On Sun, 8 Jun 2003 15:06:21 -0400, Barkley Rosser <rosserjb at jmu.edu> wrote:
Soviet nomenklature privileges Command? As a followup to the discussion a few days ago Command? about the former Soviet nomenklatura, I note that Command? we seem to be in agreement that most of them lived Command? lives about like upper middle class of the US at the time,
Too many errors encountered; the rest of the message is ignored: and that as time proceeded into the 1980s, many of them became increasingly frustrated and fed up. Let me follow up with a bit more emendation on the examples I vaguely mentioned. In referring to "driving Zils," I should have said, "were driven by chauffeurs in their Zils." Of course the top dogs in the West also get driven by chauffeurs. In mentioning "free plane rides to Sochi" I was not referring to something like a free ticket in first class on a crowded 747. I was referring to a two or three people taking an entire Tupolev to Sochi, piloted by military personnel and served munificently, substantially more impressive than the Lear jets of the western elites. As for John Mage's pals at Vnesthtorgbank, I guess they were not sufficiently high up to have access to the Kremlin cafeteria, where at least for a long time, the fare was equal to the very best in the West. This entity was located in the same complex that includes the famous "House on the Embankment," the original building that was home to the original set of Old Bolsheviks. People did not stand in lines there with plastic trays and paper plates waiting to receive mystery meat. Amusingly enough today that entity is a privatized restaurant, only so-so for food quality, that plays on its past by having a kind of satirical retro chic of old Bolshevik posters and the like. Some on the list would really get a kick out of hanging out there for such items, as well as some of the other retro CP stuff, but the people running it are playing it strictly for laughs, although I suppose some old CPers actually do go there for the pseudo-atmosphere. As a further observation on all this, I would note that as the 1980s proceeded a number of things came into play. One was that indeed the Soviet economy was stagnating relative to the West, and this increasingly began to affect even the privileges of the most elite members of the nomenklatura, as well as certainly the great mass of the less privileged garden variety crowd. Also, as the 1980s proceeded these folks became increasingly aware of what they were missing, and ironically the higher one was the more likely they were to be aware of the relative disparities. The anger at Raisa Gorbacheva for her use of a gold American Express card in London was widespread and palpable. Furthermore, there were certain ways in which even the top elites were worse off than even lower middle class types in the West who had even a little bit of money. The really touchy issue was lack of free mobility. Commandeering a huge military jet to go to Sochi gets old after awhile, and one hankers after being able to simply get up and go to places like Paris or London or Cyprus or the Costa del Sol, as the "monstrous" New Russians readily do nowadays. Sure, the top elite could manage to arrange trips outside of the USSR and outside of the socialist bloc, certainly more readily than those below them. But even for the top elites such trips involved a lot of hassle and arranging and political ass kissing. I would note that today most of the old hangouts of the top crowd, the hotels and spas, etc. are open to the current middle class for pay. These are now superseded by newer and fancier places built by multinational corpses that are very glitzy and chic. These older facilities now have a rather dowdy atmosphere to them, those that have not been taken over by such outside interests anyway. But they are quite nice, and in their day they were fully the equal of their counterparts in the West. Barkley Rosser
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On Sun, 8 Jun 2003 15:06:21 -0400, Barkley Rosser <rosserjb at jmu.edu> wrote: