DOMESTIC STRESSES ON THE SOVIET SYSTEM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87T00495R000700720002-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 26
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 30, 2010
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: November 1, 1985
• Content Type: NIE

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Director of Secret
Central
Intelligence NOFORN
Domestic Stresses
on the Soviet System
Secret
ME 11-18-85
November 1985
Copy 222
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STAT
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NOFORN,
N I E 11-18-85
DOMESTIC STRESSES
ON THE SOVIET SYSTEM
Information available as of 13 November 1985 was
used in the preparation of this Estimate, which was
approved on that date by the National Foreign
Intelligence Board.
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NOFORNJ
THIS ESTIMATE IS ISSUED BY THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL
INTELLIGENCE.
THE NATIONAL FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE BOARD CONCURS,
EXCEPT AS NOTED IN THE TEXT.
The following intelligence organizations participated in the preparation of the
Estimate:
The Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security
Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the intelligence organizations of the
Departments of State, the Treasury, and Energy.
Also Participating:
The Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army
The Director of Naval Intelligence, Department of the Navy
The Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Department of the Air Force
The Director of Intelligence, Headquarters, Marine Corps
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CONTENTS
Page
SCOPE NOTE ...................................................................................... 1
KEY JUDGMENTS .............................................................................. 3
DISCUSSION ........................................................................................ 7
I. The Elements of Discontent ........................................................ 7
A. The Legacy of Moribund Political Leadership ..................... 7
B. The Economic Slowdown ....................................................... 8
C. Social Pathologies .................................................................... 10
D. Dissent and Oppositionist Behavior ....................................... 10
E. The Shift in the Popular Mood .............................................. 12
F. External Factors ...................................................................... 13
II. Leadership Perceptions and Responses From Brezhnev to
Gorbachev ..................................................................................... 13
III. Prospects for the Soviet System and Society ............................... 15
A. Leadership Strategies .............................................................. 15
B. Responses of the System and Society ..................................... 16
C. Outlook .................................................................................... 17
IV. Implications for the United States ............................................... 19
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SCOPE NOTE
An accumulation of domestic stresses has been visible to official
and unofficial observers of the Soviet scene for many years. This
National Intelligence Estimate is the Intelligence Community's first
attempt to assess the impact of these internal Soviet problems. It also es-
timates the directions the new Gorbachev regime will take in addressing
them, and their prospects for success. The time period on which this
NIE focuses is the second half of the 1980s.
This Estimate rests in large part on a body of data and analysis that
will be published separately by the Office of Soviet Analysis, CIA. The
CIA study will record in detail the substance of intelligence reporting
on Soviet elite perceptions of the USSR's internal disorders and the
elite's mounting alarm over their political implications in recent years.
An estimate of this sort suffers from severe data problems,
particularly the lack of statistics on social trends and pathologies, such as
crime rates. Our analysis has also been encumbered by a lack of good
social theory for describing the behavior of a society that is far from fit-
ting the old "totalitarian model but is still ruled by a regime that
strives to fulfill many of that model's features. Nevertheless, this NIE
constitutes a baseline for future collection and, analysis on developments
inside Soviet society that will merit frequent reexamination in the years
ahead.
This Scope Note is Secret Noforn
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KEY JUDGMENTS
The USSR is afflicted with a complex of domestic maladies that se-
riously worsened in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Their alleviation is
one of the most significant and difficult challenges facing the Gorba-
chev regime.
By most contemporary standards, the Soviet Union is a very stable
country. Over the next five years, and for the foreseeable future, the
troubles of the society will not present a challenge to the, system of polit-
ical control that guarantees Kremlin rule, nor will they threaten the
economy with collapse. But, during the rest of the 1980s and well
beyond, the domestic affairs of the USSR will be dominated by the
efforts of the regime to grapple with these manifold problems, which
will also have an influence on Soviet foreign and national security
behavior.
At the root of Soviet domestic ills are three tightly interconnected
problems:
- A long-term slowdown in the economy caused by labor short-
ages, high natural-resource costs, and low factor productivity.
- A lethargic and parasitic party-state bureaucracy that has
virtually ceased to be a mobilizing tool and has become a major
obstacle to social and economic progress.
