De-Mythologizing the Soviet Menace

With the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops the right-wingers are all saying “I told you so,” trotting out all the worn out anti-Communist rhetoric and gleefully calling for a return to the Cold War (see, for example, Richard Whalen’s article in the Washington Post, January 20, 1980). Although on the surface it may appear that the Soviets have launched the first phase of a drive toward the Persian Gulf, threatening our vital oil supplies, there is another side to the story. It may be that the Soviet invasion is less an indication of Soviet strength than of Soviet weakness. As Arthur Schlesinger wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently; “Our hardliners like to think that the Soviet Union is a dynamic and purposeful state following a policy laid down with consistency, foresight and coherence. But it may as well be that the Soviet Union is a weary, drab country, led by sick old men, beset by insuperable problems at home and abroad and living from crisis to crisis. It may well have invaded Afghanistan out of weakness, not out of strength, for reasons that are essentially defensive rather than aggressive, local rather than global, despairing rather than joyously premeditated.” (January 18, 1980) There is ample evidence to suggest that Schlesinger is right, that the Soviet Union is a nation with serious problems. Indeed, its adventurism and aggression abroad are more usefully seen as a means of turning the Soviet peoples’ attention away from problems at home, than as a part of an overall Communist conspiracy. As Shakespeare wrote in Henry IV, “Be it thy course, to busy giddy minds with foreign quarrels: that action, hence borne out, may waste the memory of the former days.”

The Soviet Union’s most long-standing problem is economic. The Soviet economy is barely growing at all, even by its own standards of measurement. According to the latest Soviet figures industrial output grew only 3.4 percent in 1979, compared to a planned growth rate of 5.7 percent. Its capital stock is falling apart, agriculture is a disaster, the economy is desperately in need of new technology and innovation, and it faces serious shortages of energy and raw materials in the 1980s. On top of this there is a serious labor shortage and growing demands by Soviet consumers which cannot be fulfilled.

Under Stalin the Soviet economy gave the appearance of rapid growth. This was due to the fact that Stalin directed all his efforts toward building up highly visible heavy industry, and because the Soviet Union was able to borrow heavily from the West in terms of both technology and capital. But the economy today is still operating on the base built by Stalin. Virtually nothing has changed in almost 30 years, except in those areas where high priorities have been set without regard to cost, such as in military hardware or the space program. (For a fascinating look at how the Soviet Union was able to achieve its space program successes by concentrating all its efforts on the short run, for political purposes, while ultimately losing out in the long run as a result, see Leonid Vladimirov, The Russian Space Bluff.)

The Soviet Union certainly has its share of brilliant scientists and can accomplish a great deal in specific areas when the state-controlled economy is directed toward a single goal. But more and more the Soviets are bumping up against the limits of their own technological and economic base. Consider computers. The Soviet Union no doubt has scientists who know as much about computers as anyone in the West, yet they cannot manufacture a computer which is anywhere close to the quality of those made by IBM. The reason is that the Soviets do not have the technological or industrial infrastructure to manufacture such computers even if they do know how.

This situation is not likely to change because the Soviet Union cannot dismantle its system of controls and perverse incentives without running grave political risks. As The Economist recently put it, “any real change might fuel demands for yet more extensive reforms, including political ones. A powerful alliance of interests in the Soviet Union supports the status quo.”

The main barrier to change in the Soviet Union, as everywhere, is the bureaucracy. To cite one example of how it operates to stifle innovation and productivity, consider the case of Hambartsum Khlgatian. Khlgatian was sent to work in an Armenian pump factory. He produced pump shafts and was paid 32 kopecks per shaft. Having need for additional income Khlgatian worked very hard and produced 40 shafts per day, about twice the normal output per worker. Because he was producing so much his pay naturally increased. But since this caused the factory’s wage fund to be depleted at a faster rate than planned Khlgatian’s pay was cut to 27 kopecks per shaft. Thereafter, he cut his rate of production, causing his pay to be increased to 30 kopecks. Henceforth Khlgatian made certain that his production did not exceed that of other workers. (New York Times 1-18-80)

This is the reason why nothing ever changes in the Soviet economy. Thus, The Economist has observed, “although official policy in the Soviet Union favors industrial innovation, in practice the system protects the status quo. It has always been the proud claim of Soviet leaders that socialism helps modernization while capitalism represses it. Experience suggests the opposite. . . . Some of the blame lies with red tape. But the main reason is that nobody has a direct interest in bringing about change.”

Those incentives which do exist are almost exclusively directed toward maximizing current production. As a result, Soviet managers have no reason to replace obsolete equipment with modern. In a survey of Soviet machine-tool factories it was found that 80 percent of all decisions to replace equipment were made because the machine was physically worn out. Modernization and improved productivity were almost never a consideration.

Consequently, replacement investment in Russia amounts to less than 30 percent of total investment, compared to twice that in the U.S. As a consequence, capital repairs for older machinery consumes one fourth of all Soviet gross investment and occupies a tenth of the entire industrial workforce. Since spare parts are hard to come by, buyers of capital equipment must maintain their own repair shops, which produce parts for three to five times the cost of plants specializing in spare parts. This all represents economic waste and takes a heavy toll on Soviet industrial output.

Until recently, the Soviets could compensate for their inefficient production methods and achieve planned growth rates by throwing more and more manpower into problem areas. However, because of a significant decline in the birthrate throughout the Soviet Union, which will impact even more heavily during the 1980s, this is no longer a viable option. Between 1980 and 1995 the growth in the working age population is expected to be a mere 0.3-0.4 percent per year.

