by John Hackett
By the 1970s hope had long given way to cynicism. A continuous process of petrification seemed to have overcome the bureaucratic machine, producing economic policies and political practice as dogmatic as they were inflexible. The general atmosphere had become one of stagnation. Workers, denied any real incentive, took little interest in their work. Virtues and abilities went unrecognized and certainly, unless they were applied to meeting the state's requirements, earned no promotion. Advancement depended upon conformity. Ideology penetrated the structure of the machine at every level but those who operated it had long since shed any adherence to truly socialist principles. The Party never comprised more than 10 per cent of the population of the Soviet Union and probably not one Party member in ten in 1970 still believed in communism. The process of candidacy for membership to the Party, in which the candidate had to satisfy one Party committee after another of his devotion to the CPSU, and give proof of it, became an elaborate exercise in falsehood.
The cumulative effect of all this on the Soviet economy was by the mid-1970s disastrous. Central planning imposed restrictions on local initiative in situations ill understood at the controlling centre. Local needs, in materials, equipment, spare parts, even roads, were either not known or disregarded. People in the localities made their own arrangements for some fictitious show of meeting planned targets.
The targets, constantly derided by the populace, always rose and were almost never met. Workers anxious to meet them, where any did, faced only the hostility of workmates. Low salaries and shortages stimulated theft. Factories and shops, if unwillingly, fed the black market, under which 30 per cent of the whole of the country's economy by 1983 was operating.
Peasants cultivated their own plots for subsistence, selling any surplus on the black market for the cash they needed. In 1981 it was calculated that these plots — 3 per cent of the totality of arable land — were producing half of all the agricultural output. State investment in the early 1980s to enable peasants to earn more money only resulted in their producing from the land what they themselves needed for their own purposes. Parts of the Soviet Union were in fact, in the early 1980s, approaching starvation. Only a loosening of control could correct this tendency but that would lead, as it had in Hungary, in the direction of a free market economy, which was a trend the system could not tolerate.
By 1985 the growth rate of GNP in the USSR was negative, with a positive growth rate in the population, by far the greater part of the increase being in non-Russian peoples. Pauperization was now a great and growing menace. Inflation, already high and always rising, could no longer be concealed by official manipulation. Within the Soviet Union more and more people were turning to religion, often in forms the state found sufficiently hostile to proscribe. The weaknesses built into the system from the start were beginning to destroy it.
The events of the August war in 1985 worked in two ways to bring matters to a head. The political leadership had long been discredited by developments in Poland. It was the first time a governing European Communist Party had been shown to be unable to cope with dissidence and ideological opposition. Moscow was faced with the choice between direct intervention by Red Army troops and the takeover of Polish security by the Soviet KGB, or recourse to Polish military government. The latter, chosen through old men's inertia rather than conscious decision, put off for a time the international outcry which Soviet military action would have caused, and partially evaded Soviet responsibility for Poland's debt. But it signalled the abdication of the Communist Party of Poland from the control of political life.
The enormity of this breach of ideology and tradition was not everywhere fully recognized in the West, which was accustomed to military takeovers in Latin America and the Middle East, and tended to regard them as a recurrent and unsurprising reaction by the forces of order faced with administrative or parliamentary chaos. But to doctrinal communists the implications were of a different order. The Party, the fountain-head of doctrine and decision, the network which made a certain rough and ready sense in a hopelessly over-centralized bureaucracy, had shown itself powerless, divided and incapable of decision. Solidarity may have been temporarily overcome in Poland, but in its downfall the movement won a famous victory by demonstrating that the Communist Party in a communist state was no longer the all-powerful guardian of the state's authority.
The shock waves of this ideological explosion flowed back into the Soviet Union, exposing even the CPSU to doubt, and seeming to enhance the potential of the Soviet military leadership, which it appeared might one day have to play a similar role to that of Poland. So it was doubly traumatic to those inside the hierarchies when the check to the Soviet advance in Europe demonstrated that the military leadership had feet of clay. They were seen to have made faulty assessments, to have failed to adapt to changing tactical circumstances, and to have based their plans on an operational doctrine geared exclusively to rapid and complete success. When this success was not entirely forthcoming, the military machine was stalled, and the only alternative was nothing more brilliant than a futile nuclear demonstration which could not hope to restore the lost momentum of the Soviet armed forces.
These reflections went far to explain the demoralization of the nerve centre of the Soviet apparatus which made it ripe for Duglenko's takeover. The popular disenchantment had simpler causes, the same as those of many earlier revolutions: empty bellies on one side of the privilege line and full ones on the other. The demands of the war on civil transport had exceeded plans and expectations. The peasants were hoarding stocks of food, as if aware of impending catastrophe, rather than taking it for sale to the towns. The great ones of the regime still found enough in their special shops, but for the man and woman in the street too little food was at last too much for their patience, and the acute shortages in many towns gave rise to riots and disorder which overwhelmed the security militia.
