How did the very basics of Soviet Communism work at all?

[The_Joker_and_the_Thief]

@Lumpy

I swear there was a Straight Dope column about special department stores in the Soviet Union that catered to the party bigwigs, but my google-fu has deserted me. Anyone?

The column was printed in the books but has, for whatever reason, not been made available online. Here it is:

*I once read that as head of the Soviet Union Leonid Brezhnev took home as his monthly salary the U.S. equivalent of $700. I was astonished for two reasons: first, something like the president’s salary in the Soviet Union seems like it ought to be a state secret, and second, Brezhnev was a sports car aficionado, so how did he support his habit on $700 a month? They couldn’t all have been gifts from Nixon and other heads of state. It occurred to me that his salary was merely pro forma. I know, for example, that members of the Central Committee and Supreme Soviet have access to a floor of the GUM department store in Moscow which is closed to the general public and stocked with quality items from the West, which rather dents the whole “we’re all comrades over here” notion. Cecil, what’s the lowdown on Soviet big-shot salaries and perks? – Jonathan L., Los Angeles *

When it comes to compensating the elect, Jon, the Soviet Union is run pretty much along the same lines as the city of Chicago – i.e., what you don’t get in salary you make up for in freebies, graft, and under-the-table boodle. Brezhnev’s official salary was said to be 900 rubles (the equivalent of $1,200 in the early 70s, about $720 now). This was not particularly high by the standards of Soviet officialdom; top scientists and military men were hauling down around 2,000 rubles per month. But such comparisons are meaningless. What’s important in the Soviet Union is not cash per se but blat – Russian for “clout.” Top Russky leaders and their families have access to a wide range of goodies for which they pay little or nothing, whereas for your ordinary Joe Doakski, the same items are either outrageously expensive or simply unavailable. (The Russians, by the way, do not exactly go around broadcasting this stuff. What follows was gleaned from the writings of various nosy journalists, notably the New York Times’s Hedrick Smith.) A whole bureaucracy has been built up to administer the system of privilege. For instance, there’s a department of the Communist Party Central Committee known as the Upravleniye Delami, the “Administration of Affairs,” which maintains a vast system of apartments, dachas (country houses), guest houses, car pools, and servants for the exclusive use of top Soviet honchos. Special clinics and hospitals for the elite are run by the “Fourth Administration” of the Ministry of Health. There are something like 100 special shops and stores in the Moscow area alone, ranging from tailors to high-class groceries, reserved for big shots. Probably the best known of these is “Section 100,” a special elite-only clothing store on the third floor of Moscow’s GUM department store. All these shops and services are organized into a strict hierarchy – the higher you are in rank, the wider selection of goods you get and the less they cost you. For example, a Soviet-made Fiat will cost the average schmo in the Soviet Union about 7,500 rubles and requires a two- to three-year wait; ranking Soviet bureaucrats can get the same car for 1,370 rubles in a couple days (not that they necessarily need one; the top 20 Russian leaders get chauffeur-driven Zil limousines).

Brezhnev himself had a swank Moscow apartment as well as a mansion near the village of Usovo about 20 miles from Moscow that had formerly been used by Khrushchev and Stalin. He also had a hunting lodge at Zavidovo, which I believe is in central Russia, and had access to government guest houses and other facilities throughout the Soviet Union. (Incidentally, Brezhnev was known for his collection of expensive luxury cars, not sports cars. Most of them in fact were gifts from foreign leaders.)

Still, while Soviet leaders are clearly not hurting, it should be noted that the difference between the top and bottom rungs of society is less extreme in the U.S.S.R. than it is in much of the West. Furthermore, the Russian leadership frowns on conspicuous consumption, lest the masses get restless. Brezhnev did, after all, live in a Moscow apartment, not a Russian version of the White House. So let’s not get too smug, kids.

[Kent_Clark]

@Habeed

How did the Soviets treat petty disobedience? So, ok, you wouldn’t want to speak out against the State. But what about underage drinking, smoking behind the high school, graffiti, sneaking in somewhere, and other petty crimes? Were they treated seriously or was it a “comrades be comrades” kind of thing?

The Soviets (and the Russians) have a catch-all term “hooliganism,” which could be used for everything from littering to participation in non-approved activities.

[Hello_Again]

Want to read about workers’ lives - an interesting book was written by the defector who stole his Foxbat aircraft and flew it to Japan to turn over to the CIA. He mentions alcoholism being rampant, many people didn’t work hard (“we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us”) and factories were more concerned with finding acceptable excuses why they could not meet quota. The first time he saw a western supermarket he accused his handlers of setting it up as a showpiece to fool him.

MiG Pilot

[Hector_St_Clare]

@The_Joker_and_the_Thief

The column was printed in the books but has, for whatever reason, not been made available online. Here it is:

The last paragraph in that column deserves some attention. While the Soviet Union certainly wasn’t a completely egalitarian society (no advanced society ever has been), even Milton Friedman acknowledged that the gap between the top and bottom of society was narrower than in America or other Western societies.

The late Alec Nove is a good source on the Soviet economy, and IIRC he estimates that the Soviet Union was relatively unequal under Stalin and then inequality decreased after 1956.

[Hector_St_Clare]

I just found a paper on Gini coefficients during the 1990s. The Soviet Union was at its most egalitarian in around 1968, but nevertheless they estimate that in 1990 (just before the wheels came off the thing) their Gini coefficient was around 28- in the Byelorussian SSR it was a bit over 23. That is, to say the least, a lot better than the United States in 1990, much less the United States today.

Source is Alexeev, 1993 from Indiana University.

