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Considering the successes of Soviet centralized planning in arms production, why has Moscow been unable to offer its people a standard of living commensurate with the country's great natural and human resources? The Soviet Union produces more steel, cement and fertilizers than the U.S.; it is second only to the U.S. in coal and South Africa in gold. Yet little of this wealth filters down to the Soviet consumer. Roughly 30% of the Soviet population is engaged in farming, compared with 5% in the U.S., and millions more are recruited from the cities each year to help with the harvest. No less than 31% of all investment under the new five-year plan has been allocated to agriculture. Yet by the standards of other industrial nations, the U.S.S.R. has been incapable of properly feeding its people, even in good harvest times. Most Western economists believe that the basic problem lies in the Communist system of centralized planning. In the high-priority armaments sector, this can be made to work well, although with much waste and inefficiency. But planners at the top in other areas have been unable to make effective decisions regarding capital investment and the right use of resources and manpower for a multitude of enterprises scattered across an immense nation.
Beyond the inefficiency of centralized planning, the deadening impact of a system that places everything from housing to travel to the press under rigid state supervision kills individual initiative and breeds apathy. The Soviet man in the street is indifferent not just to the country's leaders, who appear on television or in the newspapers as depersonalized titans, but also to his job. The most obvious symptom of this malaise is the extraordinarily low productivity of labor in the U.S.S.R. as compared with that in every other developed country. Many people are unwilling to put in a day's work for the state if they can help it. Says a Western businessman who is a longtime resident of Moscow. "The real problem with this place is that the average worker doesn't give a damn." A recent study, based on Soviet statistics, showed that each day about 1 million people out of an industrial work force of 84 million do not turn up for work in the U.S.S.R.
One cause is epidemic alcoholism.
The Soviet humor magazine Krokodil recently ran a cartoon that pictured a puzzled bureaucrat asking a plant manager: "How did your factory succeed in fulfilling its plan?" The answer: "The liquor store was closed for repairs." The average Russian over 15 consumes 8.5 qt. of liquor a year, twice as much as the world's next biggest consumers, Americans and Frenchmen. The main tipple is vodka, at $5.22 a pt. for the cheapest brand. Authorities regularly denounce alcoholism but do little to limit liquor sales. Reason: the state derives 12% of its revenues from the sale of liquor. Drunkenness is involved in 90% of all murders, at least half of Russia's traffic accidents and 40% of divorces. In some provincial hamlets, weekends are devoted to monumental collective binges, and there are growing complaints about drunken gangs of youths roaming some city streets at night and mugging passersby.