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Gorbachev and the Workers: the Price of Reform

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Gorbachev and the Workers: the Price of Reform FINAL REPORT TO NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARCH TITLE: GORBACHEV AND THE WORKERS: THE PRICE OF REFORM AUTHOR: Walter D. Connor Boston University CONTRACTOR: Boston University PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Walter D. Connor COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER: 801-2 DATE: August, 1938 The work leading to this report was supported by funds provided by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research. The analysis and interpretations contained in the report are those of the author . Executive Summary GORBACHEV AND THE WORKERS: THE PRICE OF REFORM* Walter D. Connor 1. Gorbachev's commitment to radical reform—to stroika, glasnost', and change in elements of Soviet social and political life—emerges from a diagnosis of the sources of the Soviet system's economic ills. Unlike previous attempts at economic reform in the USSR, Gorbachev's pre- scriptions promise to cut deep into grass-roots life, as they confront the "human factor" in the economy. Those prescrip- tions are likely to be controversial. 2. It is the Soviet work ing class--blue-collar workers in industry and related branches, their families and depend- ents—who largely constitute the grass roots. Today, this represents a very different social/political reality from the small, but heavily hereditary proletariat of Lenin's time, or the large working mass created by Stalin-era industrializa- tion out of millions of peasants, new to the cities, to factory life and industrial discipline. Gorbachev's in- heritance, from the long-term developments of the Brezhnev years, is a large, heavily "hereditized" blue-collar work- force, accustomed to urban/industrial life, and possessed of *Presented as the final project report, the accompanying document is based on the final-chapter draft of a manuscript entitled The Accidental Proletariat; Workers and Politics in Gorbachev's Russia, under conditional contract to Princeton University Press. many of the characteristics of a potential "class" with which the regime must reckon: an "accidental proletariat." Just as the slowing of economic growth and social mobility contribut- ed to its formation, so rising levels of general education since World War II have made the working class more demand- ing, especially with respect to intrinsic and extrinsic rewards from work and work life. This has meant policy problems, whose resolution in the Brezhnev era produced a mixed record. 3. Brezhnev-era policy and developments produced, in the end, a working class marked by the following characteris- tics: relatively favored in wage policies, which saw blue- collar compensation "drifting" upward against managerial-professional pay secure in their jobs, by virtue of the labor-hunger of the economy, and state policy possessing the resources and experience to assert a significant amount of control over the pace and demands of work, even in the absence of participation in management or independent trade-union protection given to "militance" (strikes, stoppages) only on oc- casion, and often, at the plant level, finding their demands met (though repressive responses remained very much available to the authorities) ii 4. It was to these realities, among others, that Gorbachev's program of perestroika was designed to respond. Habitual elements of working-class behavior and the surround- ing environment were diagnosed as important sources of the stagnation in the economy. Thus, several elements of the strategy of restructuring represents attempts to alter long- familiar elements of working class life, in a way that may be anything but welcome. If perestroika ultimately is meant to provide a mix of stick and carrot, in the short run workers will see more of the former than the latter. Employment security. A central element in Gorbachev's perestroika is more efficient deployment of the labor force. This involves attacking the stockpiling of redundant man- power, especially in core production sectors of the economy. Thus, jobs in material production are projected to shrink by 15-20 million by the year 2000. At the same time, new additions to the labor force are to be directed primarily into the service sector. For the workers, energetic pursuit of these new policy lines promises dislocations of varying sorts, from transfer to an inconvenient shift to unfamiliar work in a new sector of the economy. Wage policy and preference. New wage policies and practices introduced in 1986-1987 provide smaller percentage increases for blue-collar production workers than for the engineers and managers who direct their work. The new iii wage/salary system also awards larger increments to many of the low-paid professionals outside the "productive" sphere who have long earned less than workers. The "symbolism" here is important in itself: beyond it, the new wage system ties workers' pay, especially the bonus components, more tightly to the "results." This promises frustration for many, benefits perhaps for some, and a greater differentiation