The food riots, which began in Moscow, soon spread to most major towns and cities. For a first-hand view of them in their earliest stages we turn to a local source. The following piece appeared in Russkaya MM in Paris in November 1985, filed by a special correspondent in Moscow.
“A figure, matronly but none the less imperious, appeared in the shop doorway. There were gold rings on her thick fingers.
“The shop will not be opening today,” she announced. “We have nothing in stock — no bread, no sausage — nothing. So just go away.”
A groan of disappointment rose out of the long queue which already stretched the length of several blocks from the shop door.
“But we've been waiting all night!”
“What will our children eat?”
After a few moments individual shouts began to merge into a continuous murmur of indignation. Nevertheless, the crowd's rage was short-lived. The queue broke up and people began to wander away. They were used to this.
“I've lived in this place for seventy years,” mumbled an untidy and toothless old man. “It's nothing but queues. A whole lifetime in queues.”
Suddenly a small boy's shrill voice rang out above the crowd, directed, it seemed, to the matronly figure.
“You're lying about the bread, fatty. Your car's just around the corner. I saw you carry three bags out to it in the night.”
There was a roar from the crowd. A hundred or so rushed around the corner to the car. Others ran back to the shop into the queue. They all wanted to believe that the shop would now open and everyone would be able to buy a loaf of bread. Those who had been at the back of the queue hurried to get to the front. Others who had been at the very doors of the shop insisted on having their old places back, whilst those from behind insisted that this was a new queue. There was pushing and scuffling as the crowd pressed forward. There was a sound of breaking glass. The shop window gave way. A dozen or so people found themselves flung into the shop. Some got to their feet and tried to get back on to the pavement, afraid of being accused of looting. But a score of hungry people had already burst through the broken wind
ow. The electric alarm bell went off, calling in vain for assistance. The crowd got noisier, for the shelves were empty. More pushed their way in. The door to the storeroom was broken down and its meagre contents were rapidly dispersed.
Those who had made for the fat woman's car realized that very soon nothing would be left inside the shop for them and decided to make the most of what was in the car. They broke the windows and hauled out bags with whole smoked sausages and bars of chocolate and even tins of caviar in them.
Shop windows were being smashed all along the street as crowds gathered. Militiamen appeared at the crossroads. They were greeted with a hail of stones and wisely withdrew. A crowd of several thousand was now on the rampage. These were hungry people with families to feed. The long grey streets echoed to their shouting.
None of the shops had anything much in stock except the liquor store, where there was vodka, beer, wine and champagne. Crates of bottles were carefully lifted out on to the street, without a bottle broken. The bottles passed from hand to hand along the street, everyone taking a swig in turn. But there was no food. No shop in the street had been left un-plundered, and still there was no food.
“Intourist!” shouted someone.
“Intourist!” The cry spread.
A menacing crowd surged across the bridge towards a great box-like hotel reserved for foreign visitors. This place had long been hated. To proclaim the successes of the communist regime “paradise zones” had been built for foreigners in many parts of the main towns, with splendid hotels, restaurants, shops, hospitals, sports stadia. The Party and the KGB carried out an intensive campaign to win “friends for communism” in these zones. Ordinary citizens were strictly barred from access to them. Amongst the people, especially old folk who could still remember the Tsarist regime, this was a source of great indignation. Why should they not have the right, in their own country, to go into the best restaurants, hotels and shops?
When war had first broken out, the hotels for foreigners in Moscow and the other towns had all been cordoned off by KGB detachments. All the foreigners in them were arrested and many were now being shot in the hotel cellars, with little or no enquiry as to whether they were friends or enemies. After all, there was nothing now to feed them on, and no one to guard them. Lorries had been heard the night before near the Metropole Hotel. They were carrying away the corpses of foreign citizens.
Hungry crowds of Muscovites assumed that the lorries were only making the usual nocturnal deliveries. The mob now came streaming from all parts of the city in search of food.
In the inner courtyard of the Metropole Hotel, prisoners from the Lefortovo prison, guarded by a small squad of mounted militiamen, had just finished loading corpses of foreign guests of the capital of communism into the lorries. At the head of the convoy a militia lieutenant on a horse gave the order to open the gates and started to walk his horse on through them. In front of him, advancing round the corner on to the square, came a solid wall of people armed with sticks, stones and chains. Along the way some had torn up iron railings and the long rods with their pointed ends bristled above the crowd like the pikes of a mediaeval army.
“Close the gates!” shouted the lieutenant. A couple of militiamen jumped to do so. But the crowd had already caught sight of the long grey vans in the courtyard, and a menacing roar filled the square.
“They've got bread there.”
“And meat!”
“Smoked fish!”
“Comrades!” shouted the officer, “there's nothing in the lorries. There's no food there!”
“Then why have you shut the gates?” they shouted back at him. “Give us the bread!”
Half a dozen mounted militiamen came hurrying to the officer's side. Three more quickly set up a machine-gun by the gates.
