Getting by without government: Everyday life in Russia

Abstract

The state of Russia today is a matter of inheritance rather than choice. An anthropological view of everyday life in Russia without a government is discussed.

We are making such a large turn that it is beyond anyone's dreams. No other people has experienced what has happened to us.(1)

--Mikhail Gorbachev

To describe Russia as a society in transition is politically convenient because it implies predictability: we know where Russia is heading, as well as where it is coming from. A destination model is the basis for policy prescriptions designed to achieve the goal of a modern market economy and a stable democracy. Transition then becomes a "mere" problem of ensuring that the necessary steps are taken to achieve the desired goal, just as classic Marxist-Leninist prescriptions addressed the "mere" problem of the transition to socialism.

By contrast, an origins model starts with Russia as it is today. The state of Russia today is a matter of inheritance not choice; it reflects the legacy of seventy years of communist efforts to build a new civilization by rejecting the market economy and ruthlessly suppressing the institutions of civil society. Some Russian experts argue that the legacy also includes antimarket and antidemocratic elements of czarism. From this perspective, the creation of a market economy and a stable democracy requires transformation, an unpredictable and sometimes erratic search for escape from dissatisfaction with the past and present through a process that Joseph Schumpeter described as "creative destruction."(2)

The next steps in Russia's journey from a turbulent present to an as yet undetermined destination must start from where Russia is today. The "de-statization" of a society that was once ruled by

party with a totalitarian vocation(3) is both satisfying and disturbing. Russians want to put the repression and waste of the past behind them, but it is difficult to live amidst the wreckage of the old system.

To understand how Russians are getting by we need to adopt a bottom-up perspective. This means paying less attention to leading individuals (Yeltsinology), institutions (Kremlinology), or abstract aggregates (GDPology) and paying more attention to everyday concerns of ordinary people, especially since the collapse of the old system has given Russians a chance to ignore politics. The party that claimed to know what ordinary people think no longer has the whip hand.

A SOCIETY UNDER STRESS NOT A MODERN SOCIETY

A modern society is not so much characterized by its material technology as by the sophistication of its social and institutional technology. It is a network of complex institutions that operate according to transparent and efficient cause and effect relationships. It is also a civil society in which the state governs through the impersonal rule of law and institutions can be organized independently of the state.

A PSEUDO OR SURREAL POINT OF ORIGIN

In an anthropological sense, the institutions of the Soviet regime could be described as functional since they produced benefits for social groups that thereby gained an interest in making them work. But societies can function in many different ways. Winiecki's analysis of The Distorted World of Soviet-Type Economies describes the Soviet system as "pseudo-modern" because of its reliance upon nonmarket mechanisms. Z, in "To the Stalin Mausoleum," describes the system as "surreal" because of the incongruous relationship between ideology and reality.(4) By contrast, other Soviet experts argued that in the 1970s and 1980s the functional imperatives of economic and social development were leading to the modernization of the Soviet system, making it more like the West. Gorbachev's reforms were often interpreted in this light.(5)

Although the Soviet system was complex, it was not modern; it operated in an opaque and inefficient way. Janos Kornai's The Socialist System describes the pathology of a command economy that relied upon bureaucratic methods rather than prices to allocate goods and services. Its opening chapters emphasize power and ideology as fundamental elements of that economy. The system could command, but it could not make efficient calculations or learn from its mistakes. Power was substituted for observation of cause and effect.(6) The czars had "Potemkinvilles," artificial villages, constructed to show the czar how the people were meant to be prospering. The Soviet Net Material Product was a system of national economic accounts constructed to impress Soviet leaders, Western economists, and the CIA with the alleged might of the Soviet economy.(7)

Soviet agriculture illustrates how "antimodern" the system was. The collectivization of agriculture under Stalin was a gigantic step in differentiating the Soviet system from a modern society. It substituted collective farms for peasant farming. Confronted with massive resistance, it relied upon terror and famine to achieve this objective. Notwithstanding enormously rich land, the new system was incapable of producing food efficiently. People learned not to rely upon the state's delivery of food to shops. The majority of urban residents have a small plot of land where they grow potatoes and some vegetables. Most of the people who grow food in Russia today are not farmers but factory or office workers or retirees. And they do not grow food for sale but for their own consumption.(8)

