Looking for a Strong Man After th Revolution; D. Reardon

139 Looking for a StrongMan After the Revolution by Doug Reardon T aras and Ilya were doing a very bad thing. So awful, in fact, was the deed the two young men were doing on the train to Kiev that, should the police have found them out, Taras and Ilya could have gone to prison for a long time. They had bought cigarettes for two rubles a pack in St. Petersburg and were going to sell them for five rubles a pack in Kiev. "I could go five years to prison, five years for this!" lIya exclaimed later in the smugglers' flat while unpacking the rucksacks, suitcase, and cloth bag crammed with dozens of cartons of rather toxic-looking unfiltered cigarettes made in Bulgaria. "I am a criminal!" Taras chimed in with his part ner, both singingthe hymn of wronged victims of a bad system. A system that makes supplying legal products a criminal offense obviously is in need of reform. That 73 years and untold human suffering were required to make apparent the failure of Commu nism in the Soviet Union is a profound tragedy. Yet as the republics of the former union move toward building a more sensible society,old habits of state dependency may be as vexing as loosening the chains of government.

In many instances, if government simply removes itself from people's lives, people will gladly get on with putting society on a more sensi Doug Reardonis a free-lancejournalist. ble footing. For example, Taras and Ilya were black marketeers because the government did not allow a free market to exist. The cigarettes lIya and Taras smuggle are not particularly good, but queues are eye-poppingly long outside state-controlled tobacco shops in Kiev.If the state didn't have a monopoly on tobac co and set its price, the price of cigarettes might rise and the supply of cigarettes would increase until there was a satisfactory equilibrium. This is exactly the type of free-market price reform Russian President Boris Yeltsin has pledged for the Russian republic. But other republics so far haven't followed suit. However, withdrawing the heavy hand of gov ernment, which touches even the most picayune details of life,does not mean that many people will accept the absence of Big Brother. Patterns set by centuries of authoritarian rule seem little changed since the smashing of the highly centralized Soviet state. The desire for a powerful government to dic tate life remains widely held in Russia, Ukraine, and elsewhere.

Despite the "Second Russian Revolution," life flows along the same old path at the sprawling state farm surrounding Bortnichi, a village about 20 miles, through pine forest and across rich, black soil, from the Dnieper River and Ukraine's capital, Kiev. Sunlight haloed the milkmaid's angelicface, soft 140 THE FREEMAN • APRIL 1992 Since 1547, when Ivan the Te"ible created a state where virtually all reins of power were held by his hand, Russia's economic development has been dictated from central control rather than individual effort. and fair, her hair wrapped in a simple white scarf, as she seemed poised to part her lips in a soothing lullaby ... instead came steel. "There should be a hard hand, a fist!" hammered Tamara Checko, a mother of five who tends milk cows and fattens calves at the farm. "People should be forced to work!" Down the dirt road from the milkmaid's home, Ivan Momot, a 76-year-old retiree, was spreading ash fertilizer with a rake over the rectangle of earth where he cultivates cucumbers, red beets, and pumpkins. With a dash of his rake, Momot set.a billy goat bleating away from a stalk of corn, and grumped that someone needed to take control of things. "Someone broke into my root cellar!" he exclaimed. "Crime is increasing everywhere, even in our village."

Such faith in authoritarian measures to combat rising crime and economic difficulties is heard around the globe. Unlike the United States, Russia and Ukraine don't have centuries of consti tutional government and firmly established legal precedents to protect the individual against excesses of the state. Not only does this tendency toward authoritarianism pose serious problems for democracy, it also hinders economic reforms in the former Soviet bloc. The Needfor PersonalInitiative The reforms most experts believe are needed to pull Russia and the other republics out of their cur rent economic morass require personal initiative. But after centuries of being told what to do by the state, many people naturally look to the govern ment for instruction. Many hesitate to strike out on their own. "Nobody even thinks about working indepen dently," said Klavdiya Kharchenko, a soil expert, who has worked in the state farm's greenhouse for 26 years. After a moment's reflection in front of the greenhouse with its tattered plastic sheets flap ping madly in the wind over its battered and bro ken wooden frame, she acknowledged the place could be better run. For example, this season they'd botched the tomato crop by experimenting with four strains, only one of which thrived.

