Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union

Financial Times, Monday, November 7, 1977

The Price of Soviet Achievements

It has been 60 years since the Bolshevik seizure of power created out of the old Tsarist Empire a new kind of society based on a vision of progress and social justice but sustained by force. The Soviets say the Revolution was “the greatest event of the twentieth century.” What has it meant?

On Kallinin Prospekt, Moscow’s answer to the Champs Elysées, shoppers stroll past a futuristic arcade of stores and cafes and rows of sweeping high rise apartment buildings. An outdoor screen flashes scenes from current Soviet films. The street is full of traffic, including many new Soviet “Zhiguli” automobiles, and the stores and cafes are crowded with patrons.

Kallinin Prospekt is a model of what the Soviet leaders would like their country to be. Modem and striking, it conveys a picture of progress and economic success.

In spite of this, the centrally located street feels utterly different from any Western grand avenue. The buildings are modem but uniform. The crowds are unfailingly orderly but lack spontaneity, for which something from above seems to have been substituted. Ubiquitous doormen enforce long waits in the cold while places go begging in restaurants upstairs. Newsstands are well stocked, but only with communist publications. Above the street, a Soviet model plane circles an illuminated globe advertising international air tickets that passers-by cannot buy.

The Soviet Union at 60, in many ways, bears comparison with its would-be representative street. It shows great achievement but also an atmosphere of unreality, as the society seeks to deny the coercion which helped to build it.

Without attempting to evaluate what it means in terms of efficiency or quality for Soviet industrial output to have increased 145 times since the Revolution, or for national income to have increased 68 times, there can be little doubt that the Soviet economic achievement was extraordinary. The 60th anniversary calls to mind that in the 12 years between 1928 and 1940 the Soviet Union, internationally isolated and operating on economic principles that were completely untested, transformed itself from a predominantly rural, peasant country into a formidable industrial power with the help of neither significant foreign investment nor sizeable external trade.

Terrible Cost

This Soviet achievement, however, came at a terrible cost. The new society was created by violence directed at existing classes and institutions. The effects of that violence, which reached its culmination during the Stalin period, are still perceptible in Soviet life today.

The Soviet Union now accounts for one-fifth of the world’s industrial output, boasts a vast, technologically sophisticated military, establishment which allows it to compete for power and influence in every corner of the globe, directs the world’s only ongoing manned space mission programme, and has successfully developed such modern forms of transport as the TU-144 supersonic airliner and the 125-mile-an-hour ER-200 high speed train.

The system capable of organising dramatic achievements, however, has such power over the individual that few persons dare do anything to challenge it directly. The Soviet citizen needs the approval of the Committee for State Security (KGB)—which supplements its information with the results of massive eavesdropping—and opening of mail—to travel abroad, to get a desirable job or to qualify for a promotion. At the same time, evidence of “negative political tendencies” can lead to immediate sacking or being hounded from job to job. It can prejudice attempts to get an apartment.

“Those who were frightened by Stalin,” said a Jewish activist whose parents were Stalinist purge victims, “have been frightened to the end of their lives.” The younger generation have less of this primordial fear but do not “tease the goose” lest they tip an invisible political balance and endlessly complicate their lives.

The Soviet Union was the first revolutionary Socialist state and the sight of red flags flying legally from the tops of official government buildings still lends to one’s impressions of Moscow a disquieting sense of having stepped into another world. The Revolution did not realise a philosophic ideal of justice and freedom and much of the unreal atmosphere in the Soviet Union lies in the fact that all Soviet propaganda is based on the notion that it did. In fact, the Politburo or Communist Party Central Committee, meeting in secret, set policies which the people as a whole, who have no voice in the matter, unanimously resolve to “carry into life.”

The eeriness of the situation is striking, but it must be balanced against the regime’s positive aspects. The economic and technical progress in the Soviet Union also brought the creation of a comprehensive welfare state. Since the 1930s, the Soviet Union has guaranteed full employment as well as paid holidays and an assured pension at 60 (55 for women). Housing is subsidised so rents are nominal, and education and medical care are free. There is claimed to be total literacy today in a country where 60 years ago only one in four could read, and the infant mortality rate has fallen from 269 deaths per thousand in 1913 to 26 deaths per thousand today. Average life expectancy has risen from 32 years to more than 70.