A modern society is a civil society operating under the rule of law. In the Soviet Union, however, the promise of benefits was complemented by terror. The thoroughness of Stalinist terror made what came after seem less repressive, but the Soviet system continued to be based upon doctrines of socialist legality that rejected fundamental assumptions of the Rechtsstaat, a necessary institution in a modern society. The bureaucracy, too, was not modern in the sense of being an impersonal system of imperatively coordinated hierarchical decision-making. The unrealistic nature of targets in the annual economic plan encouraged deceit and corruption in large organizations as well as in everyday life. Enterprise managers had to engage in "off the books" transactions to secure supplies. When the World Bank estimates that 20 to 30 percent of Soviet food production is wasted, this can be interpreted as evidence of the inefficiency of a pseudo-modern system or of its corruption, insofar as produce recorded as wasted was in fact expropriated by producers for unofficial sale, barter, or their own consumption.(9)

The institutions of Soviet society were controlled by the Communist Party. Unions, enterprise managers, university professors, and other leaders were part of a single pyramid of power, with the party-state at the top. Individuals did not have to believe everything the Party said, but they could not organize an alternative. There were tensions between the dictates of the Party and functional imperatives of institutions. The Soviet system of dual administration, with Party commissars shadowing technical and professional experts, was devised to prevent technical and professional norms from overriding what the Party wanted or was prepared to accept.

Whatever path is followed, the Russian journey toward modernity, begun less than three years ago, will be very different from those taken by the United States, Western Europe, or the modernizing societies of the Mediterranean. The words that Albert Hirschman wrote about Colombia, another society with many assets and also great problems, are apt for Russia too: the society can only move forward "as it is, in spite of what it is, and because of what it is."(10)

A SOCIETY UNDER STRESS

The stresses in Russia today are created by the fact that the existing complex of institutions does not function effectively, efficiently, transparently, or according to the rule of law. Weber's dictum, "Power is in the administration of everyday things,"(11) applies if one also recognizes its complement: Weakness is in the ineffective administration of everyday things.

The starting point for a society under stress is very different from that of a traditional society. Where a traditional society modernizes by expanding complex, rational, and civil institutions, a society under stress can only become modern by introducing new institutions amidst the duplicity, favoritism, and ineffectiveness that continue to serve many interests. Otherwise, behind the appearance of new institutions old practices will continue to frustrate modernization.

The system which was brought to maturity under Brezhnev and was the object of Gorbachev's reforms is not what it was. In some respects the process of "deconstruction" has been radical: the Soviet Union has dissolved, and the Communist Party too. And positive changes are occurring in the economy. For example, the material shortages that were common in the command economy are now disappearing. At the beginning of 1992 nine out of ten Russian households had one member spending at least an hour a day queuing for goods in short supply; today only one out of six spends this much time queuing. Now the problem is a shortage of money to buy all the goods available in the market. More than one-fifth of Russians are regularly employed in privatized state enterprises, new private enterprises, or are self-employed. There is even the prospect of new laws recognizing bankruptcy. Such changes substitute new stresses for old.

To understand transformation from the bottom-up perspective of ordinary Russians we must first understand the nature of socialization under communism. The party-state propagated official views about what people were expected to do and not do. It could not abolish all forms of private life, but it could and did prevent informal networks from organizing and expressing opinions publicly.(12) Unlike the German survivors of the Third Reich, whose frame of reference extended back to pre-Nazi Germany, the Russians, until 1989, knew only the Soviet system. Russians also differ from Central and East Europeans, for whom the period of communist rule was shorter, and resistance there was strengthened by the fact that communism was imposed by an alien force.(13)

In a geographical sense, the majority of Russians live remote from Europe. Whereas East Berliners could see the effects of the German Wirtschaftswunder by looking out their windows or at their television screens, a Muscovite could not. Nine-tenths of Russians do not live in Moscow; more than one-third live in Asian parts of the Russian Federation; and one-half live in villages or small industrial cities. Few Russians would idealize the "idiocy of rural life" or the despoliation through pollution of many urban centers. Three-quarters of Russians have never been outside the territories of the former Soviet Union, and nine-tenths have no friends or relatives living in the West. When asked if they think of themselves as Europeans, a majority say they do not.

Most surveys in Russia focus upon current events (views of ephemeral parties or political personalities), material or abstract phenomena outside the experience of most Russians (Do you prefer regular Coke or Diet Coke? A free market economy or a social democratic economy?), or destinations (Would you rather Russia became like Sweden or like America?).(14) Asking Russians how they are getting by is common courtesy as well as common sense. Even though (or because) Russians do not know much about business practices as they are taught at Harvard Business School, they do know coping strategies that are not taught there.

