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Part One
THE SOVIET ELITE
IN THE SEVENTIES
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1
A Problem of Definition
The Bolsheviks’ professed objective, when they came to power, was to destroy the existing bourgeois order, and create a truly egalitarian society. Yet, as I shall show elsewhere, there soon developed, under their tutelage, a system of privilege which had little in common with their Marxist creed, and which was to last to the present day. My main concern in this chapter is to suggest yardsticks for determining the most materially privileged group in Soviet society, an elite, in the early seventies. It is perhaps desirable to start with a brief review of the forces which still respectively counter and encourage this strange phenomenon. The nature of the regime makes it appropriate to begin with the hindrances.
The most fundamental of them is, of course, the state ideology itself. The principle of the legal equality of all Soviet citizens was embodied, after a long delay, in the Stalin Constitution of 1936. Since then Soviet ideologists have claimed that all significant social distinctions are disappearing, as society moves steadily towards the classlessness of full communism. Though inegalitarian policies have often been pursued, this ideological proposition has remained unshakeable, and has left a deep imprint on Soviet law.
Secondly there are the elaborate limitations on high earnings. These are so well known as to require only listing. Apart from collective farms and co-operatives, the state is virtually the only employer of labour, and most kinds of legally earned income are under some sort of government control. Wage differentials have nearly always been a matter of government decision, and subject to close scrutiny. Most other sources of income are highly restricted. The means of production are, of course, nationalised and no citizen can hire the labour of others for purposes of private production. Market gardening on private plots is the commonest way in which individuals may legally produce a commodity themselves and trade in it, but the limitations on this practice are considerable, and, given Soviet agricultural economics, it is far from yielding large sums. Buying and selling for profit are labelled as ‘speculation’ and are punishable by law. Personal talents and skills (primarily in the arts, medicine and teaching) are supposed to be exercised through state-run organisations, and are rewarded at state-approved rates; such private practice as exists is subject to progressive taxes reaching 70 per cent of earnings (Tur, 1973, p. 44). Private accommodation can only be legally rented out for profit with the approval of the local soviet, under a low rent ceiling; in this case tax can swallow up to 80 per cent of the takings. No wonder evasion of the regulations is frequent.
Thirdly, controls on wealth are rather strict. Private ownership of land, natural resources and production machinery are constitutionally banned. The citizen can keep as much money as he pleases at home, but inflation (of which there are sure signs), the risk of theft and occasional government manipulation of the currency make this unattractive in the long term. The virtual devaluation of cash holdings under the December 1947 currency reform, for instance, has never been forgotten by the public, nor repudiated by the authorities. Gold and precious stones may be a safer form of wealth than the paper ruble, but they are hard to come by in any quantity.
There is no legal limit on personal savings in the state bank, and accounts can be opened with a minimum of formality. At the same time a large balance has its drawbacks. The rate of interest is only 2–3 per cent per annum and the saver has the right to bank only ‘earned income’, which puts a putative limit on his holdings. A very large sum might attract the attention of the banking authorities who, if they suspect an illegal source, may inform the investigative organs. The present version of the RSFSR Civil Code, approved on 11 June 1964, contains a specific provision for confiscation in such circumstances (Article 395). It is not advisable to have accounts in different towns, for, with the incapacitation or death of the holder, these accounts would come to the notice of the authorities: the estates of deceased persons in any case have to be assessed by a state notary. The use of false names and addresses is also risky, since savings bank officials are at liberty to ask for a depositor's internal passport.
The Soviet citizen has the right to own his dwelling. The Civil Code stipulates that the Soviet family may, in normal circumstances, own a house (or flat) containing not more than 60 square metres of living space (Articles 106–10). The height of any individual dwelling-house is limited to one storey. Ownership of a dacha, or wooden house, in the country is also permitted, and is indeed widespread, though the Civil Code implies that it should only be for temporary residence. Local rules may prevent its use in winter by prohibiting stoves, etc., and many of these structures are hardly more than sheds. If a person inherits an extra dwelling, he has to sell it; local Soviets have powers of coercion, and eventually confiscation, in this respect. The law states that property may be handed over to the state in the form of a gift, if the owner so desires.
Consumer durables can be held as another form of wealth. The government's longstanding neglect of the consumer industries means, however, that although some durables have great market value, they cannot usually be bought in quantity. Private motor-cars are by Western standards still extremely scarce, and naturally have to be licensed — which in itself is a form of control. Possession of two or more vehicles is hardly conceivable, except for a handful of individuals. The prospects for private ownership of sea-going yachts or cruisers are poor, given the authorities' sensitivity about the coasts, the ban on the sale of sea charts and the possible use of boats for flight abroad. Ownership of private aeroplanes is specifically restricted by the Civil Code (Article 137). One does occasionally hear of rich collections of smallish objects — porcelain, icons, stamps — in private hands. Unhappily, there have been some well-advertised confiscations (with the application of ‘speculation’ charges), and a survey of Moscow second-hand shops suggests an exceptionally bare market.