The Paradox

The Soviets set out to create both a new society and a “new man.” Although they created a new socialist society, the goal of the new man—strong, unselfish, and disdainful of personal power when confronted with the needs of the community—continues to elude them. Unfortunately in the Soviet case, the goals were complementary. Without the new man to oversee it, the purity of the new socialist society was itself in danger.

In the Soviet Union today, government control of the economy and the interpretation of a guaranteed job as the basis of social and political participation create a sense of security but also lend to political life much of the inherent authoritarianism and control of the work place. At political meetings and lectures in offices and factories, people learn to agree ritually to the party policy being explained, although they may not agree with a word of it. The economic consequences of objecting or even appearing indifferent are not worth the risk.

The system maintains itself by controlling the flow of information. Foreign radio broadcasts are no longer being jammed, but there are no foreign newspapers on sale in Moscow except in foreigners’ hotels and at the airport. In spite of the Soviet claim to be the best-read nation, works of serious literature, including the Russian classics, are in chronically short supply, as are valuable statistical yearbooks. The result of these restrictions and the omnipresence of deadening consistent official propaganda is mass confusion. There is widespread dissatisfaction in the Soviet Union, but few are able to articulate what is on their minds.

The 60th anniversary inevitably prompts comparisons, and in many ways the situation in the Soviet Union—economically, socially, politically—is better than it has ever been. The Stalinist Terror appears to be a thing of the past, and people’s standard of living improves year by year, but the cautious statement of Mr. Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, in his report last week on the 60th anniversary, that “we have stood our ground and won” is indicative of the fact that the Soviet Union, which once saw itself as the embodiment of historical dynamism, is slowing down.

The Soviet leadership of the revolutionary State has become a gerontocracy, or rule by the elderly. The majority of the ruling Politburo are 70, or close to it, and they have passed up several opportunities to promote younger men. Only five Politburo members have been dropped since the Brezhnev-Kosygin leadership took over in 1964 and only one of these, former President Nikolai Podgorny, was a central figure. The stability of the Soviet leadership is reflected in the Communist Party Central Committee, where 90 per cent of the full Central Committee members elected at the 25th Party Congress in 1975 were re-elected to posts they held at the 24th Party Congress in 1971—a sharp contrast to the heavy turnover under Khrushchev and Stalin.

More Trade

At the same time, the years of spectacular economic growth appear to be over. In 1976, the growth of Soviet industrial output was less than a third of what it had been in 1951. The increase in productivity of labour, a crucial index for the Soviet Union’s future economic health, was also last year less than a third of the 1951 increase. Soviet foreign trade, however, has greatly expanded. Soviet trade with the West has more than doubled in the past six years, and Soviet foreign trade as a whole has increased almost tenfold in the past 20 years. The Soviet Union is no longer isolated from the world economy or insulated from its problems. The result is a relationship of interdependence with the capitalists which the early communists sought to minimise.

Under these circumstances, the Soviet Union does not have and apparently does not want the revolutionary’s disdain for convention and his relative freedom of action. The Soviet Union at 60 appears to prefer international respectability and recognition of its place as one of the world’s two great superpowers under circumstances in which neither the coercion of Communist Party rule, nor the post-millennial enthusiasm which conceals it, is called into question.

The two clearest threats to the Soviets in this regard are the Eurocommunists and the dissidents. At last week’s two day celebration meeting marking the 60th anniversary, the most important note of discord was heard over the issue of Eurocommunism, which promises Communism in a pluralist political society. The task of consolidating the Soviet regime and Soviet international influence among communists and non-communists alike will be greatly complicated by any successful Western European example of a Marxist government operating in conditions of political and intellectual freedom.

The Soviet international position, and particularly the relationship with the U.S., could be jeopardised by the dissidents. The West has shown a predilection to press the Soviet Union to adhere to its international and human rights commitments, and the dissidents, by basing their activities, as they have in recent years, on explicit Soviet undertakings, are always in the position of having a potential external ally.

The Soviets enjoy birthdays, and the prospectis of regular celebrations of the events of the October Revolution at least every decade. As the Revolution fades into history, the Soviet Union will remain a superpower on the basis of its formidable strength. It is hard to escape the impression, however, that the retelling of the events of October and the glorification of Lenin, such as have taken place in the week preceding today’s anniversary, will not of themselves continue to inspire other peoples to follow the Soviet example unless the Russians can reverse the trend towards rigidification and embourgeoisement and—politically, economically, and ideologically—begin to offer the world something new.