EVERYDAY LIFE IN RUSSIA TODAY

What does it mean when a Russian says that everything is normal? It means that things often do not work, and one must rely upon informal or even illegal connections to get things done. People are less concerned with getting rich than with avoiding dissatisfaction; satisfaction can occur at a lower (or different) standard of living than in a modern society.(15) The immediate concern of a person thrown into deep water is to keep afloat.

HOW DO RUSSIANS LIVE ON $100 A MONTH

The short answer is, they do not. Although foreign businessmen and journalists find plenty of takers of dollars in Moscow and St. Petersburg, most Russians live hundreds or thousands of miles from cosmopolitan cities. Only 5 percent say they sometimes have access to a hard currency. Any attempt to convert ruble incomes into American dollars is doubly misleading. First, prices in Russia do not yet reflect normal market rules of supply and demand, particularly for such necessities as housing and heat, and foreign exchange rates do not reflect purchasing power. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) calculates that the annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita in the Russian Federation was $492 at the official 1992 exchange rate, but almost seven times greater at an exchange rate adjusted for purchasing power parity.(16)

Macroeconomic statistics rely upon official Russian sources and are, therefore, ruble accounts. The World Bank, for example, reports that between 1990 and 1992 the official Russian economy contracted by 37 percent. A footnote adds the caution: "Data on the former USSR are subject to more than the usual margin of error."(17) Standard national accounts in forms used in market economies will only become accurate as Russia becomes more a market economy and less a nonmarket economy in which official statistics often exaggerate the value of much that is produced and take no account of production in unofficial shadow economies.(18) Economic reform has introduced the semblance of a price mechanism but the demoralization of state administration has also made it possible for those in the know to make large transactions "off the books." For example, the Institute of International Finance estimates that $40 billion of the $90 billion made on oil, gas, and other exports in the past three years has not been repatriated because of fear of confiscation through taxes or inflation.(19)

GETTING BY WITH A MULTIPLICITY OF ECONOMIES

It is a gross ecological fallacy to infer the conditions of individual Russians from aggregate data about the Russian economy.(20) Empirical research shows that nearly every Russian household is seeking to get by through a strategy of "defensive demodernization," relying upon a multiplicity of economies, official and unofficial, monetized and nonmonetized, legal, "alegal," or uncivil. This strategy was developed of necessity in the old command economy and will remain important until Russia nears its economic destination.(21)

Of the nine forms of economic activity shown in Table 1, only employment in the official economy and receipt of a social security pension are consistently recorded in official statistics. (Table 1 Omitted) Nearly every household also draws upon social economies, which are nonmonetized and therefore outside official records. The only requirement to enter a social economy is the willingness to lend a hand. Uncivil economies, monetized but illegal, and therefore also off the books, involve almost half of Russian households. The limited proportion of people working in the cash-in-hand second economies is not a reflection of effective law enforcement but rather a reflection of the problem of effective demand: not many Russians are able to pay workers with cash in hand.

Just as investors in market economies have a diversified portfolio of assets, so Russian households combine their multiple activities into four different portfolios according to family circumstances:(22)

Defensive (43 percent). The destabilization of money income through inflation and the introduction of market prices reinforces a lesson learned from the command economy: money is not everything. Households with a defensive portfolio combine a money income from the official economy or pension with resources from

nonmonetized social economy.

Enterprising (23 percent). Some individuals are able to deal with the inadequacies of the official economy by having two types of cash income: one from a recognized job and another from an uncivil economy. Such a portfolio is rational for the individual able to earn extra cash, but it is counterproductive for modernization since enterprising ways of making money are usually in "fly by night" activities that cannot be expanded into modern enterprises.

Vulnerable (22 percent). Only one-quarter of Russian households today say that they rely solely upon official sources of income. Vulnerable people are not necessarily poor, and may have done well under the old regime. Those who relied solely upon official resources are most vulnerable to the effects of transformation, for they have neither a second job producing additional cash income nor a garden plot producing food.

Marginal (12 percent). Paradoxically, households in which people say that money income is unimportant are less at risk from transformation. Because they subsist on the fringes of society, they do not rely upon any official or uncivil economy. Their standard of living is likely to be low, but their peripheral position makes it unlikely for decisions in Moscow to make it worse.

When Russians are asked the straightforward question, "Do you earn enough to meet your everyday needs?," two-thirds or more say they do not. As the transformation has progressed, it has become harder for people to earn enough from one job to make ends meet. At the start of economic reform in January 1992, 28 percent of Russians said their first job provided them with enough to cope; it was 3 percent higher in the summer of 1993. But by April 1994, only 13 percent said they earned enough from one job to get by.

