Chris is right to say that people hardly worked in the Brezhnev era. It was an era of institutionalised slacking and institutionalised corruption (James Millar calls this the Soviet 'Little Deal': the acceptance of corruption in place of systemic reform). When Burlatsky suggested raising wages, he quotes Brezhnev as replying: "You don't know life. Nobody lives on just his wages. I remember how we used to load wagons – three sacks inside and one on the side." An incredible admission! Of course, the Brezhnev era is characterised by the continuation of the nomenklatura-only stores, but some Russians perceived a kind of egalitarianism in the fact that the one who queued longest was at the front of the queue for less available goods. People would slack off from work to do so ... All in all, it was a massive system of rule-breaking that everyone indulged in. It was a sort of carnivalesque atmosphere. Only in black and white and without the fun. No-one would claim that the Brezhnev era was a joy to live in (although Mark Sandle [I think] claims that it was the golden age of the USSR), but I don't think the Yeltsin era was an all-day party, either.
Simon
James Heartfield wrote:
> I think it is a bit like Chris Doss's confusion. He
> does not understand the difference between nostalgia
> for the past, and the past. The world is full of
> people who think things were much better in the
> 1950s, but that does not mean that it was. It just
> means that their lives are a dead-end today.
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