['After Andro No-one knows what the choice of…]

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'After Andro No-one knows what the choice of Konstantin Chernenko to succeed I new leadership decides to follow a new course, that will be decider workers and peasants of the USSR will find out only when the polic The political regime serves, and is underpinned by, economic ineq in this survey come mostly from the book 'Modern Soviet Society' b 1983), with some supplementing from David Lane's Politics and So edition, 1978). These are both sober academic studies, very toleral established order in the USSR, and basing themselves largely on official nin, Trotsky, and the struggle they stood for (anti-clockwise): orkers demolisk Stalin's statue, Hungary 1956; the first workers' ite is established, Russia 1917; East German workers rise up 'ainst Stalinism, 1953; and another picture from Hungary 1956.

A PRECISE picture of ineq af innamnlite, seems difficult to establish.

democracy still existed, a ma:

decided. Differentials quickly but it was not until the consc revolution in the 1930s that in Since the mid-'50s inequality seems to have decreased again. somewhat. but a Marshal of the USSR receives 28 times the income of a worker on the minimum wage.

Official figures show relatively small differentials between managers and workers in the factories, and Lane stresses that maximum differentials between the very highest incomes and the very lowest are smaller than in the West.

The Russian oppositionist Roy Medvedev, however, reckons that 'in some enterprises, pay differentials between senior executives and workers may vary from one to ten, ... sometimes even one to fifty .. the differences may be as high as one to one hundred if practical advantages, medical care and hos¡Ditals are taken into account."

In the USSR, Kerblay reckons, the top 10% averages ten times the income of the poorest 10%; in the UK, eight times and in West Germany, fifteen times.

Inequality

• Inequalities of wealth are obviously less in the USSR because the major means of production are not privately owned; but inequalities of income are probably similar to those in the West.

Kerblay further notes: "among the different elements of Soviet lifestyle, income counts less than access to goods... It matters little now high or low rents are it one does not have an apartment of one's own ... various shops and dressmakers in the capital are reserved for a few privileged customers ... Dignitaries have their own chauffeur, and even domestic staff.

"To this list of privileges must be added official living accommodation, whose size and comfort depend on rank; priority tickets for entertainment and travel; special waiting rooms in stations special showings of films to which the public is not admitted; dining-rooms reserved for notables in restaurants ... uality of incomes in the USSR in tha T'COD In 1919, when working class ximum differential of 1.75:1 was slipped beyond that maximum, ›lidation of the Stalinist counterequality increased massively.

direct deliveries to the home; and a pass to jump queues."

In everyday life, especially in rural society, other "imponderable distinctions" belong to "the new notables" -"possession of a passport permitting travel without special permission, the way of dress •.. and the fact of being addressed by one's patronymic" (i.e. as 'Ivan Ivanovich' rather than 'Ivanov' — an equivalent to calling people 'sir' in the West).

The elite perpetuates itself to a large degree. 72% of the children of top bureaucrats become top bureaucrats or middle-rank managers or technicians. 73% of the children of unskilled workers become manual workers.

The chance of a child of a manual worker becoming a senior manager in the USSR is about 2% — around the same as in France, and five times less than in the USA.

With inherited wealth not a major factor, inequality in education is the main way in which the elite perpetuates itself. In 1975-6, 49% of the students of Moscow University were classified as from the intelligentsia.

Secondary school fees were abolished in 1956 (after being introduced in 1940), and the total numbers in higher education are high by Western standards. But selection for higher education is sharply competitive; 'political' criteria are openly stated as being part of the selection; and students' grants cover at most two-thirds of their living costs.

Workers' living standards have increased considerably since the Stalin era. But economic growth since World War 2 has been slower and slower.

Industrial output increased 16% per year between 1928 and 1940. In 1951-55 it increased at 10% per year, according to Western estimates; in 1961-65, at 7% per year; and in 1971-75, 6%.

Total output increased at 4½% per year in 1975-9 by USSR estimates (3% by US estimates) — and onlu 3% ner year in 1980-2.

Urban housing, according to Kerblay, has improved a lot since the 1960s — when conditions were very bad. In 1964, above. in Leningrad. 57% of work; class families lived in a sin, room, 21% in two rooms. In Novosibirsk in 1965, o 60% of workers who recently moved into the r had to sublet a single room even a "corner' of a room. Recent statistics are scan but it seems that even toc some 40% of unskilled wo ers' families live in acco modation where they have share washing and cooki facilities. For young work the alternative is facts hostels: "some 70% of ent prises run such hostels, uns the supervision of a 'Comm: dant' Meanwhile dissidents rep "property developments il result in the expulsion ordinary citizens from t centre of Moscow in order build luxury housing for carefully selected elite." The USSR has more doct in proportion to populati than any other country in t world; but infant mortal remains at the level of Port gal or the Caribbean, ratt: than of wealthier weste societies, and there are pi scription charges.

Only 15 days holiday a ye are granted to 44% of t citizens, while manage average 24 days.

Women

One of the major claims made for the USSR by the friends of its regime i s that it gives equality to wome :n. 82%, of women of working age are ing gle ver lad ity i Or imto ing ers ory erJer anort nat of the to Drs ion he ity tuler irn sar he erS Vladimir Klebanov is an Ukrainian miner, and a representative of 'the other USSR' - the suppressed and stifled working class.

In 1978 he, with others, tried to form a Solidarnosc-type trade union in the USSR. Within nine days Klebanov was arrested. He had already suffered sackings and spells in prison and in psychiatric hospital over the previous 20 years.

He is now, like many other oppositionists, held in a psychiatric hospital.

Nothing has been heard of him since 1980.

employed, and sometimes in jobs which in the West are male dominated. 74% of doctors, for example, are women.

Since the 1950s the Stalinist laws against abortion and divorce have been repealed.

Rut women are still lowerpaid than men. A survey in one town showed that 66% of women were in jobs classitied as comparatively unskilled, but only 19% of men. Only 16% of factory directors and chief engineers are women.

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