Russ-speak to explain away Soviet shortage of socks

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 13

Russ-speak to explain away Soviet shortage of socks

CONOR CRUISE O’BRIEN in Dublin on “Russ-speak” — the art of reading what the Soviet press prints and what it means.

“I seem to be the only person who has noticed that in the last year or so, Russia is profoundly changed; but because of the curious kind of journalism which appears to be unchanged since 1917, it has gone unremarked, unobserved, unmentioned.” So a reader, Olga Franklin, wrote to me earlier this year. I was impressed, both by her thesis and by her credentials: she has been reading the Soviet press attentively for nearly 40 years, and now monitors it for a 8.8. C. radio programme. Her argument, essentially, is that the Russian press is a lot better, and Russian social and economic conditions a lot worse, than you might think from it. Superficially, this may seem a dubious paradox: if the press is any good, and the conditions are so bad, surely the press ought to reflect the conditions? But Olga Franklin’s point is that the press does reflect the conditions, if you know how to read it. But to read it, you have to know not only Russian, but how to decode the peculiar, conventional language of Soviet journalism — what she calls “Russ-speak.” Through “Russ-speak,” information about actual conditions can be conveyed, provided it is well wrapped up in a verbiage of a sunny and positive nature. Thus, discussion of a serious bread-short-

age — and of de facto bread rationing — over the past six months or so, is carried on in the guise of a discussion of the food value of bread. “Bread is the most valued and valuable friend of mankind” (“Izvestia”). “Not a day goes by,” says “Nedelya,” “without our postbag bringing more letters on the subject of bread. And this is understandable because for one thing our citizens have a special feeling for bread itself, the stuff on our dinner table and at the bakery. For us bread is not merely a food but somehow the very founder of our moral being.” These wholesome sentiments serve to introduce, and sanitise, the substance: points from readers’ letters. One Comrade Tkachev, for example, advised that: “In blocks of flats, a bucket should be kept on the stairways for people to put their unused crusts and waste bread too stale to eat, so that it can be collected and used for making pies and puddings. Or dried in the oven, salted, and used again at teatime.” Of course, the Soviet press has long carried a certain amount of

controlled “critical” material, often in the form of readers’ letters. This was certainly so back in Khruschev’s day, when I used to read the Soviet papers myself. I had the impression that the idea was to allow some steam to be let off harmlessly. But the material Olga Franklin sends me, out of recent issues of the Soviet press, suggests that either things have got worse, or people are talking more openly, or both. The Soviet press, in recent months, has reflected shortages of the following (as well as bread, and much else): Milk: Letters to “Literaturnaya Gazeta” described a phenomenon disturbing large areas: “Vast lakes, rivers, streams, floods of some white substance like melting snow are to be seen in our region ... Citizens are asking: 'What is it? Why have the very fields turned white in summer?’ ” After some weeks, the newspaper came up with an answer. Collective dairies, it said, had switched from using milk cans to paper cartons for delivery by longdistance lorry. The cartons came apart “and the milk flowed away,

with thousands of boxes being delivered ... completely empty and the milk still flowing in a foaming river in the village streets.” Socks: “Literaturnaya Gazeta” investigated socklessness and found: “It was all the fault of ministry civil servants whose job it is to estimate how many pairs of socks a man needs per year, and then to fix production norms accordingly.” The clerks underestimated, coming up with the figure of six pairs per year. The figure should have been eight pairs. Hence the shortage. Gravestones: Flourishing black market in the red granite used for these. All the “snobs” want red granite and, having saved enough money to buy a slab, they often park on the grave for week-end picnics, “just to show off to poorer citizens” (according to “Nedelya”). Communists: The late Yuri Andropov told the Party Central Committee in June of last year that the No. 1 task of the Party is “to re-educate Soviet youth on Communist lines.” The youth were so hopeless, from a Communist point of view, that the veterans would just have to go on carrying the burden. Apparently, the New Soviet Man is dying out, without having been able to reproduce his kind. It seems possible that great changes may be approaching.