Soviets review agricultural problems

Press, 17 June 1982, Page 16

Soviets review agricultural problems

Men matter, but policy matters more. The announcement on May 24 that Mr Yuri Andropov. the head of the K.G.B. (the Soviety Union's security service). had been appointed to the Soviet Communist party's powerful central committee secretariat grabbed the headlines from a meeting of the central committee itself. Yet the committee meeting was at least as important, because its subject was the disastrous performance of Soviet agriculture. Both events could have profound significance for the future of the Soviet Union. Mr Andropov, who already has a seat on the 13-man politburo. has emerged in recent weeks as a leading contender in the battle for the party leadership 'once Mr Brezhnev goes. Mr Andropov, a party man and diplomat by career, was put in charge of the K.G.B. in 1967 to strengthen political control over a security service which not so many years before, in Stalin's time, had the other Soviet leaders quaking in their boots. He is no softy. He was ambassador to Hungary in 1956 when Soviet troops moved in. He has now relinquished his K.G.B. post in order to concentrate on his political career. . Only three other men, apart from the ailing Mr Brezhnev himself, have a seat on both of the party’s two most powerful bodies .— the ageing Mr Konstantin Chernenko (70), Mr Andrei Kirilenko (75), and “young” Mr Mikhail Gorbachev (50). During the past two years Mr Brezhnev has been un-

From “The Economist," London

ashamedly promoting Mr Chernenko. one of his closest associates. as his heir-apparent. Mr Andropov’s new job suggests that, at a modestly elderly 67. he has powerful backers in the party, prepared to lend their weight to a stop-Chernenko movement. Whoever emerges triumphant from a bruising battle for the leadership will face the sobering consequences of the party's failure this week to come to grips with agriculture. The Kremlin has taken six months to draft a new programme intended to put an end to worsening food shortages and to break the Soviet Union's dependence on the west for grain. A study prepared for the Soviet leaders and leaked just before the central committee meeting spoke of appalling mismanagement and wastage in agriculture. Some Soviet officials had predicted political fireworks and a radical reform of the country's ramshackle farm system. What PresidentBrezhne’v announced at the specially convened central committee session amounted to no more than a damp fizzle. Mr Brezhnev's, speech on May 24 contained echoes of new ideas and daring changes, but it is clear that the teeth of real reform had been carefully extracted during the document's journey through the various committees along the Soviet Union's corridors of power. The most radical measure is the creation of a new supervisory bureaucracy in an agricultural system al-

ready paralysed by layers of officialdom. So-called agro-industrial associations, to be set up at district and regional level to improve farm planning and coordination. are already in operation as part of. smallscale farming experiments in the Caucasian republic of Georgia. These experiments have produced marked improvements in output and efficiency. They have been able to cut through the confusion of red tape in a system where several ministries all have a say in what goes on down on the’ farm. But in the Georgian experiments the real innovation has been to give farm managers plenty of independence in running their collective farms and to provide extra incentives for the farmers themselves, including profit-sharing schemes. This was too much for some officials in Moscow to stomach. Instead, they opted for a halfhearted compromise which is likely to mean that the associations will be robbed of their vita). direct co-operation with potverful farm managers and will do little more than add to the existing clutter of bureaucratic structures. The dilution of the Georgian model is evidence of the immense resistance to change within the Soviet hierarchy. The other measures announced by Mr Brezhnev amount to a continuation of the same less-than-successful policies of the past few years. The state is to spend an extra 16 billion roubles (about SNZ2B.4

billion) on state purchases o! meat, grain, milk and vegetables from next year, so that farms can raise their prices And farms are to be allowed.to' write off 10 billion roubles (about SNZI9 billion) of their debts to the State. Mr Brezhnev also announced pay rises for farm workers, and the Government plans to spend more money on improving roads and living conditions in an attempt to stop the drift from the land which has left many areas bereft of voung farmhands. Mr Brezhnev said that the Government expected to see a return on its huge investments in agriculture this year. He also promised that investment in farming would be increased from 27 per. cent of all investment in the current five-year plan to a third in the next plan period, starting in 1986. But he had little else to offer other than familiar and. so far unsuccessful, exhortations to improve efficiency and cut down waste. Mr Brezhnev frankly admitted that there were serious shortages of most foodstuffs. But the targets he outlined for the period up to 1990 held out little hope of drastic improvement. Until recently the official aim was for a .grain harvest of one tonne for each head of population by 1990. But while the number of inhabitants is due to rise to around 290 M by then, the grain target is now only 250 M. And even that looks over-ambitious when compared with the disastrous 1981 result of roughly 160 M.

Targets for meat and milk production, which have been in decline for more than two years, call for no more than a modest improvement on present performance. Rationing of meat and dairy products in most Soviet cities is likely to

continue for some years.. With this gloomy prospect in store for Mr Andropov, if he does emerge the winner in the race for the party leadership, hjs greatest political challenge may be still to come - from the hard-pressed Soviet consumer.