Financial Times, Thursday, November 24, 1977

Smoking in the Soviet Union

A Burning Issue

Hypnosis is being used to combat the smoking habit in the Russian actors’ sanatorium at Sochi, the resort which is the centre of the Soviet antismoking campaign.

Instructions calculated to induce a trance and accompanied by organ music or the sound of birds chirping are transmitted to receivers in the pillows of those taking the cure upstairs. The instructions are followed by a carefully phrased antismoking message, the last sound the actor hears before falling asleep.

The method is only one of the sophisticated means being employed in Russia to get people to give up smoking. Although tobacco production is scheduled to rise 16 per cent in the 1976–80 five year plan, the countervailing efforts to discourage the habit are considerable, and growing.

Smoking is banned on all international Aeroflot flights of less than five hours, in dining cars, sports stadiums, swimming pools, ticket offices and—with difficulty—in many cafes. Moscow recently banned smoking at tables in the city’s 120 restaurants, allowing it only in restrooms and special foyers.

Russia is the world’s fourth largest tobacco grower, after the U.S., China and India, with total production in 1976 of 264,000 tonnes of raw tobacco, 218 bn. cigarettes and 1.57 bn. “Papirosi,” potent cigarettes which consist of a two-inch holder made of rolled paper and an inch of chewing quality tobacco. Demand for tobacco products is high and last year Russia supplemented domestic production by importing 74,000 tonnes of raw tobacco and about 53 bn. cigarettes, mostly from Bulgaria.

Sochi has undertaken a coordinated drive against the habit. City officials report a 25 per cent drop in cigarette sales and no decline in tourism. The Sochi anti-smoking effort is largely a characteristic of the “city of health” but it could presage wider efforts against smoking in the country as a whole.

Cautionary placards at the station and airport greet visitors to Sochi who are also met with anti-smoking propaganda in the sanatoria and rest homes where many spend their holidays. On arrival in the sanatoria, they’re asked whether they want to give up smoking. Those who try, inspired by the aura of good health and clean living, either do so unaided or with the help of medicines that help over withdrawal by imitating the effects of nicotine.

The treatment in the Sanatoria is largely psychological. Doctors discuss the harmful effects of smoking with those who want to stop the habit and there are discussion groups. Those who succeed are given a certificate congratulating them on their willpower and doctors at the sanatorium write to them to avoid a relapse.

In Sochi omnipresent posters proclaim that “work, rest and medical treatment are incompatible with smoking.” The campaign is supported by articles in the newspapers and programmes on radio and television. Smoking is banned in cinemas, hotels and public buildings, including the Sochi town hall. Kiosks that sell cigarettes also display antismoking literature.

This total approach to combatting smoking works well in a resort where the healthful atmosphere, nearby mineral springs, and the break in the work routine, encourage people to try to stop. An estimated 200,000 persons a year are now giving up smoking in Sochi, though only 10,000 succeed for good.

Other towns could follow the example. Exhortatory public propaganda is almost as common in Russia as advertising is in the West, so a national antismoking campaign would be both feasible and in character. The Soviet Health Ministry is concerned about the increase of smoking in the country, and particularly, the use of tobacco by schoolchildren. Literatarnaya Gazeta, the writers’ union weekly, has called for health warnings on cigarette packages, a ban on cigarette sales in grocery shops and from newsstands, and the elimination of inducements to smoke such as scenes of cinema stars smoking.

Oddly, the campaign has apparently met bureaucratic obstacles from ministries responsible for growing tobacco and making cigarettes. Per capita cigarette consumption by persons over 18 in 1974 was estimated to be only 60 per cent of that in the U.S., a tribute perhaps to Russia’s lack of cigarette advertisements, but consumption is rising and tobacco production is a 4 bn. rouble a year industry. According to Literaturnaya Gazeta, trade officials recently opposed the proposed inclusion of a health wanting in each cigarette packet and the Ministry of Light Industry, which oversees 54 tobacco factories, and the Ministry of Agriculture, which oversees 189,000 hectares of tobacco crops, are other potential sources of opposition to stringent anti-smoking measures.

More than 20 brands of cigarettes are on sale in Moscow and many more in the national republics. The most popular appear to be Yavaplain and Stolichnaya filter cigarettes at 30 Kopecks (about 33 pence) for 20. The Apollo-Soyuz brand, commemorating the joint U.S.–Soviet space flight, also appears popular, probably because of its American association and the American tobacco of which it is made, but is hard to get.

Cigarettes imported from the West are only sold to foreigners for hard currency.

The potent papirosi, production of which is to be cut one third by 1980, sell for 22 Kopeks for 250. There have been efforts to create tobacco substitutes but after unsuccessful attempts to make something smokable out of such substances as cellulose, sawdust, cabbage leaves, beetroot, dandelion leaves and pollen, the tobacco industry has given up. Scientists in Kiev, however, have designed a special cigarette holder which may go into wider use. It contains pills made of baked metal powder which act as a filter and are said to retain up to 75 per cent of the most harmful components of cigarette smoke drawn through the holder.

Financial Times, Friday, November 25, 1977

The Soviet strategy on dissidents

From Russia Without Love

While the debate in Belgrade has been going on about Soviet human rights abuses, the Soviet authorities have continued to pursue a strategy intended to make dissent a largely academic issue.

During the course of this year, a wave of arrests and many approvals of requests to emigrate have succeeded in so depleting the dissident ranks that they appear to be greatly weakened for the foreseeable future.

Twelve members of citizens’ groups which sought to monitor Soviet observance of the 1975 Helsinki agreements have been arrested or sentenced since February of this year. In Moscow, those arrested were Dr. Yuri Orlov, the leader of the Moscow-based group, and members Alexander Ginzburg and Anatoly Shcharansky, who faces treason charges. A fourth member, Malva Landa, was sentenced to two years exile in the Soviet Far East for negligence in connection with a fire in her apartment last December.

In the Ukraine; there have been four arrests of members of the Ukrainian-Helsinki group including Mr. Mikola Rudenko, the group leader, and Mr. Olexy Tikhy, who were convicted in July of anti-Soviet agitation. The only Helsinki group members so far convicted on political charges.

Mr. Rudenko, a Ukrainian poet and war invalid, was sentenced to seven years hard labour and five years exile. Mr. Tikhy was sentenced to ten years hard labour and five years exile. There have also been three arrests of Georgian Helsinki group members. And in Lithuania; Viktorus Petkus, head of the Lithuanian Helsinki group, was arrested this summer.

Manv dissidents have been induced to emigrate. Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko leaves next week on a six month visa for medical treatment in the U.S. Gen. Grigorenko insists that he will come back to the Soviet Union and said he regards the granting of the visa as “a humanitarian act.” Once in the U.S. he may be stripped of his citizenship and refused permission to return.

The departure of Gen. Grigorenko, Moscow’s best-known dissident after Dr. Andrei Sakharov, will follow the recent emigration of Dr. Valentin Turchin, leader of the Soviet branch of Amnesty International, who accepted an offer to leave after being unable to find work for three and a half years, and the emigration of Tatyana Khodorovich, the last remaining director of a fund to aid political prisoners, who decided to leave after being threatened with criminal charges.

Other dissidents who have emigrated in recent months include Lyudmilla Alexeeva and Yuri Mnyukh, both former members of the Moscow based Helsinki group, and Kronid Lubarsky, an astronomer who helped Mrs. Khodorovich manage the fund to aid political prisoners.

The Soviet dissident movement appeared in its present form in the late 1960s and has suffered repeated repressions since then. But never before has it lost so many of its key personalities in such a short time. Dr. Sakharov is now almost the only major dissident still active in Moscow and the absence of other well-known personalities such as Dr. Orlov, Mr. Ginzburg, and in a few days, Gen. Grigorenko, removes men whose wide contacts made them invaluable sources of information about human rights abuses throughout the Soviet Union.

The tactics being used against the dissidents are sometimes brutal. But, as a rule the KGB attempts to suppress dissent with a minimum of violence. This can be done by arresting some people, allowing many others to emigrate and making the choice between emigration and arrest almost a matter of whim. Dissidents speak of the “black box” which contains their fate. It is impossible to say with certainty, for example, why Anatoly Shcharansky was arrested and faces treason charges while Dr. Turchin, who succeeded him as the principal dissident spokesman, was allowed to emigrate to the U.S. The inability of the individual to predict the reactions of the KGB, predisposes him toward restraint.