of reward. Management and participation. Perestroika promises more autonomy and responsibility to the enterprise and its manager. It also endorses the election of managers and other supervisors by the workforce, and offers seemingly hefty participatory roles to new "councils of workers' collectives" in the plant. However, these are sufficiently hedged to indicate that any sort of workers' control — a departure from all prior Soviet practice—is not intended. Most likely, the intent is to provide another channel through which certain kinds of control can be maintained on more "independent" managers, rather than new power for workers. Price reform. Workers and their families make up the majority of the Soviet consumer population. As such, they face the prospect of a new price policy, to be introduced in the early 1990s, which should see rents and food prices, long controlled at the cost of massive state subsidies, rise significantly. Perceptions of eroding living standards have evoked worker protest in the past: price hikes on daily iv necessities, against the background of tougher labor dis- cipline and less certain wage packets, may prove stressful in the future. 5. Given the foregoing, workers on the whole should not be seen as a pro-perestroika constituency. Whether they will present an active obstacle to the policy depends on the interplay of numerous factors (see pp. 45-53). The capacity of workers to organize in a "Polish" scenario should not be overestimated, nor the coercive resources of the state underestimated. But the freer flow of information and discussion under glasnost' and the indeterminacy of contem- porary Soviet politics raise the possibility that working- class discontent may find more channels of expression than in the past. To the degree that such might seem to threaten order, workers' "welfare" may become the pretext, for complex politicking by lukewarm supporters or opponents of perestroi- ka . Under the guise of adjustments in a reformist course, warranted by violations of "legitimate" working-class expectations, Gorbachev's programs, and his power, could be gutted. In substance if not in slogans, radical reform would come to an end, in the name of defending core elements of the socialism the working class had achieved through its efforts. This is a possibility, not a certainty. Reducing its probability involves, for Gorbachev, the attainment of more, and better, results in areas that touch on the material lives and prospects of workers than have been seen thus far. The risk is that a combination of factors (leadership disagreement about how much reform is desirable, perceptions of the impact of various price-wage-employment measures on the workers, their morale and propensities to use their "negative control" against innovation) will "trim" reform measures to the point where what follows in the late 1990's will threaten to reproduce in somewhat altered form the Brezhnev-era economic and social malaise that bespoke the need for reform in the first place. This is not a simple case of deja vu: the workers, if their perceived or ex- pressed discontent with the "stick" part of reform blunts its use, will not necessarily be resigned to the absence of the "carrots" reform promises. This, perhaps, is the essence of the "new worker" Zaslavskaia and others describe. He/she is not as resourceless as the worker of the 1930s. While the resources may not be sufficient to alter the system, and are not likely to be deployed in any attempt to overthrow it, they can guarantee an ongoing and uncomfortable stalemate. In this context, social order will be preserved, but the political line to be taken from the top will become a more controversial matter. Leadership politics in the 1990s may witness a fight between alternatives farther apart than those most specialists perceived as testing leadership unity in the late 1980s. Gorbachev's perestroika, accompanied and to some degree driven by glasnost' and a broad demokratizatsiia in the political sphere, lies on one side. On the other, a vi harder, narrower line, attributed to Ligachev and some others, would back the economic thrust, but press to accom- plish its results without much loosening of political controls or expansion of public controversy. Neither may "work." It is possible that, in retrospect, either may seem benign in comparison with what the end of the century might bring in a USSR which fails to bring off the economic reform and the requisite social transformations which are the aim of perestroika. VII GORBACHEV AND THE WORKERS: THE PRICE OF REFORM In some other communist countries, give people an inch of reform, and they will grab a yard. Mr. Gorbachev is having to force the first inch into Russia's fist. The Economist. July 4, 1987 Our political culture is still inade- quate. Our standard of debate is inadequate; our ability to respect the point of view even of our friend and comrade even that is inadequate. M.S. Gorbachev, July 10, 1987 ...ours is a terribly inert system..." Tatiana Zaslavskaia, 1987 From the perspective of The Economist's leader-writer, Gorbachev faces a reluctant Russia, resistant to the reform medicine he prescribes for it.
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