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Perhaps the most damning indictment of the Soviet economy was published late last month by economist Alexander Zaychenko in the monthly journal of the Institute of U.S.A. and Canada Studies. He charged that Soviet food products, housing, health care and consumer goods are not only poor in quality but also among the most expensive in the world in terms of the labor needed to produce them. As for the Soviet diet, which contains 28 lbs. of meat annually, according to official figures, Zaychenko scoffed that 10 lbs. of that is actually lard and bone, and calculated that the average Soviet eats only about one-third as much meat as the 55 lbs. consumed by an average American. In a comparison that might have cost him his job not too long ago, the economist asserted that the people of the Soviet Union today have a worse diet than the Russians under Czar Nicholas II in 1913, a year of prosperity before World War I and the October Revolution.
As usual, the burdens created by today's shortfalls are borne unevenly. The Soviet elite has always had access to luxury shops, and even many ordinary Soviets buy groceries through factory and office outlets that offer a wider selection than is available in state stores. But not all rubles are created equal: a top Soviet bureaucrat can buy a food package that may include canned crab, high-quality cheese, imported hard salami and lean meat. For a factory worker, the package would more likely contain chicken, less desirable cheese, domestic sausage and canned fish. Even some of the artful dodges developed by resourceful shoppers over the years are proving unreliable in the current crisis. "I've always bought meat on the black market at a premium," says a well-off Moscow writer. "But now I'm having trouble getting meat anywhere. Even the larder of the black market is growing bare."
The Soviet Union's winter of discontent is caused partly by the predictable functioning of the capitalist law of supply and demand. Soviet salaries have risen an average of roughly 8% over the past three years. Meanwhile, production of big-ticket consumer items like refrigerators and automobiles has been increasing at a much lower rate. As a result, says Yuri Luzhkov, chairman of the state committee responsible for Moscow's food supply, "people are investing their new money in food" -- and, in the process, creating the current spate of product shortages. Jan Vanous, research director of PlanEcon, a Washington-based think tank, agrees that Soviet supply and demand has gone seriously out of kilter. "By allowing increased purchasing power and providing nothing more to spend it on, the authorities have created a mind- boggling situation," he says.
Economic planning seems to be in disarray. Pricing officials announced two weeks ago that state subsidies for such consumer goods as fabrics and some appliances would be modestly increased. But the plan contradicts Gorbachev's announced intention to make prices reflect the true costs of production and to curtail subsidies. Last week authorities unveiled new rules barring private cooperatives from engaging in certain kinds of businesses -- for example, selling jewelry and renting videos. Only five days before these restrictions were announced, Gorbachev had called for a "stronger cooperative movement" during 1989.