Forty Years On A BALANCE SHEET OF RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28440, 21 November 1957, Page 14

Forty Years On A BALANCE SHEET OF RUSSIA’S REVOLUTION

[Bv

"LYNCEUS”

of the "Economist”)

[From the Economist Intelligence Unit]

London. November 12. —The fortieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution has been celebrated this week on earth, in outer space and. for all we know, on the moon, with a tremendous fanfare of trumpets and “bleep" of satellites. To add to its propaganda value the free world has obliged with an appreciable retardation of its own boom, a crumbling of commodity and security prices, and a chorus of predictions of a recession which, whatever euphemisms may be used to describe it, "a pause for breath,” “a corrective reaction.” is nonetheless a gift offering to the competing and alternative system of collectivism.

The time has certainly come to look back on the economic achievements of communism and to assess their solidity and their prospect of endurance. The uncommitted nations of Asia and Africa are certainly trying to do so. It does not need the tedious list of figures advanced by Mr Khrushchev in his 18.000-word. three-hour speech to the Supreme Soviet to convince the world of the immensity of an achievement which, in the span of four short decades, has converted a nation of peasants into an industrial giant, second only to the United States, and by all accounts fast narrowing the margin which still separates them. Ominous Lead The way in which Russia stood up to attack in the last war. and was able to hurl into battle a weight of armour out-matching that pitted against it. was in itself a measure of the strides made by the country in developing its heavy industry. Since then Russia lias clearly made tremendous progress in the newer techniques of jet propulsion and electronic control. The launching of the two satellites, together with the trustworthy claims made for the construction and propulsion of long-range missiles, testify to an impressive and ominous lead secured by Russian scientists and technicians over the United States in certain selected spheres of manufacture.

The Khrushchev speech shed a great deal of light not only on the past achievements but on the hopes and targets of Soviet Russia. He pointed out, for example, that the output of Russian industry over the four decades had increased no less than 33 times and that there had. over the same period, been a 74-fold increase in the output of capital goods. These two figures provide much of the explanation of Russia’s industrial policy since the early years of the revolution. The whole emphasis of the Russian industrial effort has been placed on heavy industry, and on the production of goods required not for consumption but for producing still more goods. The immense rise in Russian production htas been due to a deliberate choice on the part of the authorities to concentrate a large and almost intolerable proportion of Russia’s available resources on building up capital. Compulsory Saving

There have been periods during which Soviet Russia appeared to be devoting to investment a full half of its national production. No other country in the world has over the last 40 years found it possible to devote to canital construction anything like this proportion of its total accruing wealth. This diversion of current resources to compulsory saving and investment by a country which began the process of industrialisation from so low a level of well-being, involved sacrifices which no democraticallygoverned country would ever have tolerated. There can be no disputing the immensity of Russia’s achievement in the sphere of industrial expansion; but neither can there be any disputing the price that had to be paid for it, in terms of compulsory labour, collectivisation of farms, liquidation of kulaks, and all the other familiar appendages of a Communist regime. It is sometimes deemed to be the strength of Communism that it allows central planning to secure this conscious selection of priorities. It is true that the absence of any need to defer to the demands and desires of the masses of the people produces a basic simplicity in economic programming. The ordinary people of Moscow, many of whom live four persons to a room, might, had they been asked, have decided to devote more resources to rehousing and fewer to the task of sending artificial earth satellites into space. They were not given the chance. There are limits beyond which the basic needs of the people cannot be neglected or disregarded. Mr Khrushchev, in his speech to the Supreme Soviet, admitted as much and made the first official recognition ever aired in Soviet Russia that things are not quite what they should be in the realm of the welfare of the consumer. He said, for example, “We know that we have an acute housing shortage,” and he went on to promise

a programme for the development of housing which would end the shortage in 10 to 12 years. Once again it is a case of jam tomorrow.

In contrasting the economic and technical achievements of communism with those of the free world, one should never forget this seeming advantage of conffinunism in placing the decisionF as to what shall and shall not be done in the hands of a comparatively small number of people who need have no great concern for the wishes of the people they govern. This may, however, be a very superficial advantage. The central planning of the economy, as experience has shown in democratic countries during total wars, when all else has to be sacrificed to the supreme objective of winning, can be, and usually is, unbelievably wasteful. The rise in Russian industrial production is admittedly impressive, though it should always be borne in mind that it is measured in terms of an abysmally low starting level. These impressive figures like the 33-fold increase in industrial production are a measure of the negligible level from which the increase began after the holocausts of World War 1 and of the Bolshevik revolution. Nor should it be forgotten that today, between that production and the good life enjoyed by the people, there are rivulets of resources, real and potential, running into the waste sands of bureaucratic inefficiency. There are more overseers to workers in Soviet Russia than in any other country in the world. “Grovelling Abasement”

Mr Khrushchev may be brimful with confidence; he may predict with an air of infallibility that in 15 years Soviet Russia will have overtaken the United States in the general standard of welfare of its peoples. Confirming those predictions there is the admitted fact that the rate of advance of the Communist countries has been breathtaking and that in the formation of new capital the Communists are in a way more capitalist than the capitalist countries.

But the solidity of a system’s efficiency must be judged by moral as well as economic considerations. Recent events in Russia do not produce a wholly favourable verdict on the moral criteria. The dismissal of ZhUkpv is particularly instructive in this context. Few tears will be shed in the rest of the world for the departed MarshaL But the manner of his dismissal and the reactions to it in Russia are full of significance. Already the former hero of the Soviet Union is having heaped upon him the blame for the early Russian defeats in the last war. The familiar, sickening, unanimous resolutions are pouring in from factories and collective farms, condemning his sins. In the best George Orwell-1984 terms, the official history of this man is being rewritten and all truth expunged from the records. All this is tantamount to a grovelling abasement of every real standard of human intelligence, integrity, and dignity, which accords ill with Russia’s claim to be a great nation. Where these things are possible the seeds of corruption and ultimate death must lie within the system. In judging communism and assessing its power • of endurance these marks of decay outweigh a thousand times the credit marks of the sputnik.