FROM GORBACHEV, WITH DIFFICULTY : Positive Steps by Kremlin, but Leader and Team Face Trouble in Getting Results

The new Soviet administration’s second year, now coming to a close, has been a year no less difficult than the first.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s attention in 1986 was centered not on consolidation of power but on economic problems. If in 1985 it was difficult even to find the word reform in the many Gorbachev speeches, today few people doubt that Gorbachev’s aspirations are to make, in V.I. Lenin’s words, a “number of important changes in our economic and political system.”

In his speech to the Central Committee last Tuesday, Gorbachev made a very important step in the right direction, but clearly the outcome overall represents a compromise between Gorbachev and those who want to go more slowly. It has not been by chance that Gorbachev has more and more often spoken not of “reform” but of “revolution.” However, in calling party and people to “revolutionary reconstruction,” Gorbachev frankly admits that a real turning point and improvement in the economy of the country are not yet visible.

During recent months Gorbachev’s foreign policy has attracted universal attention. However, the very fact that he twice had to postpone the plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, originally scheduled for the end of 1986, underscores the troubles that he and his team confront in carrying out their domestic policy.

It was well known that the plenum, when it finally convened last week, had to discuss the problems of the party’s policy on cadres. This, however, would have been an impossible task without very sharp criticism addressed to former Soviet President Leonid I. Brezhnev and faulty methods of promotion of personnel which became firmly established. Under Brezhnev, attention was first paid to personal devotion, family and relatives’ connections, unconditional loyalty and friendly relations, with total disregard of business, political and moral qualities of the leaders.

The principle of “stability,” which was placed in the foreground, had led to connivance and irresponsibility and had slowed down the promotion of younger and more competent leaders. For almost 20 years, promotion was not equated with a major increase of responsibilities and attention to work, but only with the receipt of more substantial privileges.

It is not surprising that even very old and sick people who were able to work no more than three hours a day were not in a hurry to get their “well-deserved rest” but shifted the biggest part of their duties onto the shoulders of a rapidly growing layer of assistants. As a result of this favoritism shown to the apparat, there was a dissipation of power, moral degradation of personnel and the weakening of the real authority of the party no matter what party speeches and slogans proclaimed.

And it is not surprising that the former leadership was unable to switch our economy onto the rails of intensive development, raise its scientific-technical level and ensure the proper development of the national society and culture. From this point of view, last week’s party plenum had the same importance for Gorbachev as the 20th party congress had for former Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev, because in many respects Brezhnevism brought to our society no less harm than Stalinism.

Under the current administration over the last two years, it is difficult even to enumerate all the innovations that have come into our lives in the form of experiments, initiatives or in the form of law: Agroprom, the new superagency for agriculture; “family enterprise”; intensive technology and the new system of buying and selling prices in the rural economy; the expansion of independence and greater financial self-reliance for industrial enterprises, putting whole branches of industry on a self-supporting, unsubsidized basis and giving some industries and big enterprises the right to operate independently in the international market.

The question of creating joint ventures, even with Western firms, is being discussed. Official registration for business trips abroad is being made easier. Cooperative and individual economic activity is being allowed.

The democratization of society and decisive change of political and moral climate in the country, as well as observance of the principle of openness, are being moved forward. Development of real spiritual values is truly increasing, while in Brezhnev’s time it was not expanding but actually shrinking.

Dry statistics show that reconstruction of management and economy has started to show results. In 1985, the general volume of industrial production increased by 4% and in 1986 by 5%. Production of grain and meat rose. The state of things in the sphere of culture is being improved. But all this is still not a revolution, and not even a turning point.

There were many problems and hardships in the past year. The Chernobyl catastrophe alone cost the country tens of billions of rubles in direct and indirect expenses. But this catastrophe did not occur by chance. It was the direct consequence of irresponsibility in solving the important tasks of atomic energy, starting with the design of the atomic reactors, construction of the power station and Atommash, the reactor-fabricating plant, and also exploitation of atomic stations and inadequate assurances of their safety. Chernobyl demonstrated again the burdensome inheritance of the Brezhnev administration and how much the former methods of work and management do not conform to conditions and demands of the new scientific-technical revolution.

Secondly, it is difficult to overcome the inertia of such a huge and super-centralized system as our economy. It is impossible in such a short period of time to compel tens of millions of people to think and to work differently; it is impossible to find replacements for tens of thousands of leaders for whom it is too late to learn to work in a new fashion.