Taken at face value, these numbers imply that 87 percent of Russians are now threatened with poverty. In fact, more than four-fifths of Russians are getting by(23) today in spite of low wages by relying upon their portfolio of economic activities. After taking into account all their different activities, only 18 percent report that they still have difficulty getting by.

Since the start of the transformation process in 1992, the percentage of Russians able to get by with one job has fallen by 15 percent, but the proportion able to get by with a portfolio of activities has increased by 26 percent. Altogether, the proportion of Russians able to get by is virtually the same as in such market economies as Great Britain or Austria. The difference is that in a market economy nearly everybody who copes does so because of regular employment, whereas in Russia a majority do so because of unofficial resources.

LOSERS FROM TRANSFORMATION

"There is no such thing as a free economic transformation" might be the contemporary equivalent of Lenin's revolutionary dictum about not being able to make an omelet without breaking eggs. To believe otherwise is to repeat the communists' mistake of believing that Russians can live in Utopia. In the short run, the losers from transformation will likely outnumber the winners. Hence, it is necessary to consider two questions: How many Russians are in dire need? Are their discomforts temporary or persisting?

Russians are not destitute in the absolute sense. Although a majority of Russians report that their living standard has fallen in the past five years, one-quarter of households have cars and three-quarters have a color television set. Living standards are not at American or Swedish levels, but they can reasonably be compared with those of Western Europe in the 1960s and are higher than those in some Mediterranean countries at the time they joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) or the European Community (EC).(24)

An increase in unemployment is a necessary condition of economic transformation. The expression of fears about unemployment becoming "too high" implies that there is such a thing as the right amount of unemployment. If so, what is it? The target level of unemployment should be measured in units of time rather than as a percentage of the labor force. If the average duration of unemployment is eight weeks, then six different persons could be unemployed in the process of adding one "person-unit" to the annual level of unemployment. If the annual level of unemployment were 5 percent and the average duration eight weeks, then as much as one-third of the labor force could experience short-term unemployment during the year. If unemployment were 10 percent, then nearly two-thirds of the labor force could experience unemployment at some time during the year.(25)

From a Rawlsian perspective,(26) the more widely a given annual level of unemployment is spread, the fairer its distribution. As the number of people experiencing unemployment increases to become a majority of the labor force, almost everyone can conceive of losing a job. Widespread but temporary unemployment is also desirable from an economic perspective, for labor mobility is a necessary condition for the efficient operation of a market economy, and this is especially so in a labor market that has been as stagnant as Russia's.

Unemployment in Russia today is like a lock on a river, with a steady flow of people into the ranks of the unemployed and a steady outflow. If a factory announces one thousand job losses, the people who lose their jobs do not remain unemployed forever, or even for the rest of the year. Three-quarters of Russians who have been unemployed at some time in the past year are now back at work. Since the basic economic unit in Russia is the household, the loss of a job does not mean that an individual is without any resources. The majority experiencing unemployment live in households in which at least one other person is employed. Moreover, the flow of resources from a multiplicity of economies is not stopped by the temporary loss of a regular job. Thus, the effect of unemployment upon a household's economy is likely to be temporary and marginal.

Only 1 percent of Russians say they are constantly without food or heat, essentials for survival. Only 4 percent say they are constantly without medical treatment, and 7 percent say they are in need of clothing. The proportion of Russians constantly without essentials is as low as in the United States.

Belt tightening is one strategy for adapting to stress; stretching goods to make them last longer is another. The strategies that Russians are using to get by are rational ones. They have become proficient in learning how to get by in a society under stress.

FREEDOM FROM THE STATE, THE FIRST FREEDOM

Russians were able to get by under the old regime, but doing so was a constant struggle. To protect themselves against claims of the state, many Russians practiced "defensive alienation." Apathetic conformity was the mask shown to authorities.

FREEDOM FROM THE STATE

The collapse of the communist system has done far more to advance freedom than to advance the market. The ultimate test of freedom is not what the statute books say but what individuals feel they can do without sanctions by the state. The New Russia Barometer asked Russians to compare the new regime and the communist regime in terms of a host of everyday activities that constitute the essence of a free society. For each activity, people were asked to say whether things were better, much the same, or worse under the new regime. Two-thirds or more feel freer today to say what they think, to join any organization they wish, or to decide for themselves what religion they will practice. Only a small percentage say conditions are worse.