[Eva_Luna]

@Hector_St_Clare

I just found a paper on Gini coefficients during the 1990s. The Soviet Union was at its most egalitarian in around 1968, but nevertheless they estimate that in 1990 (just before the wheels came off the thing) their Gini coefficient was around 28- in the Byelorussian SSR it was a bit over 23. That is, to say the least, a lot better than the United States in 1990, much less the United States today.

Source is Alexeev, 1993 from Indiana University.

I took his grad survey class on Soviet and post-Soviet economics - he told us that best guesses were that about 1/3 of the economy was black market, more so if you were talking about alcohol. Great guy

[chaika]

The Soviet Union’s entire raison d’etre was to glorify and elevate the workers. That would be why a bus driver would earn as much as or more than a dentist. But ironically, there was considerable stratification in terms of class and a hefty amount of snobbery. So the official line was to promote the workers and their contribution to society, while at the same time those with any sort of power attempted to distance themselves from actual workers. Class wasn’t defined by salary, but there were significant cultural markers nonetheless.

[MichaelEmouse]

Chaika,

Can you tell us more about those cultural markers?

[Hector_St_Clare]

Wow, this paper (Stodder, 1991) estimates that in 1968, the Soviet Gini index (OK, only for ‘employees in the state sector’, but presumably in the Soviet economy that covered most people) was even lower, around 17.

It’s closer to 49 in modern day America.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/4785285_Equity-Efficiency_Preferences_in_Poland_and_the_Soviet_Union_Order-Reversals_under_the_Atkinson_Index

[Northern_Piper]

Please help me with my ignorance.

What is a Gini coefficient and why is it relevant to the discussion?

[MichaelEmouse]

It measures income inequality. It is only relevant to the discussion in that Hector is trying to steer the discussion in the direction of income inequality in the US instead of just starting a thread in GD.

[Hector_St_Clare]

@MichaelEmouse

It measures income inequality. It is only relevant to the discussion in that Hector is trying to steer the discussion in the direction of income inequality in the US instead of just starting a thread in GD.

I’m not trying to steer the discussion anywhere. Someone brought up gaps between rich and poor in the old Soviet Union, so I pointed out that while they existed, they weren’t really that large.

[chaika]

@MichaelEmouse

Chaika,

Can you tell us more about those cultural markers?

Yes, certainly. The Party elite had access to foreign and higher quality goods, so their clothing was recognizably not of the working class and they could serve delicacies not available to the general population. Even on holiday, there were private beaches accessible only to the elite. The Party bigwigs often pulled strings to ensure their children attended top schools, often English language schools, which few children of manual laborers attended.

Cultural markers for the intelligentsia were somewhat different. They included things like having a lot of books (including tamizdat) listening to unofficial singers (the so-called “bards”), going to the theater frequently. Vodka crossed all class lines in its universal popularity. But in the 1970s and 1980s, the intelligentsia distinguished themselves by serving cocktails, something unheard of among Soviet workers.

Those are just a few cultural markers. There are of course many more.

[Cayuga]

Cecil’s column reminded me of something that might be a good source for the OP to check out — The Russians by Hedrick Smith. I read it before going to the Soviet Union and it saved my life.

I believe he wrote a follow-up as well, either during or just after the fall.

[Dr.Strangelove]

@Hector_St_Clare

Wow, this paper (Stodder, 1991) estimates that in 1968, the Soviet Gini index (OK, only for ‘employees in the state sector’, but presumably in the Soviet economy that covered most people) was even lower, around 17.

A country where one person had 15% of the total wealth and everyone else lived in a mud shack would have a Gini index of 15. More generally, it will give a low score whenever you have a small number of rich elites and a large number of equally-poor peasants. It leaves a bit to be desired.

[Hector_St_Clare]

@Dr.Strangelove

A country where one person had 15% of the total wealth and everyone else lived in a mud shack would have a Gini index of 15. More generally, it will give a low score whenever you have a small number of rich elites and a large number of equally-poor peasants. It leaves a bit to be desired.

While that’s certainly true, I think my point (which was not that Soviet inequality didn’t exist, it’s that quantitatively and comparatively it wasn’t that bad) still stands. Unless you have statistical evidence that the situation youre describing was in fact the case (and anecdotes about nice Crimean beach hotels and Ural Mountain hunting lodges for Soviet officials aren’t quite the level of evidence I’m looking for).

[Lumpy]

The Signorino illustration to the column:

http://lib.znate.ru/pars_docs/refs/18/17716/17716_html_mb43ecab.gif

[Johnny_Ecks]

I have done some reading on this subject, and I recommend the book “Red Plenty” by Francis Spufford, which is a novelistic examination of the failures of the Soviet Union to rationalize production. One chapter is devoted to the POV of a fixer, a person who works the black market professionally to make up the gaps in the official system, a position that was both illegal and indispensable. At one point he buys copper pipe stolen from construction sites by gangsters, and muses that they were too stupid to realize that money was just glorified ration cards for bread and vodka. Also good is “Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking” by Anya Von Bremzen which is a Memoir of a Soviet childhood, giving a nice idea of how economics worked for the regular person, and the importance of personal connection in getting anything done.

[Lumpy]

I find it highly amusing that given that an open market was forbidden by the state, a “peer-to-peer” network emerged that almost met the definition of anarchocapitalism.

[md2000]

@Eva_Luna

Want to know what the late glasnost’ era was like? I could tell you a few stories.

Thanks a lot. That led me to the Honey and the Beekeeper thread, which is an hour and a half of my life I will never get back! :rolleyes: