The first six months of Gorbachov's reign THE TOP SPOT in the Soviet hierarchy has been occupied by Gorbachov for six months now. He assumed power without any open clashes. He has consolidated it by means of rapid changes in the makeup of the leading bodies of the party, the state, and the armed forces. The youngest leader elevated by the bureaucracy since Stalin's death seems, thus, to have a chance to carry through reforms at least as extensive as those that Nikita Khrushchev sought to implement. Everything indicates that this, in fact, is Mikhail Gorbachov's intention. What is known about him personally also tends to confirm this. Such a view, notably, is supported by Roy Medvedev, who was his fellow student. The limited public opinion that has developed in the Soviet Union in recent years — among a part of the intelligentsia, the technocrats, and the party apparatchiks has tended to come to the same conclusion. In these circles, expectations, hopes for a "thaw," are emerging that have not been seen in the Soviet Union since Khrushchev's death.
ERNEST MANDEL
USSR Its effects on the economy (absenteeism in the factories) are disastrous, as well as its consequences for public health. It is, no doubt, the major cause of the decline in average life expectancy that has been registered for several years now in the Soviet Union.
Among the industrialized or semiindustrialized countries, a decline in average life expectancy has been seen only in the Soviet Union. Besides alcoholism, the other factors are a delay in putting into use the more modern medicines and a more and more pronounced decline in the quality of the health-care system.
So, the bureaucracy has a clear interest in trying to come up with an answer to these problems. The hefty income that the state derives from the sales of vodka certainly does not compensate for the losses caused by the evil of alcoholism.
The measures adopted are administrative and repressive in nature. They include a ban on serving alcohol in cafes, canteens, and restaurants before 2.00 pm or after 8.00 pm; big price increases for alcoholic beverages, along with increased production of soft drinks and fruit juice; a sharp reduction in the production of vodka in the future; stepped-up repression of moonshiners; and greater penalties for public drunkeness and absenteeism in the plants owing to drunkenness.
The effects of these measures, however, are for the moment modest. The population generally shares the skepticism of Le Monde's Moscow correspondent, who wrote in the June 7, 1985, issue of the Paris daily:
"Despite the press campaign that is in full swing, the daily lives of the Soviets have not yet really changed. The screw may go on being tightened. On top of the repressive measures will come the automatic effects of the announced cuts in the annual production of alcohol. But for the moment the old habits remain well rooted, as the magazine Ogonyok recounts. One of its readers made the test in a restaurant. He asked for tea. The waiter smiled complicitly and asked: Would you like a bottle or a carafe?' "
At the same time, as soon as he assumed power, Gorbachov relaunched the violent repression of corruption and economic crimes' that was initiated under Andropov, and which Chernenko had relaxed somewhat. Heads have rolled in the all-union ministries and those of the various republics. The targets for the axe have been managers of enterprises, in particular trading enterprises, and the entrepreneurs and intermediaries in the "parallel markets" ( the black and "grey" markets).
The expectation that Gorbachov will introduce major reforms has become so accepted that in an open letter the Czechoslovak dissident group Charter 77 contrasted his "desire for reform" favorably with the stand-pat attitude of the Czechoslovak CP leaders. Such subjective impressions are merely the reflection of pressing objective needs. For years, the bills have been adding up for the growing cost the Soviet Union must pay for the rule of the bureaucratic dictatorship. Over the last two years, economic growth rates have steadily fallen. The crisis in agriculture is leading to a disastrous dependence on cereal imports from the Western countries. A serious lag in technological progress has been developing in the field of electronics. An abrupt rise in the mortality rate indicates a crisis of public health. And these are only some of the graver consequences of bureaucratic rigidity for the Soviet society and masses.
"This has got to change" - everyone capable of thinking for himself or herself in the Soviet Union agrees about that. And there are a lot more of them than the likes of Aleksandr Zinoviev, with their myth of the hopelessly conformist "homo someticus," would have us believe.
the moment there is no perspec: change initiated from below. attional Viewpoint 30 September 1985
So, the expectations of the intellectuals and technocrats are focused on the hope for change from above.
What the workers think is something no one knows very much about, least of all the party apparatus, which from time to time organizes pathetic "sociological studies in the factories" to gather a few scraps of information. The few first-hand reports that have reached us indicate skepticism or outright hostility.
The burden of these reports can be summed up in the phrase: "Gorbachov - Andropov - more discipline, chov - Andropov - more discipline; more belt tightening for the workers. In fact, in a recent speech in Leningrad, Gorbachov himself acknowledged that there was a general skepticism among the masses about the scope and effectiveness of the reforms underway.
It cannot exactly be said that cold water has been poured immediately on these expectations of major reforms. On May 17, 1985, after two sessions of the Soviet CP Central Committee devoted entirely to this subject, measures were adopted "against alcoholism and drunkenness." They were to go into effect on June 1.
Alcoholism is a terrible plague in the Soviet Union. According to a report of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, it affects 40 million people.
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International Viewpoint 30 September 1985
POLAND sheets in a home for youth, the prosecutor asked for sentences of ten years in prison. It seems that sheets cannot be found in the stores, and so "decent people" are particularly outraged by such a crime.
Such talk reveals more about the social reality of the Soviet Union and East Europe (1) than a hundred volumes on a "Marxism-Leninism" made unrecognizable by adaptation to the needs and interests of the bureaucracy.
While Mikhail Gorbachov, who clearly lacks neither intelligence nor knowledge, understands this reality to some extent, he has to keep quiet, not for "reasons of state" but because of the interests of the bureaucracy. (2)
On June 11, 1985, speaking to a Central Committee plenum attended by all the high Soviet dignitaries -except his main rival Romanov -Gorbachov delivered a virtual indictment of the state of the Soviet economy. His audience was called upon to understand the need for "radical changes" and to carry them out. Such reform has to be put into practice in all urgency - "We don't have any more time left."
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