In a civil society, an individual should feel free to participate in organizations of his or her choice. To Russians, this also means being free not to participate in politics, that is, not having to be a Communist Party member in order to get a job, a promotion, or a better house. Sixty-two percent feel freer now to decide for themselves whether or not to take an interest in politics.

The achievement of freedoms taken for granted in a civil society is the biggest benefit that Russians have received as a result of the collapse of the old system. This is not the only goal of political activity, but as Isaiah Berlin has emphasized, viewed against past history, freedom from the state is a distinctive and real achievement.(27) In Russia freedom has not come about, as in England, by the gradual evolution of a system of laws and norms of behavior. Nor has it come about, as in the American south, through a generation of successful court cases. It has come about through the demoralization and collapse of the state's institutions of repression.

DEMOCRACY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT: THE LEGACY OF DISTRUST

Democracies can accommodate distrust in some parties and individuals as long as others are trusted. This is not the case in Russia today, where the communist regime has left a legacy of distrust. A majority of Russians distrust political parties, Parliament, President Yeltsin, local government, trade unions, the police, television, the KGB, and the courts. The Army is trusted by half of Russians, but only one-sixth are generally predisposed to trust institutions of representative government.(28)

An election produces a representative government if those elected are trusted representatives of those who voted for them. The current Russian government is democratically elected but distrusted. Distrust of both the Parliament and the President is extremely high, and more than three-quarters of Russians do not identify with any political party.

An optimist might describe the Russian electorate as consisting of floating voters who, lacking a stable party preference, split their ticket. But describing the weak partisanship of Russians in terms used in the United States misreads the context. Russians are not floating voters but fugitive voters, fleeing from the party that has sought to dominate their lives and unwilling to put their trust in any party seeking power.

The December 1993 election offered Russians the opportunity to vote for or against a new Constitution. Up to a point the Constitution can be described as presidentialist in the manner of the French Fifth Republic. However, the French Constitution requires that if the President proclaims an emergency allowing rule by decree, Parliament is automatically called to session and cannot be dismissed as long as emergency rule continues. This prudential check on dictatorship does not appear in the new Russian Constitution.

Election returns reported that a majority of the eligible electorate voted and a majority of voters endorsed the Constitution.(29) But an overwhelming majority of Russians do not believe that the document is adequate to the nation's needs. Only one-sixth think that the new Constitution can guarantee the territorial unity of Russia or ensure lawful government within the country. Three-fifths think that a future dispute between the President and the Parliament is likely to be resolved by force, and only 8 percent feel confident that force will not be used (see Table 4).(Table 4 Omitted)

The rule of law is also declining in the streets. Russian-style mafiosi have filled vacuums left by the state's loss of power, organizing monopolies in local markets or turning to extortion to collect money at gunpoint from those who have profited from the market. A report by Morgan Stanley estimates that about three-quarters of commercial banks and privatized enterprises are paying substantial sums to organized crime, equivalent to as much as half their profits. The murder rate in Moscow is now ten times higher than that in the most violent West European city and as high as in New York.(30)

Distrust of parties and disregard for constitutional niceties detract from Russia's claims of legitimacy. Corruption in the ministries and in the market place, often backed up with the threat of force, and crime in the streets show there is no legitimate monopoly of force, a necessary element of being a modern state in the Weberian sense. The chief difficulty in negotiating with Russia today is not the existence of conflicting interests but the incapacity of Russians to fulfill their obligations.

WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?

In the raw language of Marxism, Russians need to address only two questions: Who is to blame? What is to be done?(31)

WHO IS TO BLAME?

When Russians are asked "Who is to blame for Russia's economic problems?," they have no difficulty in pointing the finger, and do so in a not unrealistic way (see Table 5).(Table 5 Omitted) Two-thirds mention the breakup of the Soviet Union, a fundamental point that is often overlooked. It forced a highly integrated economy to operate across fifteen different countries with as many currencies or noncurrencies. Although future historians are likely to lay the blame for most of Russia's problems in the 1990s on communist mistakes in the preceding decades, less than half of Russians see their former leaders as the cause of the current problems. Just under half think that they themselves are to blame. Most blame is heaped on those who have held high offices in the post-Gorbachev era. A majority of Russians blame the government generally, promoters of reform, President Yeltsin, Gaidar, and local government, and two-fifths blame the current Parliament as well. The Mafia is also frequently cited as a cause of difficulties; indirectly, this implicates the government because of its inability to maintain law and order.