As important as the decline in the overall birthrate is the difference in birthrates among the Soviet peoples, and the important political and economic consequences of this difference. In Decline of an Empire by Helene Carrere d’Encausse (Newsweek Books, 1979) there is a wealth of data about changing demographics in the Soviet Union which indicate the enormity of the problem.

Professor D’Encausse points out that from 1897 to 1959 the population of the Russian people steadily increased in proportion to all the peoples that they dominated. All the other ethnic groups went through phases of regression, either sporadically or continuously. The latest census, however, reveals a departure from this longstanding trend in a way which relates adversely to the Russian people, whose population, proportionate to that of the whole country, has begun to decline, though still remaining in the majority. The Moslem Soviet people, in particular, have registered a spectacular population increase since 1959. And the most recent census indicates that they continue to have birth rates far in excess of the Russian people. For example, the people of Turkmenia (a predominantly Moslem area) have a birth rate of 33.9 per 1,000 population compared to 15.3 for people in the Russian Republic.

Nearly a fourth of the Soviet Union’s population is already Moslem. The fact that the Moslem population is rising at a faster rate than the Russian population and the fact that Islamic revivalism is now growing in countries along the Soviet border—Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan—could pose very serious political problems for the Soviet government in the 1980s. Indeed, the threat of Islamic radicalism spreading across the border is probably the major reason why the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, and why the invasion is more usefully seen as a defensive operation than an offensive one.

Islamic radicalism isn’t the only danger on the Soviet Union’s borders. To the east the Chinese remain an important potential threat. Soviet concern for the Chinese threat is demonstrated by the fact that a major portion of its armed forces is deployed along the China border.

Although the China threat is significant, of even greater importance is the growing Soviet vulnerability along its western borders, from the Warsaw Pact nations. The fact is that the Eastern European nations are bound to the Soviet Union out of fear rather than solidarity. Pope John Paul II’s trip to Poland last year only highlighted the extent to which Eastern Europe remains a tinderbox of nationalism which could explode at a moment’s notice. Twice before, in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviets’ Eastern European empire threatened to fall apart. It was only through quick military action and utter brutality that the Soviets managed to contain the situation. They are unlikely to be successful a third time. Thus the New Republic recently observed, “Eastern Europe remains the Achilles’ heel of Soviet power. After 35 years of communism, there does not appear to be one regime in the bloc that can rely on the loyalty of its population.”

For this reason many people suggest that we would be far more successful in opposing Soviet interventionism and adventurism by championing the rights of all people to self-determination, rather than by pumping up an already bloated defense budget. As Eugen Loebl, the former director of the State Bank of Czechoslovakia under the Dubcek government who was expelled after the Soviet invasion in 1968, wrote recently in Business Week: “If the current Western policy of detente-appeasement were replaced by a policy based on the inevitability and validity of the self-determination of peoples, there would be a tidal shift in political sentiment throughout the Eastern bloc.”

In my view, adhering to a noninterventionist position for the United States does not require that one be impartial about Soviet aggression. The unfortunate thing is that because of American intervention, both overt and covert, in so many different countries around the world, where fascist regimes were supported and nationalistic movements suppressed in the name of anti-Communism, American credibility regarding self-determination is nonexistent. Many Third World nations now see no real difference between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

A step in the right direction would be a recognition that foreign nations do not necessarily share American values and cannot necessarily operate under the American political system. It is less important that a nation be “friendly” to the United States than that it be independent of domination by the Soviet Union or any other power. In the end it is in the best interest of the United States to foster self-determination among all peoples regardless of whether we agree or disagree with their political/economic/cultural systems. However, strict neutrality must be maintained lest we end up back in the same boat of supporting dictatorships and anti-democratic forces in the name of anti-Communism.

“It is essential,” according to Loebl, that Western leaders realize that nationalistic aspirations do not assure democracy, capitalism, or any other features of Western political systems. The West can count on only two results from a policy of self-determination: one, people in given nations will be free from foreign domination so that they can work out their own political and economic arrangements and, two, such independence forms a bulwark against Soviet imperialism, which is the major threat to freedom throughout the world. Before the people of any nation can build a free society for themselves, they first need to throw off the bonds of foreign oppression. It is this first, fundamental goal of self-determination that the West should work for, in its own ultimate self-interest.

Thus we see that far from being the overpowering superpower bent on world domination which American conservatives see when they look at the Soviet Union, it is a nation with serious problems, threatened on all sides both militarily and ideologically. The truly amazing thing is that it has managed to survive all these years with its empire intact without collapsing from within. Soviet aggression is better understood as an effort to defuse internal pressures and direct them away from home toward real or imagined enemies. When the U.S. attempts to confront the Soviet Union on the same basis, by pumping up arms spending or intervening in nations where the Soviets have caused trouble, we only play into the Soviets’ hands, giving them grist for their propaganda mills.

As a nation whose very existence involved revolutionary activity and the overthrow of foreign domination, the U.S. ought to be in a unique position to exploit the desires of all enslaved peoples for self-determination. Unfortunately, our policy of intervention in the affairs of other nations has destroyed our credibility in this respect. Were it to be restored we might find an enormous increase in American influence throughout the world. The Soviet Union itself has 17 federated republics with their own nationalistic aspirations, not to mention the occupied nations of Eastern Europe. This is where our message would have its strongest influence and why freedom and self-determination remain the most powerful weapons against oppression.

Bruce Bartlett is a veteran congressional aide and a widely published writer on political, economic and historical matters. His articles have appeared in Washington Monthly, National Review, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He is a contributing editor of LR.