Russia: Tomorrow Is Three Suits

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have a far greater impact on the economy in Russia than in most Western nations—have clearly collapsed the Communists' hopes of overtaking the U.S. in the foreseeable future. This is a galling personal defeat for both Khrushchev and his heir apparent, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, a Ukrainian who has been his protege during the long, hard-fought battle to raise Russian living standards. Since 1960, burly, bushy-browed Brezhnev, 57, has been Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet and Russia's titular head of state.

Brezhnev was Nikita's man in Kazakhstan during the first two critical years of the Virgin Lands program, has subsequently acted as the Kremlin's grey eminence in handling major problems in industry, space and defense.

A suave, handsome, cagey administrator, Brezhnev is deeply committed to creation of the economic and social climate in which Russia's rising generation hopes finally to achieve Karl Marx's vision of "abundance in our days." As Nikita Khrushchev proclaimed last month: "If a man has one suit, God help him to have two, and then three!" If most Russians had one suit in Stalin's time, it was under Khrushchev that they got Suit No. 2. The third will come along any decade now.

Sublime Chaos. By contrast with the cock-a-hoop mood of a few years back, most Russians now seem bitterly resigned to the shortages, discomforts and joyless conformity of life as they now know it. In the cities all winter, housewives have had to wait interminably in line for potatoes, macaroni, flour, coal and coarse, gritty brown bread; in some areas, where bread ran out, they have heeded Marie Antoinette's apocryphal advice and queued for cookies and cake instead. Asked recently how he thought 1964 would turn out, one Muscovite replied dryly: "Worse than 1963, but better than 1965."

But Russia's faltering economy is more than a disappointment to the consumer. The letdown strikes at the heart of Communist theology, which borrows freely from the Utopian philosophers in envisioning the age of plenty as the final, inevitable stage of man's progress to perfection.

As a faith, Communism's appeal depends in equal measure on the down-to-earth accomplishments of its past and its rosy, teleological view of the future. From the blend of both elements, in an economy guided largely by the theories of a 19th century visionary who knew next to nothing of economics, might well have come a close approximation of Dostoevsky's view of 19th century Russia, a "sublime, universal, ordered chaos." In fact, the Soviet economy is only moderately chaotic. Its high-priority sectors can be impressively efficient, though not so efficient perhaps as the Russians, with their infinite capacity for self-deception (or salesmanship?), portray them. This, and pride in their real achievements, explains the litany that ranges from housing ("A new five-story building goes up every five minutes") to industrial production

("We have overtaken you in cement") and results in many an official claim that is outrageously exaggerated.

The Metal Eaters. What frustrates so many Soviet ambitions is a simple matter of priorities. Hard-nosed traditionalists have long insisted that Russia follow Stalin's policy of sinking all available capital into defense and heavy