Given the anxieties induced by the shocks of transformation, the Russians could easily have projected blame onto remote symbols of power. In fact, only one-fifth blame foreign governments or capitalists, and even fewer blame the workers. In view of the history of anti-Semitism in Russia and the virulence of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, it is noteworthy that only 8 percent blame the Jews.

HOW IS RUSSIA TO BE GOVERNED?

When Russians are asked to rate their current system of government and to rate the old communist regime, the verdict is mixed: 36 percent give the present regime a positive rating and 51 percent give the communist regime a positive rating. This is a very different pattern than that found elsewhere in postcommunist Europe. From Tallinn and Bucharest to Prague and East Berlin, the majority of Central and Eastern Europeans prefer their new regimes.(32)

When individual views of the past and present are combined, Russians appear even more divided. The largest group (36 percent) are reactionaries, having a positive view of the old communist regime and a negative view of the present system. The second largest group (28 percent) are skeptics, disliking both the old and the new regimes. A total of 21 percent are democrats, preferring the new regime. In view of the alleged submissiveness of Russians, it is noteworthy that only 8 percent are indiscriminate "da-sayers," approving of both the old and the new regimes.

A return to the past is not a realistic political platform. Too much has happened to return to the superficial order and stagnation of the Brezhnev era. When people are asked about a series of alternatives to the present system, only 23 percent say that they would welcome a restoration of the communist regime, and even fewer, 9 percent? endorse the alternative of the return of a czar.

There are three realistic alternatives to the present system of Russian government: military rule, rule by a strong man, or government by technocratic experts. In many troubled areas of the world, including Eastern Europe between the wars, the military has taken over amidst disorder or has destabilized an elected government. Even though the Army is more trusted than any other Soviet institution, it is not trusted to take charge of the country; only 11 percent of Russians would prefer the Army to rule in place of the present regime. Given that the Soviet Army was designed to fight abroad, its leaders probably share the popular aversion to the Army taking responsibility for managing the economy or fighting crime in the streets.

Russians are divided over the statement, "We do not need a Parliament and elections but a strong leader who can make decisions and put them into effect fast." Forty-three percent agree with the statement, 40 percent disagree, and the remainder neither agree nor disagree. The percentage endorsing a strong, effective leader is much higher than the percentage saying they would vote for President Yeltsin or Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In other words, Russians are looking for a "white knight" who has not yet appeared on their political horizon. They regard the alternatives that they know as ineffective and untrustworthy.

Fifty-four percent of Russians endorse the statement, "Experts, not the Parliament and government, should make the most important decisions about the economy."(33) This does not contradict statements blaming promoters of reforms for the present economic difficulties (see Table 5).(Table 5 Omitted Rather, it suggests that the problem of reformers was not a lack of popularity but a lack of effectiveness--inflation followed price liberalization and the output and cash flows of large enterprises are contracting. What is lacking in Russia today is not the right personality but policies that will work not only within the framework of theoretical models that exogenize all the difficulties, but also in the peculiar historical context of a society under the stress of transformation.(34)

Lacking a Churchill and given massive popular resistance to another Stalin, what will become of Russian government? Pluralist politics are likely to continue because the present fragmentation of power serves many interests. Former Party bosses in the provinces and managers, entrepreneurs, and kleptocrats in former state enterprises have an interest in preventing the government from becoming strong enough to take away what they have carved out for themselves in the past few years. A broken-backed regime offering freedom, disorder, and ineffective government is not a noble goal, but in a society under stress it may be preferred as a lesser evil.

HOW LONG WILL RUSSIANS WAIT?

The communist system cannot be unbuilt in a day. But will people wait? The frustration-aggression hypothesis predicts that if changes in society raise popular expectations and if these expectations are not met, then the result will be aggressive behavior, whether Calculated or irrational.(35) Global telecommunications are now showing Russians a picture of Western living standards that had previously been unseen by them. How long do Russians expect it to take to raise their living standards to levels that they can see each evening on television?

Russians remain realists. When asked how soon it will be before they reach a standard of living with which they are content, only 2 percent say they are already content. Most are unsure (see Table 6).(Table 6 Omitted) Such an answer is far more honest than a prediction that economic contentment can be achieved in a few years if the appropriate macroeconomic policies are followed. It is also more honest than saying contentment can never be achieved. Paradoxically, because the deterioration in the official economy has created negative expectations, people will not be surprised if the official economy turns worse. A "revolution of falling expectations" also implies that even the slightest upturn, if sustained, could create disproportionate enthusiasm.

