A Nation Where No One’s Content : Soviet Political Gains Can’t Hide a Burdensome, Empty Material Life

Two things amazed me when I recently returned to Moscow for the first time after having emigrated from the Soviet Union almost 10 years ago: the incredible progress made in the political life of the Soviet citizens and the stagnation, even the regression, in their material life.

Recently a Soviet newspaper published a letter written by Nobel prize winner Piotr Kapitsa. The letter had been sent to the then-chairman of the KGB, Yuri V. Andropov, in 1980 in defense of Andrei D. Sakharov and Yuri Orlov, two human-rights advocates. Physicist Kapitsa, the symbol of conscience and bravery within the Academy of Science, did not dare to demonstrate his solidarity with their views while trying to help them. Instead, Kapitsa cited only their usefulness to the state.

Today there are no forbidden subjects for the Soviet people. Even in public places, as if Big Brother had already ceased watching, talk among Soviets now includes critical comments that spare no one--not even the general secretary or the chairman of the KGB.

What’s more, the Soviet people have begun to criticize, privately and publicly, Soviet foreign policy and Lenin--two of the last sacred cows standing for what is left of the old Soviet ideology.

I was in Moscow during the heady days of the election for the party conference about a month ago. For the first time, Soviet people got a taste of what it is like to participate in actions that had some similarity to democratic procedures. With great excitement they recounted their first experience with democracy. The party committees, however, in most cases ignored the choices of the rank and file and appointed apparatchiks as the representatives of the people.

In the Soviet Union the degree of control that the state has over its citizens’ contact with the West has always been the most sensitive indicator of the political climate. Now, Soviet people do not dash away at the sight of foreigners, and in most cases are ready to communicate openly with them.

Of course, hostility toward the former Soviet citizen coming from the United States is much higher than it is to the “true American.” Only a few years ago, to see an emigrating friend off at Sheremetievo, the international airport in Moscow, was a civic feat. Now dozens of my friends joyfully met me at the airport. I can remember only one of my old acquaintances who openly shunned me. All with whom I met behaved as though they were absolutely free people ready to discuss any issue with me.

Although there has been amazing progress in the level of freedom in speech, the state of Soviet economic life is burdensome. The food supply in Moscow appears worse than it was 10 years ago. Moscow food stores, with their empty shelves, have to be humiliating to Russians who have taken a trip even to Bulgaria, let alone to the West. The lack of fruits and vegetables was especially overwhelming. Even after mobilizing all of their resources, my dear hosts could not provide any type of fruit for the feasts that they held in my honor.

The Soviets are in a permanent hunt not only for a variety of good foods but also for all other consumer goods. They now spend more time and energy in this pursuit than they did in the 1970s. It is horrible to have to make a prominent scholar happy with a few packages of tea or to appear as a generous person if you can give a few good tape cassettes as a gift.

Private business--individual labor activity or cooperatives--so much acclaimed, is so far not a very serious element in Soviet society. Almost all of my Moscow friends and acquaintances have not yet experienced any beneficial effect from Mikhail Gorbachev’s brave innovation, and they do not foresee any serious change in the coming years.

It is, however, not amazing that the country suffers from a lack of goods. My personal experience in Moscow only served to confirm what I had already read in the Soviet press and had watched on Soviet television at my office at Michigan State University. Labor discipline and productivity are, as in the past, very low. Dozens of women workers sit idle in cafeterias and offices. The same picture can be seen in many stores. Soviet customers clearly are not receiving the same standard of service that is common in other countries--the standard that forms the basis of the modern efficient economy.

The large gap between the new freedom of speech on the one hand and the backward economy on the other reflects a major problem of Gorbachev’s regime. Freedom of speech makes many Soviet people politically active, including those on both the left and the right and including even the most rabid Russian chauvinists. In some ways the country is already in civil war at the verbal level. There are no content people in the country at present, and Gorbachev’s liberalization program cannot by itself ensure the transformation of Soviet society.

Gorbachev can change things only if he manages to radically improve the Soviet market. The masses appreciate the access to consumer goods more than they do the access to new political freedoms. We shall see how this week’s party conference will try to lessen this gap. So far Gorbachev’s ways have been successful only in creating a tremendous rift between politics and economics in the Soviet Union.