselves’ … They found that in 156 of 193 purchases they were cheated. The profits were then systematically passed up in line. (Financial Times, 2/7/86.)
The same lifestyle was common to Brezhnev’s children, and to the ruling elite in general. In 1980, after the arrest of 300 officials in the ‘Sochi caviar’ scandal, Brezhnev’s family was investigated for involvement in corruption. A vast amount of the wealth created by the Soviet workers was being used up in this way. One textile bureaucrat had actually accumulated the astonishing amount of seven million pounds – although this sum now pales in insignificance beside the billions looted from the state by the nascent bourgeoisie. The parasitism of the bureaucracy was undermining the very foundations of the planned economy. Simultaneously, the gulf between the bureaucracy and the masses was getting ever wider. The whole psychology of the ruling caste was becoming transformed. The consequences of this were to be seen in the next phase.