- An unmotivated labor force.
Both contributing to and resulting from these basic ills, the Soviet
system has been further afflicted by:
- A moribund political leadership from the last years of Brezhnev
until the accession of Gorbachev in 1985.
- Social pathologies including corruption by both officials and the
population at large, rampant alcoholism, rising crime rates, and
drug abuse.
- The spread of dissenting attitudes, including religious adher-
ence, nationalistic resentments, and youth alienation, despite
increased repression of overt political dissent in recent years.
- Isolated but numerous incidents of civil unrest and worker
protests, often over food shortages and working conditions.
The material spur to these problems was the near stagnation of
consumption levels in the late 1970s and early 1980s. More information
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from the outside world contributed to popular disgruntlement. The
underlying cause of most of these problems is the repressive nature of a
political system that discourages initiative throughout the society on
which economic and social progress depend, and that limits the private
freedoms Soviet citizens desire.
The worsening of these problems and the failure of the top
leadership to take credible action against them demoralized both the
ruling elite and the population at large in recent years. Continuing
measures begun under Andropov, the Gorbachev regime is trying to
develop a comprehensive strategy to alleviate these problems by
renewal-of leading cadres, tightened social and bureaucratic discipline,
and an economic growth program reliant on modernizing the technol-
ogy base and reform of the management system.
Gorbachev has achieved an upswing in the mood of the Soviet elite
and populace. But the prospects for his strategy over the next five years
are mixed at best:
- We expect his measures to be activist, but essentially conserva-
tive, with heavy emphasis on disciplinary controls to balance
what modest decentralizing reforms of the management bu-
reaucracy he adopts.
- Although recent regime policies have boosted growth, the
Gorbachev economic program is fraught with uncertainty and
risk. It depends heavily on an initial stimulus to labor productiv-
ity, which could be undercut because welfare improvements are
likely to be slow. The oil production turndown and uncertainties
in agriculture are further threats.
- Many of the ills of the system are very deeply rooted in the na-
ture of the economic system-widespread corruption and lack
of incentives, for example-and in the political system-wide-
spread attitudinal alienation. We do not expect Gorbachev to
make much progress in correcting them over the next five years,
despite strenuous measures.
- Many of Gorbachev's policies, such as cadre renewal, disciplin-
ary measures, differentiated material incentives for workers and
managers, and bureaucratic restructuring are likely to increase
rather than decrease tensions in the society that result from
anxiety and insecurity. The regime is, indeed, counting on such
tensions to spur worker performance.
Powerful factors buttress the stability of the Soviet system, includ-
ing pervasive political controls and the passive tolerance of the popula-
tion at large. At the same time, those factors favoring stability are a con-
tinuing brake on the economic growth and social modernization goals of
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the regime. Moreover, there is a growing tension between popular
aspirations and the system's ability to satisfy them, and also tensions
between the regime's growth and modernization goals, on the one hand,
and centralized political control on the other. We do not exclude the
possibility that at some unforeseeable future time these tensions could
pose a serious threat to the stability of the system.
Economic and social problems do not make the USSR anything
other than a powerful and acquisitive actor on the international scene.
Gorbachev gives every indication of endorsing well-established Soviet
goals for expanded power and influence. But slow growth, technological
backwardness, and the surrounding complex of social ills do pose
constraints on the USSR's achievement of international goals with ease:
- Because of them, the USSR is no longer an economic model for
advanced or developing societies, which diminishes Soviet ideo-
logical appeal.
- Internal problems give Soviet leaders a sense of the vulnerability
of their system to foreign influences and might, under some
conditions, inhibit foreign military ventures that could stimulate
internal unrest. These factors constrain foreign policy flexibility,
although Afghanistan and other Third World ventures indicate
that the USSR is much less constrained than the United States by
domestic considerations.
- Technological backwardness constrains Soviet ability to compete
in high-technology weapons development; and labor needs now
clash more than ever with high levels of active military
manpower.
In part because it appears a good way to advance established Soviet
foreign policy goals, but also because he wants a breathing space to ease
the task of managing Soviet internal problems, Gorbachev is urgently
seeking a restoration of the detente enviroment of the early 1970s in
East-West relations.' He is at present unwilling to pay a significant price
for detente by accommodating Soviet behavior to US security interests.