Russian expectations about government are also low. Past experience and the absence of an effective alternative justify these low expectations. This need not disrupt everyday life, however, for Russians learned long ago how to get by without, or in spite of, government. Low expectations are not grounds for optimism, but they at least prevent frustration, and the acts of aggression that may follow.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am indebted to Stephen L. White of Glasgow University for comments on the first draft, and to Evgeny Tikhomirov for technical assistance. This paper is part of a British ESRC-funded project on Social Welfare and Individual Enterprise in Post-Communist Societies (Y 309 25 3047). The 1994 New Russia Barometer survey cited herein was organized by the Paul Lazarsfeld Society, Vienna.

ENDNOTES

(1)Mikhail Gorbachev, speech at Khabarovsk, 15 April 1991.

(2)Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, 4th ed. (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1952), chap. 7. Cf. Richard Rose, "Escaping From Absolute Dissatisfaction: A Trial-and-Error Model of Change in Eastern Europe," Journal of Theoretical Politics 4 (4) (1992): 371-93.

(3)The Communist Party may not have been perfectly totalitarian but then a market economy is not a perfect market. The concept of totalitarianism remains useful for distinguishing the old Soviet regime from authoritarian regimes. See Juan J. Linz, "Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes," in Fred I. Greenstein and Nelson. W. Polsby, eds., Handbook of Political Science, vol. 3 (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1975), 175-412.

(4)Z, "To the Stalin Mausoleum," Daedalus 119 (1) (Winter 1990): 298ff; Jan Winiecki, The Distorted World of Soviet-Type Economies (New York: Routledge, 1988).

(5)For reviews of the Soviet system that debate the relevance of modernization, see Frederic Fleron Jr. and Erik P. Hoffmann, eds., Post-Communist Studies and Political Science: Methodology and Empirical Theory in Sociology (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993); and Owen Harries, ed., "The Strange Death of Soviet Communism: An Autopsy," The National Interest 31 (Spring 1993).

(6)See Janos Kornai, The Socialist System (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), especially pt. one, and the very relevant passages in Karl W. Deutsch, The Nerves of Government (New York: Free Press, 1963), 105ff.

(7)See Anders Aslund, "How Small is the Soviet National Economy?," in Henry S. Rowen and Charles Wolf Jr., eds., The Impoverished Superpower: Perestroika and the Soviet Military Burden (San Francisco, Calif.: ICS Press, 1990), 13-61.

(8)Cf. Richard Rose and Evgeny Tikhomirov, "Who Grows Food in Russia and Eastern Europe?," Post-Soviet Geography 34 (2) (1993): 111-26; Frederick L. Pryor, The Red and the Green: The Rise and Fall of Collectivized Agriculture in Marxist Regimes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992).

(9)Cf. World Bank Studies of Economies in Transformation Paper Number 1, Food and Agricultural Policy Reforms in the Former USSR (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1992).

(10)Albert Hirschman, Journeys Toward Progress: Studies of Economic Policy-Making in Latin America (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1963).

(11)Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 5th ed. (Tuebingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1972), 126.

(12)For an account of the classic system, see Stephen White, "Propagating Communist Values in the USSR," Problems of Communism 34 (6) (1985): 1-17. Cf. Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the Soviet People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

(13)For survey evidence showing under what circumstances and to what extent non-Russians respond differently than Russians to transformation, see the report of the Ten-Nation New Democracies Barometer of the Paul Lazarsfeld Society in Richard Rose and Christian Haerpfer, "Mass Response to Transformation in Post-Communist Societies," Europe-Asia Studies (formerly, Soviet Studies) 46 (1) (1994): 3-28.

(14)This article draws upon data from the New Russia Barometer (NRB), an annual nationwide sample survey of Russians developed by the Centre for the Study of Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, as part of a program to monitor mass response to the transformation of fifteen postcommunist societies. Unless otherwise noted, all survey data reported here come from New Russia Barometer III, a nationally representative survey in March-April 1994 of 3,535 Russians. The survey was organized by the Paul Lazarsfeld Society, Vienna. For full details of the three NRB surveys, see Irina Boeva and Viachyslav Shironin, Russians Between State and Market: The Generations Compared, Studies in Public Policy no. 205 (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 1992); Richard Rose, Irina Boeva, and Viachyslav Shironin, How Russians are Coping with Transition: New Russia Barometer II, Studies in Public Policy no. 216 (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 1993); and Richard Rose and Christian Haerpfer, New Russia Barometer III: The Results, Studies in Public Policy no. 228 (Glasgow: University of Strathclyde, 1993, 1994).

