Gorbachev Gambles That Success Is Measured in Plumbing, Not Missiles

What a Christmas present: Swords into plowshares, tanks into tractors, missiles into microcomputers, planes into plumbing.

Mikhail S. Gorbachev had something for almost everyone last week in New York. In a single speech, Gorbachev sought to solve what appeared to be the near-intractable dispute between East and West while at the same time offering some needed support for perestroika and his effort to revitalize the Soviet Union’s economy. Others have discussed extensively the international effect. But the internal implications in some ways may be equally far-reaching.

From the day he assumed the post of general secretary in March, 1985, Gorbachev’s obsessive concern has been to revitalize his country’s economy. Almost everything else is designed in some way or another to facilitate the realization of that goal. Thus, whatever their intrinsic merits, glasnost and democratization are intended to win popular support for his economic-reform effort. By calling for criticism of waste, incompetence and corruption, Gorbachev hopes to show Soviet workers that society will not tolerate the type of favoritism and elitism that characterized so much of the Brezhnev era.

By reaching out to the United States and President Reagan, Gorbachev has sought to bring about the relaxation of tensions so that he can proceed to divert resources from the military sector. He realizes that as long as society spends upwards of 15% of its gross national product on military expenditures, it will be unable to satisfy the needs of its population for consumer goods. After a time, that is likely to lead toa decline in morale and an unwillingness to work. The result is sure to be economic deterioration and stagnation.

While the progress made in reaching a treaty on intermediate-range nuclear forces brought about an astonishing change in the international climate, those of us on the outside kept asking for some tangible sign that the new environment would produce a Soviet switch from guns to butter.

That is why Gorbachev’s blockbuster announcement of a unilateral cut of 500,000 Soviet troops was so ingenious. Such a large contraction should be able to provide doubters in the West with concrete evidence that his desire to reduce Soviet forces is real.

Gorbachev’s new program should also bring him important benefits at home.The Soviet people already know, as one of the country’s leading economic analysts reported in late October, that their real standard of living has dropped for the last two years. Now Gorbachev has promised that in the next year two or three weapons-producing factories will be converted to the production of civilian goods. Soviet officials have already promised that 40% of the plumbing that they plan to install in new housing over the next seven years will be made by factories that heretofore have been producing weapons. Similarly, the Medium Machine Building Ministry, the Soviet Union’s prime defense contractor, has announced that it will assume responsibility for producing a new type of dairy-processing equipment. Such products go to the heart of the needs of the people.

If he can pull it off, the potential benefits should win favor for Gorbachev’s efforts and additional time for him to show that his program can produce actual results.

But Gorbachev is savvy enough to know that unilateral action of this sort also comes at a cost. Just because he orders military factories to produce consumer goods does not mean that they will do it, particularly if it means that the managers and workers will have to work harder and take on new and unaccustomed risks. Nor does it mean that the quality of the new products will necessarily be an improvement over the existing output. Nor will new products alone be enough. The Soviet Union also needs an expanded infrastructure. Thus, if automobile output is expanded, at some point the Soviets also will have to increase highway construction, at present only 15% of ours.

There is a second risk that Gorbachev will also have to encounter: the many generals who are distressed by what they see as his willingness to disarm the Soviet Union. That, more than his poor health, must explain why Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, the chief of staff of the armed forces, decided to resign at the same time that Gorbachev made his initiative public.

Equally haunting is the fact that Gorbachev is not the first Soviet leader to take on the Soviet military-industrial complex. Nikita S. Khrushchev also announced a large-scale demobilization of the military. By doing so he lost the support of the generals and, eventually, his job.

That Gorbachev should nonetheless move as he has done suggests not only that he is a bold leader but also that he is willing to gamble that he needs popular support more than military support, and plumbing more than missiles.