Not only Khrushchev’s era has shown that haste in conducting even reasonable economic measures often leads to failure. Unfortunately, the past year provided a number of instructive examples of this, including the campaign started in June against “unearned incomes.” It would be wrong to deny the existence in the country of tens and hundreds of thousands of people who gain huge “unearned incomes” by means of bribes, plunder and unjustified privileges.

At the same time, with such low salaries for the majority of industrial, office and professional workers on one side, and huge deficits in the service sphere and production of consumer goods on the other, tens of millions of people are looking for, and finding, hundreds of different methods for additional income.

Those people work and often work very hard, although in many cases their useful labor is violating various kinds of laws and regulations: A tractor operator, for instance, violates these regulations by plowing kitchen gardens for widows of World War II soldiers. The regulations are violated by an old woman selling sunflower seeds on the streets of a southern city. They are violated by the peasant who builds a garden greenhouse that is deemed too big. In the majority of cases, we are talking not of “unearned incomes” but of old-fashioned, obsolete and mistaken regulations, of inadequate labor laws that artificially restrain socially useful initiative.

This special “second economy” has existed for many years in our country, important for its volume and supplementing, sometimes correcting, the omissions and defects of the state economy. The second economy fulfills a useful public function, although the lack of control engenders quite a few abuses. But the campaign started last June was directed not against abuses, but against the entire second economy. As a result, the collective-farm markets became emptier and prices there increased by two to four times compared with the previous year. In the southern regions, the renting of places for sick people and vacationers decreased. The conditions of life worsened for tens of millions of people who used the services of the second economy and the tens of millions who provided services to their fellow citizens. The government budget and commodity distribution suffered from the decrease of side incomes.

The broad masses of the people expressed their dissatisfaction with these government measures, especially because in many places large-scale bribe-takers and plunderers used this campaign for their own purposes. Those errors were partly corrected by the end of summer. Moscow ordered an end to “extremism” in the struggle against “unearned incomes.”

But the problem is not only in stagnation of our economic system or in the speed of interdiction and innovations. Many useful reforms are confronted with resistance by the very same workers of the party-government apparatus who are supposed to carry them out. It is easier to work by old administrative methods, and bureaucrats care little about society’s needs. A system of economic incentives demands more qualified leadership. As a result, even some directors of enterprises are not in a hurry to use the opportunities given to them.

Passive resistance and sometimes direct sabotage of the new system have often appeared on the level of ministries and regional committees of the party. There have been cases when factories and enterprises issue administrative regulations that weaken or nullify important resolutions of the Central Committee immediately after they are adopted.

For example, the Ministry of Health did not increase salaries of some categories of doctors and medical personnel, even though an order to that effect was published in the press with a specific date for the increases to take effect. In Moldavia, “acceleration” in the development of the economy was reached only by falsifying statistics. The same resistance is occurring in the field of culture, where many new theatrical plays, movies, novels and stories come to light only after resolutions are passed by high party bodies.

Sometimes we are talking about simple temporizing. People are not rushing to show initiative--they want to be sure that the new leadership is strong enough and its policy is not going to be fast-changing “campaigns” as they have known in the past. They want to be sure that the reforms are being carried out seriously, for a people tired of promises and appeals.

Gorbachev’s domestic policy hardships do not mean the weakening of his leadership position. Therefore we can assume that the current party plenum will produce another considerable shakeup of party cadres. This would be a step forward, but only a partial solution.

The experience of 70 years’ existence of Soviet power gives us many lessons. One of them clearly indicates that an authoritarian system oriented not so much on the demands of the times but on qualities of the separate leaders needs to be changed. The expanding openness we are witnessing today is very important. However, we need not only liberalization and expansion of criticism and openness within “allowed limits,” but real socialist democracy, including the right of independent criticism, the right of free speech and opinions and the right of opposition.

Sooner or later, this problem will have to be solved if we really want rapid increases in the production of essential goods and the development of spiritual values. Such steps will allow the Soviet Union to emerge in a forward position worthy of socialism in areas of economics, technology, science and culture.

Historian Medvedev compares the effects of Brezhnevism with those of Stalinism, but it’s also pertinent to compare Nikita S. Khrushchev, the last reform-minded Soviet leader, with Gorbachev. Page 2.