Soviet Party Discloses $2.7-Billion Budget

Challenged to prove its commitment to glasnost by disclosing its finances, the Soviet Communist Party reported Friday that its current annual budget is nearly $2.7 billion, most of which is financed by members’ dues.

The party newspaper Pravda said it had received many letters asking about the organization’s finances, which had not been disclosed even to most party members for decades.

“We are paying a lot, but we do not have the slightest idea of how the money is spent,” a reader from Leningrad had written in a typical letter. “They should not make it so secret.”

In response, the party decided that glasnost , or openness, should apply to this aspect of Soviet politics, too, and it gave Pravda a general outline of its income and expenses but stopped far short of disclosing the specific salaries of party officials or of providing a complete breakdown of its operating costs.

Members’ dues amount to nearly $2.2 billion a year at current exchange rates, Pravda reported, and the rest of the funds, nearly 20% of the budget, come from the party’s publishing houses, which print many of the country’s newspapers, magazines, journals and books.

The party’s 19 million members pay dues that range from the equivalent of 15 cents or 30 cents a month up to as much as 3% of their earnings; most pay 2% or 2 1/2%.

The money goes to finance the operations of 4,625 local party committees across the country and to pay the salaries of 52,000 party secretaries working full-time in party branches in offices, factories and farms. The party’s Central Committee, its headquarters in Moscow, costs $80.7 million a year, Pravda reported.

Although Pravda gave only a few other details, it said the party’s new monthly bulletin, Information of the Central Committee, will publish more material on the party’s budget.

Earlier, a leading Soviet editor had disclosed that members of the party’s ruling Politburo are paid from $1,935 to $2,420 a month, with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev getting somewhat more. Gorbachev had also earned more than $600,000 from foreign sales of his book “Perestroika,” according to Soviet press reports but had donated the money to the party.

But Vitaly A. Korotich, editor of the liberal weekly Ogonyok, one of the country’s most popular magazines, said that the highest salaries in the government or party, as much as $3,225 a month, went to leading generals in the Defense Ministry.

Soviet officials’ salaries seem modest by American or West European standards, but the average monthly pay here is about $350. Top Soviet officials also receive much larger city apartments, country houses and seaside cottages, they are able to buy better food at low prices and they benefit from scores of other perquisites, such as chauffeur-driven limousines and special clinics, as a result of their positions.