"The complete pragmatism of the regime is one sign of its weakness. Their whole time is taken up thinking about short-range questions like ensuring an adequate supply of farm machinery Tor the coming year rather than probing econo mic failures at their root. Even in foreign policy where they appear to be more active, all they are really doing is to follow up initiatives instigated in the Westas in the Middle East or with the German treaty. Unfortunately I must say that we in the Opposition have so far betrayed exactly the same weakness. We first became active in 1966 at the time of the Daniel and Sinyavsky trial when we realised that deStalinisation from above was over. These last four years we have been so involved in fighting issue by issue that we have not developed any theoretical perspective on what we are doing. We have been fighting every issue on a civil rights basis appealing to a conception of democracy which is not widely diffused among our people. Perhaps it ought to be but at the moment it is not. We have got to be more than • democ aue movement —mats General Grigorenko's name for us-and we have got to see beyond the next trial. As it is the repression this year has been very bad; many Oppositionists have been sent to prison, labour camps, or, worst of all, to mental hospitals."
The Opposition of which my friend was speaking is politically of great significance but it is numerically tiny. For the first time since the "30s the Party leaders do not exercise a monopoly on politics. The main publication of the Opposition, the mimeographed Chronicle of Current Events, circulates only among a few thousand readers though it has now regularly appeared fourteen times. "Some Western reporters have said that we have a wide network extending to every soviet ciyum amrald unis is hot true; actually the small size of those actually engaged in producing the Chronicle has helped to protect us.
It is well known that the politics of dissident intellectuals in the Soviet Union are very diverse; arter tne decades or olainist repression or all independent political thinking this is not surprising. One can for example meet Soviet intellectuals who, perhaps partly to shock advocate the restoration of Tsarism. But it must be emphasised that none of those active in the Opposition engage in this sort of whimsicality To be active at all in prevailing Soviet conditions one has to be in deadly earnest. In fact it would be quite mistaken to identify the Opposition with the intelligentsia. Many prominent Oppo sitionists like Marchenko and Bukovsky are workers and in general the bulk of the intelligentsia does not allow its grumbling to get any where near open opposition. Because so much of the opposition's activities have centred on attacking the arbitrariness of Soviet Tustice the implicit assumptions of the opposition have often appeared purely liberal. However, the Opposition has already gone beyond this. Solzhenitsyn's writings, for example, contain a savage atlack on oureducratic privnege and tne pervasive inequality of Soviet society. And of course many leading Oppositionists, such as Pyotr Yakir, are avowed Marxists who challenge the regime which it proclaims.
Since its continued existence depenas on preventing the masses becoming aware of any socialist alternative to bureaucratic domination, the regime is prepared to go to any length to stamp out opposition and to take the most elaborate precautions. Thus the Arts Faculty of Moscow University which used to be housed next to the Kremlin has now been moved out to the suburbs. So far the oppositional movement among students has been very weak, at any rate in Moscow, but the authorities are taking no chances.
Beyond its need to preserve its political monopoly the Party leadership also knows that there is growing popular discontent, and that in these circumstances the Opposition could be the spark to ignite the prairie-fire. Despite a further rise of 15% in the prices paid to the peasants this year, there is still a massive shortfall of staple food products. In consequence there is a lively private market outside the State farm system altogether. In Moscow I saw one of the immense and crowded covered market areas where this private produce is sold, and sold at astronomic prices. The peasants who are able to turn their private plots to such profit are naturally happy with this system. But for the mass of Soviet workers it makes life much more expensive than official indices claim. It also makes everyday shopping a very wearing exercise for the customer since it frequently entails prolonged queuing. In Leningrad I saw a queue quarter of a mile long for towels which had mysteriously been in short supply:
The question which must be answered is why an advanced industrial economy is con tinually running into troubles of this sort. The main cause is lack of any genuine mass involve ment in the running of the strategic political and economic institutions. The Soviet leaders cannot supply material incentives to the working population and they cannot command any political enthusiasm. The result is an under lying stagnation of the conditions of life of the mass of the population despite the continuing growth of heavy industry. At the moment there is still a gulf between the everyday preoccupations of the masses and the more esoteric concerns of the miniscule opposition groups. But when the regime worries that this gulf might be bridged they are, for once, being far-sighted.
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The Red Mole 15th September 1970 Page 9
The civil war in Nigeria which reflected the of the ruling class with a mixture of confused