As is often the case, the argument is going nowhere (in this one point,
I agree with Eva Durant) — more than that, it is missing the point. The
Soviet system rapidly became a system that was not able to work well --
one might say that it was a degenerate form of Marxist idealism (in this
one point, I agree with Trotsky -- though he put it in slightly
different form, and blamed the Stalinist bureaucracy: i.e., he thought
that, if he, Trotsky, had somehow been on top of things, he would have
managed it better). Very early, the system deeloped the following
style: the Party and Government used force, rather than law, as its
ultimo ratio for running the system; the people very quickly learned to
finagle and defraud, to get by. Periodically, in addition to fits of
ppure paranoia, Stalin would launch a major purge of "economic
criminals" to set an example (deter) the others, usually by shooting the
culprits. As late as the 1960's, the Soviet government (after
de-Stalinizing) was resorting to this: e.g., a number of cases where
clothing factories were producing suits that were one size less than
what they were marked as being, and shipping the surplus cloth out the
backdoor for sale on the blackmarket. The culprits were publicly
identified, quickly tried, and shot. However, this process simply meant
that economic crimes became more sophisticated. The economy could not
survive (other than in heavy industry and weapons production -- the
favored sectors right until the 1980's, with minor variations) without
this kind of behavior. Tacitly, most of the time, officials
collaborated in this --- used the "tolkach" or fixer in complex schemes
to get around the official plan and to trade, on the market, surplus or
scrounged materials to get other materials that they were short of, and
operated an unofficial and crude market economy for most of the Soviet
period. This enabled people to survive, but very inefficiently. In the
late 1970's, when information started to become more accessible, teams
of Western scholars, of which Gregory Grossman was the most prominent
individual, started to document this unofficial economy. I believe (but
I am citing this form memory) that they eventually estimated, in the
early 1990's when this work was summarized, that about 25% of Soviet GDP
was accounted for by black market activities.
At the level of larger units, the same process of finagling and worse
quicklyl developed. In the 1970's, there was an official debate, soon
suppressed, within the Russian Federation; the Russians were charging
that the Central Asian and Caucasusian republics were getting more than
their share of the benefits (whatever they were) of the system, and that
the Russians were paying more than their share (I believe there were
even charges that the books were being coooked, but I can't confirm
this). The same was happening within and among the satellite states.
Everyone was out for themselves, and they weren't too restrained in
trying to beat the system. The fact that the Russians had the dominant
power in the system may have enabled them to get the most, but this is
probably not proven nor provable: whether they really benefited from
their Empire was questionable and in the end, Gorbachev was willing to
let the satellites go -- not least because they no longer paid, if they
ever did.
The moral of this tale *IS* of value to us. Who was the genius who
believed that capitalism could be introduced easily into Russia (I mean,
not "casino capitalism," but the market economy combined with law and at
least minimal behavioral norms). These people had spent years
perfecting their skills in screwing the system --- as our Cherokee
friend has commented, what gave us the almighty gall to think that they
would change their habits, believe that we had come to give them the
benefits of our economic and political system, and that they could
therefore stop playing their games. The only thing that we did in
changing the Russian economy (as distinct from changes that *MAY* have
occurred -- or may yet occur —— in the political system) is make this
kind of economic behavior more lucrative, often at our expense via the
IMF and other economic aid channels.
Saul Silverman
(in a cynical mood)