In fact, Kharchenko said, running a shipshape LOOKING FOR A STRONG MAN AFTER THE REVOLUTION 141 greenhouse privately "would be very lucrative." Nonetheless, she went on, "Conditions aren't ripe for that." For centuries, people have learned that condi tions aren't ripe until the government tells them they are ripe. In 1547, Ivan the Terrible adopted the title Czar and created a state where virtually all reins of power were held by his hands. Since then, Russia's economic development has been dictated from the center rather than growing spontaneous ly by individual effort. In 1712, Peter the Great thought up a plan for the Russian economy, then simply decreed that the industries in his scheme be created and trade be developed with the West. Even the last attempt in the U.S.S.R. to stimu late farming through privatization, during the 1920s famine, was steered from the center. Ironi cally that attempt, the New Economic Policy,was made by the Communists, but was brutally smashed after a few good years by Stalin, who shipped thousands of the small private farmers to death camps.

Throughout Soviet citizens' lives, the state set wages and controlled prices. So people are in the habit of expecting the state to take care of them. Free market reforms will be politically difficult because they mean increasing many prices. At the same time, the government must hold the lid on printing money to avoid hyperinflation. A conversation with Maria Fotan, a 27-year-old mother of five from a Carpathian mountain vil lage, illustrated the tremendous difficulty facing reformers. Fotan was in Moscow ("It's very excit ing!") on her annual trip to sell the baskets she weaves. "Prices are very high. It's very bad now," she said. "We don't know how we're going to feed our family." What if capitalism means prices will increase even more? "That means we must have more payment from the government," she replied simply.If not, "Then we're going to demonstrate. We'll get rid of them." Reliance on the state and a desire for authori tarian rule surface repeatedly in conversations with Ukrainian and Russian citizens.

The RootsRun Deep Even though the Communist Party's absolute power largelywasbroken by recent events,its roots snaked deep. "Party people used to watch our work and give instructions. They interfered," said Kharchenko, the greenhouse worker. "But now there's no more party oversight and propaganda." Communist Party members have been banned from conducting political activity and other party business in government-owned enterprises. Those new rules went into effect on the Bortnichi farm, three days before Kharchenko spoke. "The party members have not been kicked out," she said. Why not? "They're the managers." Elsewhere, the failed putsch and its aftermath seem to have had little effect. "It wasjust a revolu tion in Moscow," said Misha Babieva, 38, who comes from a village in the Caucasus Mountains near the Black Sea. "Nothing is changing in the places we live." Sometimes there is an odd, flailing attempt to fuse divergent desires for democratic reform and for the relative wealth provided by previous Com munist regimes.

"From America? Well, excuse me for not shav ing, there are no razors in this country," cracked Victor Vakulov,57, smoking a cigarette from a fil ter. "I'm against everything that's going on right now in Russia. Even after the war, it was better. Even though Khrushchev was a fool, it was better. When Brezhnev was ruling, it was much better. Because of Gorbachev's rule, we cannot live." He interrupted his tirade to haggle with an elderly woman trying to buy one of the grizzled ears of corn he was hawking from a wooden crate at a Moscow market. "The politicians are just chatterboxing and chat terboxing. We need a strong man," he said upon returning. "I'm for the power of the people, but the main thing is for this strong man to be just and to show us what to do. He must be cruel and strong, but no dictatorship. I want the power of the people." If history played a role in instillingthis tendency toward authoritarianism in Soviet life, history also serves to ward off such trends.

"Our young democracy is making a lot of mis takes right now," said Mikhail Smiryagin, a taxi driver in Moscow. "One mistake was to ban the Communist Party. We've already seen this. In 1917,the Bolsheviks banned all the parties." No, he was not a member of the Communist Party. "It's not a question of whether you're a member of the party, it's a question of your think ing like a democrat." D 142 BreatheDeep, America, WhileLibertyIs in the Air by Arthur E Hall, II By liberty, I understandthe power which every manhasoverhisownactions,andhis rightto enjoy thefruitofhis labor, art, andindustry,as far as by it he hurtsnotthe society,orany memberofit, by tak ing from any member, or by hinderinghim from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The fruits of a man's honest industry are the just rewardsof it, ascertainedto him by naturaland eternalequity, as is his title to use them in a mannerwhichhe thinks fit: And thus, with the abovelimitations,everyman issolelordandarbiterofhisownprivateactionsand property-a characterof which no man livingcan divesthim butby usurpation,or his own consent.