Privilege in the Soviet Union: A Study of Elite Life-styles Under Communism

190 Pages·2011·7.902 MB·English

by  Mervyn Matthews

Routledge Revivals
Privilege in the Soviet Union
First published in 1978, this unique work throws much-needed light
upon the exact nature of privilege and elite life-styles in the con
temporary Soviet Union, under the Communist regime. Dr Matthews
I
study places these life-styles in a historical perspective, and char
acterises, in sociological terms, the people who enjoyed them.
This study is based on an extensive programme of personal interviews
among emigre groups and a close analysis of original and little-known
legal historical sources. There are special sections on the nature of
change in the Soviet elite and on social mobility. This reissue will
attract interest amongst students and scholars concerned with the his
tory, politics and sociology of the Soviet Union; it will also be of value
to all those concerned with the age-old problem of social equality.
Privilege in the Soviet Union
A Study of Elite Life-Styles under Communism
Mervyn Matthews
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First published in 1978
by George Allen & Unwin
This edition first published in 2011 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 1978 Mervyn Matthews
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic! mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
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Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
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The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.
A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 0043230202
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-66964-1 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-81557-1 (ebk)
Privilege in
the Soviet Union
A Study of Elite Life-Styles
under Communism
MERVYN MATTHEWS
Reader in Soviet Studies. University of Surrey
London
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN
Boston Sydney
First published in 1978
Second impression 1979
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights
are reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of
private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under
the Copyright Act, 1956, no part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical,
mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquiries
should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
40 Museum Street, London WCIA ILU
© Mervyn Matthews, 1978
ISBN 0 04 323020 2
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Billing & Sons Limited, Guildford, London, Oxford, Worcester
Preface
The idea of social privilege in communist societies may still be
strange to a few people, but not many. The information which has
accumulated in the West about inequality in Russia and East
Europe is sufficient to dispel most illusions. An egalitarian ideology
need not always mean egalitarianism in practice.
The main object of this book, then, is not to prove that privilege,
political, economic or social, exists under communism. Obviously
there must be differences, even under the most redistributive regime.
I wish rather to define privileges of the communist variety a little
more exactly than has hitherto been possible, and put them in some
historical perspective. I have attempted to collect a body of fact
about benefits, both material and moral, which are accessible only
to small, restricted groups of people, and which are fixed by law or
administrative practice. If public scrutiny of them were allowed,
many of these benefits might be considered undeserved or excessive.
The existence of 'privilege' implies, of course, an 'elite' to enjoy it.
I have used my material to suggest answers to some of the questions
sociologists might ask about the size and nature of such a group:
this, indeed, forms a convenient starting point for this work. I have
based this book on published documents and the testimonies of
recent emigres whose powers of observation seemed eminently
reliable. My approach is factual rather than attitudinal: I endeavour
to show how privilege in Soviet and East European societies is
actively promoted or administered for. The topic, like all sociologi
cal matters, is complex, so I have only attempted to cover some
principal aspects. Each chapter concentrates on one of them, and
is to some extent an independent study.
Chapter 1 is concerned with defining 'an elite' at the beginning
of the seventies. I suggest income and occupation indices, bring in
the problem of the official nomenclature lists, and propose a magni
tude which could be useful for purposes of comparison with elites
in other lands. In a sense, of course, this is an arbitrary exercise,
for an 'elite' can be large or small, open or closed, within quite
wide conceptual limits. I hope, however, that my delineation is
reasonably realistic. At least I have tried to avoid the vaporous
generalisation which so often characterises discussions of Soviet
society. And since I am dealing with only a small group at the top
of the income scale, I have not thought it necessary to get involved
in the argument about the overall distribution of Soviet incomes.
Chapter 2 deals with the administrative basis of the elite life-style
- in other words, how the necessary goods and benefits are actually
provided - in the same period. Consideration of life-style in this
6 Privilege in the Soviet Union
context involves the risk of circular argumentation. I have already
defined an elite without specific reference to life-style; yet an elite
which enjoys no more than average Soviet standards is unthinkable.
If a privileged style of life is essential to Soviet elitism (in social,
if not in individual terms), access to it should in some sense be
considered as another index of elitism. Fortunately this problem,
which is perhaps more apparent than real, does not impede separate
study of the two themes. (Most, though not all, of the information
contained in Chapters 1 and 2 was first set out in a paper which I
wrote for the NATO colloquium 'Economic Aspects of Life in the
USSR', Brussels, January 1975 and was republished in 'Survey',
Summer 1975 issue.)
The third and fourth chapters are concerned with the past, and
their focus is primarily legal. My aim here is to see what social
privileges were embodied in the earliest Soviet law, and how they
developed over five and a half decades of Soviet rule. In other words,
I explore the extent to which the framework of Soviet law was
constructed, or modified, to benefit restricted social groups. I do
not seek an 'explanation' of existing privileges in the past, because
the past cannot give one: an explanation is to be found, if anywhere,
in the nature of society and man himself. Yet the legal developments
of bygone days illustrate the extent to which the configuration of
privilege is a matter of government decision, and deepen our com
prehension of the present.
No social group can be thought of as a static entity. Unfortunately
social mobility is very difficult to explore, especially in the Soviet
context. But rather than leave an unacceptable gap, I have
attempted to gather, in Chapter 5, information about change in the
Soviet elite, and to draw a few modest conclusions from it. These
generally point in the direction of stabilisation. Our understanding
of a social group can sometimes be improved by comparison with
like groups in other societies. Two interesting aspects of this
problem form the subject of the last chapter. The first is elite
life-styles in the Soviet-dominated countries of East Europe. I wish
to see how far Soviet characteristics can be distinguished in them,
and what differences protrude. Obviously it is impracticable to treat
each of the six societies involved in detail, so I have limited
myself to a few generalisations on them, followed by a more detailed
discussion of Poland. A comparison of the Soviet elite and possible
American counterparts takes up the last pagel> of the book.
As a result of these investigations, I provide, I hope, a clearer
picture of what 'privilege' means in communist society. I conclude
that the material gap between the Soviet elite and the masses is
enough to invalidate the cep.tral Soviet thesis about a relatively
high degree of egalitarianism in the USSR; that the limitations on
privilege which actually exist in the USSR have been achieved at
Preface 7
the price of drastic reductions in personal freedom; and that
protection and encouragement of privileges for the few in communist
societies are hypocritical and thus particularly distasteful in
character. It is indeed possible to find numerous indications of
levelling in the Soviet-type societies, but I cannot see that this in
any real sense portends the imminent disappearance of communist
elites.
Something needs to be said about the shelf of books already
written around the subject of Soviet elitism. The subject has, of
course, attracted attention from scholars of differing interests: at
least six major types of analysis can be distinguished.
Perhaps the most newsworthy is represented by 'Kremlinologists',
of whom the late Boris Nicolaevsky and the veteran journalist
Edward Crankshaw are perhaps typical. These observers have
explored the relations between top political leaders so as to under
stand better the play of politics between them. Intriguing though
such writing may be, it usually embraces too narrow a circle of
actors, and is too restricted, for social analysis. A great deal of
scholarship has been devoted to the concentration of political or
administrative power in the hands of a few narrow occupation
groups in the Fainsod or Brzezinski traditions. Although fashions
have changed over the years, this type of analysis has been concerned
in principle with the gap between the Soviet variety of totalitarianism
and what is loosely known as social democracy. The direction of
study is thus quite different from the present one.
A third, and newer, approach is based on the study of the
membership of political bodies like Central Committees, groups of
provincial party secretaries, managers, and other officials (Granick,
Hough, Skilling and Griffiths, and others). The object here is to
examine alliances, interest groups and turnover as a key to political
change. Unfortunately this often becomes a mechanical and rather
inconclusive exercise, involving age groupings, length of tenure of
office, hierarchy-switching, and so on.
Analysis of a more theoretical and predominantly left-wing
character has developed its own tradition (Lane, 1976). Most people
would regard writers like Leon Trotsky, Milovan Djilas or Herbert
Marcuse as leading exponents of it. Trotsky saw the Stalinist
bureaucracy as a self-seeking elite whose growth was actively
promoted. Djilas claimed that it had actually transformed itself
into an entire class at the centre of political power. Such views
are intensely critical of the USSR and have, at times, strangely
Weberian echoes. The concept of a 'bureaucratic elite' has at any
rate long since passed into common usage among sovietologists. I
would be the last to belittle the value of power-based analyses, but
I consider that on the whole they neglect the social dimension of
elitism that I have made my prime concern here.
8 Privilege in the Soviet Union
A fifth type of analysis uses a 'Who's Who' style, listing the
known prominent personalities. Published work of this kind has so
far been confined to a research institute in Munich and (I presume)
diplomatic or intelligence services. It is rather less promising than
might at first appear, because many people of elite status shun,
or are protected from, publicity, and the details available on those
known are usually confined to their jobs or public appearances.
Information on their family circumstances or origin, education,
marriage, personal associations, address, hobbies, etc., is rarely
obtainable.
Finally, many readable contributions to our knowledge of the
Soviet elite life-styles have come from the pens of people who lived
amongst them and defected (physically or morally) to the West.
The line stretches from G. Z. Besedovsky and G. A. Solomon in
the twenties down to Oleg Penkovsky and Svetlana Stalina
(Alleluyeva) in the sixties. This type of literature rarely has theo
retical pretension, but can be most revealing. The six studies in
this book draw upon or complement an of these approaches,
though, I repeat, they are oriented towards life-styles rather than
power holding.
A word needs to be said about my terminology. I have already
used the word 'communist' to describe Soviet society and the
societies of the Soviet bloc. It is a word with an unfashionable and
negative coloration. The alternative would be to talk about 'socialist'
or 'workers" societies. My preference for 'communist' (which
holds for the whole book) is based on the fact that 'socialism'
seems to me to imply, if not social democracy, then a degree of
freedom and benign governance which is typically unknown in the
Soviet bloc. The use of this term merely to indicate that the state
has appropriated the means of production, and is thus not 'capitalist',
is in a social sense most misleading. The use of 'workers" to
describe such societies is even less adequate: for good or ill, the
toiling masses in them have precious little say in what goes on.
I use 'the West' to describe industrialised societies of the West
European/US varieties; perhaps, with time, some more accurate
appellations will be devised, but I have not found them.
The word 'elite' presents, of course, its own difficulties. In well
over a century of use and misuse it has become sponge-like and
absorbed a great variety of meanings. As I have suggested, studies
of elitism are often studies of the concentration of political power;
such power may become an end in itself, but it is ultimately
essential for the maintenance of group privileges. My concern with
privilege and life-styles means that, unlike the political scientists, I
am primarily concerned with an elite as a body of consumers. I write
'elite' in the singular for this reason, reverting to the plural only when
discussing different societies, or distinguishing hetween sub-groups.