Andropov gets busy

Press, 1 February 1983, Page 16

Andropov gets busy

From

MARK FRANKLAND

in Moscow

The photograph in the Moscow newspaper seemed at first glance nothing out of the ordinary — two workers in caps standing in front of a machine, one of them looking at his watch. But the caption was unexpected. Instead of the usual upbeat message like. "We’ve fulfilled the plan with an hour to spare," it read: "The lunch break finished half an hour ago but three lathes are still standing idle." It’s hard these days to pick up a paper or watch television news without seeing something about discipline at work and order on the streets. Such campaigns are not new. But this one received its impulse after Yuri Andropov was appointed party leader. The leadership’s disquiet was signalled in an unprecedented public account of a Politburo meeting in midDecember at which “workers' letters" were discussed. These urged the “strengthening of state, labour, and production discipline." Workers are said to be "seriously worried" bycrime in the streets. There is no secret about the conditions that promoted

these complaints. The Soviet Government may not publish statistics about crime and labour discipline, but enough comes out in speeches and articles to explain the present concern. The chairman of the Supreme Court has said that crimes against the individual are on the increase and so are a variety of financial crimes like bribery and embezzlement. The financial crimes are sometimes peculiar to a centralised. . bureaucrat-run economy, like the senior officials who recently played the system to make money from a factory that never existed. Shortages give others their chance. Instead of wasting their time looking for spare parts in shops, car owners buy them quicker and cheaper on the black market. They may even be offered whole cars. Workers in the factory that makes the little Zaporozhets saloon managed to sell eight of them before they were caught. Drink is the cause of much of *■■>»> '’•mitie in factories

and on the streets. A Soviet academician has calculated that if the ecomomy could manage a complete “sobering up." productivity would jump 10 per cent. Absenteeism has become the “scourge of production” in many factories. according to “Pravda", and the main reason for absenteeism is drink. Soviet legal officials say that drunkenness is on the increase and that when linked with crime it should be treated as an aggravating circumstance. In 1980, two out of three juvenile criminals were drunk. The country's chief law officer reported recently that workers in Gorky were afraid to walk home at night, and that even members of citizens' voluntary patrols had been attacked. Coded locks are being installed on the front doors of some apartment blocks to stop vandalism, though the locks themselves are then sometimes stolen. Manv complaints stress the youth rf A

juvenile criminal is quoted as saying: "I’ve carried nothing heavier than long hair and a guitar on my back." Absentees in one factory were said to be mainly under 25. The feelings aroused are pushing some people to propose solutions of questionable lawfulness. A popular idea for curing labour indisciplines is to make it impossible for an unsatisfactory worker to leave a job without his workmates’ permission. This, a Soviet lawyer pointed out in dismay, would be a “howling illegality," violating a worker’s right to terminate his labour contract. The campaign has already helped Andropov to replace the Minister of Internal Affairs, a Brezhnev associate, and more changes at the top of the ministry are rumoured. The militia is now being criticised for its past failings. The Andropov message is that everyone, from top to bottom, must be held responsible for his misdeeds. This may give him further opportunities to put men of his own choosing into power. — Copyright. London Observer Service.