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The picture does have its lighter tones. Under the present government, wages are rising and the standard of living has improved everywhere—even deep in Siberia, where log cabins in the muddy villages now have TV aerials on their roofs. As a citizen of the Soviet Union, the Russian enjoys a large measure of security and many social benefits. Both husband and wife must normally take jobs to support a family, but the Russian gets high-quality medical and hospital care for nothing, pays practically no rent, can go to a university free—if he can pass the entrance exams—and is entitled to a pension at age 60 (55 for women) of between 50% and 100% of his former income. The entire country is gradually being put on a five-day work week.
Meantime, the vast reshuffling of the Soviet economy has proceeded at an almost break neck pace. Since Economist Liberman made his first proposals five years ago, more than 5,500 factories, accounting for one-third of the country's total industrial output, have been converted to a system that makes both managers' and workers' incomes heavily dependent upon profit and, in consequence, on the level of sales. This has spurred a flurry of interest in the consumer's tastes and purchasing power and even an official campaign to introduce radio commercials and improve product packaging, window displays, neon lighting, and other once-deprecated Western advertising techniques.
As the economic reforms move forward, Russian life is undergoing the greatest degree of liberalization since the revolution's early days. There is increasing freedom of speech and opinion—though in a much smaller amount than in the West.
After years of jamming, Russians are now allowed to hear the BBC, Radio Liberty and other Western radio stations without interference. The youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda has taken to giving teen-agers advice on such formerly taboo subjects as "How short should a miniskirt be?" The socialist answer: Every girl should decide for herself, depending upon the attractiveness of her legs and the chilliness of the weather. Public-opinion polls, which were long banned, have suddenly become a craze. One question not being asked: Do you approve of the job that Premier Kosygin and his colleagues are doing?
Despite the recent relaxation, life in the Soviet Union has a boring and sometimes even a brutish quality. Outside his home, the Russian cannot walk, sit clown or breathe without seeing a slogan, a flag, a statistic, a portrait of Lenin, a piece of heroic Soviet statuary. He is rarely allowed to tour outside the Soviet Union by himself, even in other socialist countries, and he must show an internal passport when he travels within his own country. A Russian spends much of his free time standing in queues, where he must push and heave to defend his place. Partly because of boredom, alcoholism is widespread; every park in Moscow has its nightly yield of inert bodies that are dragged off to sobering-up stations.