(15)Simon's ideas of satisfaction and avoiding dissatisfaction are more relevant in Russia today than are ideas of profit maximization or optimization. See Herbert A. Simon, "Rationality as Process and as Product of Thought," American Economic Review 68 (2) (1978): 1-16.

(16)International Monetary Fund, IMF Economic Reviews 8: Russian Federation (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1993), 85.

(17)World Bank, Historically Planned Economies: A Guide to the Data, 1993 ed. (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1993), 32.

(18)See Tim Heleniak and Albert Motivans, "A Note on Glasnost and the Soviet Statistical System," Soviet Studies 43 (3) (1991): 473-90; Michael Ellman and Vladimir Kontorovich, eds., The Disintegration of the Soviet Economic System (London: Routledge, 1992).

(19)Anthony Robinson, "Quiet Revolution Pays Dividends for EBRD," Financial Times, 19 April 1994.

(20)For a discussion of the appropriate uses of economic statistics in postcommunist societies, see the papers by Janos Arvay and Bruno Dallago and the comment by Richard Rose in Robert Holzman, Janos Gacs, and Georg Winckler, eds., Measuring Output Decline in Eastern Europe (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer, forthcoming).

(21)For classic analyses of multiple economies in the old regime, see Gregory Grossman, "Informal Personal Incomes and Outlays of the Soviet Urban Population," in Alejandro Portes, Manuel Castells, and Lauren A. Benton, eds., The Informal Economy (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 150-70, and Aaron Katsenelinboigen, Studies in Soviet Economic Planning (White Plains, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1978).

(22)After being interviewed in detail about involvement in each of the nine economies described in Table I, each respondent was handed a card listing all the economies and asked to identify the two most important ones. The answers given are the basis for assignment to different portfolios. For more details see Richard Rose, "Contradictions Between Micro-and Macro-Economic Goals in Post-Communist Societies," Europe-Asia Studies 45 (3) (1993): 419- 44.

(23)Operationally, "getting by" is defined as the capacity of people to sustain themselves indefinitely without borrowing money or spending savings. Individuals are classified as getting by in Table 2 if they report earning enough from their first job to meet their needs or if in the past year they have not needed to borrow money or spend their savings, activities that cannot continue indefinitely.

(24)See the evidence of social indicators marshaled in "Comparing Welfare Across Time and Space," Welfare in a Civil Society, Annex II (Vienna: European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, 1993).

(25)To estimate the maximum number who could be unemployed during the year, divide fifty-two weeks by the average duration of unemployment, eight weeks, and multiply this quotient, 6.5, by the annual average of unemployment. At 5 percent annual unemployment, as much as 32.5 percent could be unemployed for eight weeks at some point in the year, and at 10 percent annual unemployment, up to 65 percent.

(26)John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).

(27)See Isaiah Berlin, "Two Concepts of Liberty," in Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).

(28)For details, see Richard Rose, "Distrust as an Obstacle to the Civil Society," Journal of Democracy 5 (3) (1994).

(29)Whether these figures are accurate is a matter of dispute. A Kremlin-appointed commission has concluded that up to 9 million votes were falsified in order to create a turnout high enough to meet legal requirements for enactment of the Constitution, and that the Zhirinovsky vote was also padded. See John Lloyd, "Massive Electoral Fraud Alleged in Russia," Financial Times, 6 May 1994.

(30)See The Guardian, 29 April 1994.

(31)Lustration is hardly an issue in the ur-communist state, in which 39 percent of respondents in NRB III said that they or a member of their family had been a member of the Communist Party. Consequently, Russians are spared a third question that has caused concern in other postcommunist countries: What is to be done with those who are to blame?

(32)See Rose and Haerpfer, "Mass Response to Transformation in Post-Communist Societies," 23.

(33)In the May 1994 election, the Hungarian Socialist Party successfully campaigned with the slogan, "Let the experts govern."

(34)On the problematic nature of "technopol" rule see the comments by John Williamson, Robert Bates, and John Toye in John Williamson, ed., The Political Economy of Reform (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1994), 9-48.

(35)See the classic work of Ted Robert Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).

Richard Rose is Director of the Centre for the Study of Policy at the University of Strathclyde and international scientific advisor of the Paul Lazarsfeld Society, Vienna.