Just at that moment, a square-built red-haired lad poked the rump of the lieutenant's mount with a long spike. The horse reared up on its hind legs, throwing its rider. There was a howl of triumph, and a hail of stones deluged the militiamen. The crowd pressed forward, pulling off the antique gates and filling the inner courtyard. They broke into the lorries and tore off the tarpaulins.
“Bread!”
Bewilderment, disappointment, despair, hatred and horror filled the courtyard. Instead of bread they had found dead bodies. The thousands of people filling the square outside did not know what had happened in the courtyard but seemed to guess instinctively that something dreadful had been discovered.
To get a better view a few climbed up on to the statue of Karl Marx.
“Break the old bastard up,” came a call from the crowd. People nearby burst out laughing. Some who had managed to get hold of a metal post began bashing at the granite pedestal.
“That's no good. We'll have to pull him down.”
A thick wire cable was produced from somewhere and its end passed up to the people sitting on Marx's head. They wound the cable round his granite neck and threw down the end. It was eagerly seized and the huge grey granite block came tumbling down to the triumphant roar of the crowd.
“Lenin too!”
“And Dzerzhinski!”
The growing crowd had filled the square and now surged on to Red Square. The higher the dam, the louder the roar when it collapses. The more apparently tranquil the million tons of water held in by the dam, the more terrifying and destructive its force when it finally breaks out into freedom.
On the square, by the Historical Museum, the single barrel of a 57 mm anti-aircraft gun thrust upwards to the sky. A few batteries of these guns covered the city centre. The roaring crowd appearing round the corner caught the gun crew completely unawares.
People swarmed over the anti-aircraft gun from all directions. They offered the soldiers opened bottles of wine. Then, suddenly, from the Kremlin walls a machine-gun cracked its leaden whip. People fell injured and dying.
“Brothers, soldiers — defend us!”
The sergeant commanding the gun crew drew his pistol and aimed it into the crowd. Instantly, one of his own soldiers bayoneted him in the back. The crowd ducked under the walls for shelter from the machine-gun fire. The Kremlin guards' fire was answered by a hand-held machine-gun from somewhere in the crowded square. But the Kremlin machine-gun behind the ancient and mighty walls was invulnerable. Then the anti-aircraft gun swung smoothly round. The loader threw a clip of ten shells into the breach, the weapon swallowed and discharged them, and disgorged the empty cartridge cases on to the stone pavement. Ten explosions so close to each other as to be almost simultaneous broke through the ancient wall, into the embrasure in the Spassky Tower through which the machine-gun was firing. The square was shrouded in brick dust and filled with the smell of burning explosive.
“Hurrah-ah-ah!”
“And again!”
“Aim at the stars, the stars!”
“At the gates!”
“At Lenin!”
But the gun crew knew better. The loader threw in another clip and this time the gun swung slowly from left to right, firing off single unhurried shots at the Kremlin walls, breaking the merlons which concealed the automatic weapons of security guards. The high building immediately behind the Kremlin wall was now in its turn being torn apart by exploding shells. Masonry and glass came crashing to the ground. A roar of approval from the crowd accompanied every shot. The gunners would gladly have fired at the doors of the Lenin Mausoleum but there were people there already trying to break their way in with improvised battering rams. Instead, the barrel of the anti-aircraft gun swung smoothly upwards and with a tongue of flame in one single shot shattered to smithereens the red star topping the Spassky Tower.
The Mausoleum guards had fled but the black marble doors of the Mausoleum itself stood fast.
“We'll have to break it open, all the same,” someone shouted in the crowd, “and have him out.”
“No use! Lenin rotted years ago, it's just a wax effigy there now!”
“We'll get in and see!”
“It's not Lenin that's rot
ted,” someone had to make a speech, “it's Leninism. It rotted when Lenin broke up the Constituent Assembly…”
But there was nothing to be done: the Mausoleum had been well built in its time. The crowd cleared out of it on to Red Square where they strung up without ceremony several men who had been identified as members of the Central Committee, indiscriminately mixed with ordinary Kremlin security guards. Aux lanternes!
It was the members of the Politburo that were now being sought by this rampaging crowd, but they were nowhere to be found. They had escaped by an underground passage into the Metro where an armoured train was waiting to whisk them away.
Not the Kremlin itself but the buildings housing the Communist Party bureaucracy within the Kremlin were ablaze. The Kremlin churches were unharmed. People flocked into them, praying on their knees for the Lord God to forgive the sins of His long-suffering people.
For sixty-eight years Moscow had not heard church bells. Now, high above Moscow, Ivan the Dread, the great bell of all Russia, awoke from his slumber. His mellow chime rang out over the ancient city, where the communists in little more than half a century had destroyed so many more people than even the Tartars in 300 years. Hear what the ancient bell has to say — “forgive our enemies…” — What? Nobody is doing any forgiving here. Aux lanternes!