These limitations on earnings and wealth, together with the generally low standard of living, ensure that the Soviet elite, in ‘capitalist’ terms, if not in the context of Soviet society, is relatively poor.* It is also directly and continually dependent on the state for its well-being. Every Soviet citizen is under a constitutional obligation to work, and any income which he earns outside state-approved channels is illegal, carrying considerable risks. Those individuals (mainly artists) who can earn large sums of money from foreign sources apparently have to surrender up to 90 per cent of it to the Soviet government.
THE PROTECTION OF PRIVILEGE
So much for the impediments. Even in this unpromising framework, there are powerful factors which favour privileged life-styles. The first undoubtedly comprises the deep-seated attitudes of the population. After all, it has never been demonstrated that Soviet citizens have different responses towards incentives and differentiation from people who were unfortunate enough to be born elsewhere. The impact of a few decades of propaganda, and isolation from the West, cannot be judged with any certainty. All indications are that Soviet citizens have not, to any significant degree, lost their propensity to appreciate, and strive for, material advantages vis-à-vis friends and neighbours. Neither are there grounds for believing that society itself does not benefit from this fact.
Secondly, there is a more functionalist argument. The Soviet Union, like all industrialised states, has a wide range of occupations which vary greatly in content and the demands they make on the individual. Occupational prestige differences are freely admitted, and these, as far as we can tell, correlate with income and skill, much as elsewhere. Labour is still paid according to ‘quantity and quality’: the need for differentials is thus taken firmly for granted, and only the ‘spread’ of them is open to question.
Lenin always regarded himself as a fervent egalitarian but, as I shall argue below, practical Leninism was in some ways ambivalent and favoured apartness. The leadership of the Soviet Communist Party has, from its early days, been profoundly elitist in its attitudes; it has regarded itself as an enlightened band which understands the march of history and is destined to lead the Russian people — indeed the whole world — to communism. In daily life it has always ensured for itself and its closest associates privileges commensurate with these awesome demands.
On an administrative plane, the official policy towards privilege has usually been positively benign. From the earliest months, if not days, of Bolshevik rule considerable differentiation was permitted in such matters as food rationing, accommodation, and access to state services, particularly education. Earnings were a contentious issue even amongst the Bolsheviks, but here, too, long scales soon appeared. After Stalin took power he allowed various social differentials to widen to an extreme degree. Khrushchev did something to reverse this policy, but the Brezhnev years have been characterised by a definite return to differentiation. These developments are something that will be considered in other chapters.
Direct taxation has long since been abandoned as an instrument of income redistribution in any significant sense. Income tax reaches a maximum of 13 per cent on regular earnings, and promises have been made to abolish it altogether. Wealth is not taxed as such, and the maximum rate of death duties is only 10 per cent (Tur, p. 149). Many essential consumer goods carry high state duties, a practice which obviously bears heaviest on the poor. The so-called state transfer payments — though educational, health and social services — are of variable quality and only marginally, if at all, redistributive.
Privilege is further protected by a veil of secrecy. A comparison of information on elite life-styles which is normally accessible in ‘open’ societies, and that available in the Soviet Union, shows this plainly. In the USSR (a) no official figures are published on the national distribution of income, probably because they would reveal an unsocialistic degree of inequality, (b) words like ‘elite’, ‘rich’, are banned as a description of any social group, (c) hardly any data on higher salaries are printed for open distribution, (d) scarcely anything is printed on elite life-styles or material privileges, (e) there is no biographic directory similar in size or scope to a ‘Who's Who’, (f) there is no popular celebrity or image-building in the Western sense, the Soviet press being, anyway, unsuited to this and (g) there are no light-weight magazines or journals directed at an elite market. Pay, differentials and life-styles at the lower levels of Soviet reality are often discussed in print, so the explanation for these gaps must lie in a censor's prohibition of the topic (Matthews, 1974; Dewhirst and Farrell, 1973), confirmation of this can be found in samizdat sources.
HIGH INCOMES
We may now turn to the problem of delineating the social group which enjoyed most material privileges in the seventies.* I shall deal with three fairly obvious and closely related indices here, leaving some less obvious but equally essential ones to the next chapter. First, I shall seek a rather high income which is the minimum requirement for an elite life-style (given other important factors). Secondly, I shall list occupations which arguably allow people to achieve it. The third index — nomenclature listings — really needs to be described in detail, but the censorship ban is complete enough to prevent proper ana...