He will probably maintain this stance for several years while he
determines how well his domestic and foreign policies are working. But
if he fails to get either domestic revitalization or an international
' There is an alternative view-held by the Director, Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Assistant
Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Department of the Air Force-which holds that the Gorbachev regime
regards the advancement of its foreign and strategic goals as the primary determinant of, and motivating
factor behind, Soviet behavior in the international arena, not Soviet internal problems.
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breathing space on the cheap, he would most likely opt for tactical
accommodation with the United States in order to gain the advantage of
economic interaction with the West, facilitating both relief from
domestic economic constraints and continued military modernization.
At the same time, the Soviets would continue to pursue greater
influence in the Third World and efforts to divide US alliances.
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DISCUSSION
1. The Soviet regime under its new leader, Mikhail
S. Gorbachev, faces a knot of societal problems that
embraces almost all aspects of Soviet life. Together
they make the Soviet Union a far less healthy society
than either its leadership or its population wishes it to
be, and a parody of its official values of social progress,
public welfare, and popular optimism. Most of these
problems-from alcoholism to declining public health,
from rampant corruption to abysmal worker produc-
tivity, from youth alienation to dissenting attitudes in
the population-have deep social and political roots.
They worsened considerably under conditions of eco-
nomic slowdown that beset the system in, the late
1970s and were exacerbated by the period of mori-
bund political leadership preceding Gorbachev's ac-
cession. (c)
2. The manifold illnesses of Soviet society are less
traumatic than what the Soviet population suffered
and the regime survived in the not-too-distant past:
civil war, collectivization, purges, mass terror, and
World War II. Yet they are also less tractable or
transient than those intense stresses. The problems of
the present are very much products of the system in its
maturity and represent a definite running down of the
capacity of the system to motivate constructive social
behavior or to suppress some pervasive forms of anti-
social behavior through coercion or persuasion. (c)
3. To some extent these problems are the products
of urbanization and modernization systematically
sought by the regime over nearly 70 years, and of the
high priority always placed by the regime on military
power at the expense of other goals: (c)
- Growing and unsatisfied consumer demand has
been the natural consequence of overall Soviet
economic development. (c)
- The development of a more critically thinking
population, less susceptible to previous forms of
exhortation, is the product of mass education. (c)
- A society more open to outside influences results
from advances in communications and the greater
international involvement of the USSR as a su-
perpower. (c)
But the Soviet system has found it increasingly diffi-
cult to manage many of the effects of these processes it
has abetted. (c)
4. Soviet societal problems are interrelated and
exceptionally difficult to manage. For example, poor
worker performance contributes to slowing economic
growth, which fails to provide the incentives needed to
improve performance. Therapeutic measures taken by
the regime may well increase social stresses in costly
ways before they pay off in increased growth and
improved welfare. In the final analysis, the system
itself is a large part of the problem because it discour-
ages the creativity and initiative on which the progress
of a modern technological society depends. (c)
5. The new Gorbachev leadership is clearly deter-
mined to alleviate the system's societal problems
through revitalization of the entire political elite,
tightening of social discipline, sharp improvements in
economic performance, and, more generally, restora-
tion of belief by the population and the elite that the
system works. A variety of sources indicate that
Gorbachev has made considerable progress in impart-
ing a sense of optimism to the elite and to some
elements of the populace, at the price of an increased
sense of insecurity among some. His efforts are more
than a matter of seeking improved social conditions as
one among several regime priorities. The new leader-
ship perceives a troubled and underachieving society
as a twofold threat to its most vital goals of projecting
power abroad and maintaining control at home: first,
unhealthy societal conditions are an obstacle to the
growth and technological modernization on which the
USSR depends to be the effective and ultimately
preeminent superpower it seeks to be; second, they are
a source of tensions that could, if not checked, jeopar-
dize the stability of the internal system itself. (c)
1. The Elements of Discontent
A. The Legacy of Moribund Political Leadership
6. The Brezhnev leadership fulfilled with a ven-
geance its mandate from the ruling elite to provide
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"stability of cadres" after the terror of Stalin and the
organizational turmoil of the Khrushchev years. Under
its aegis the thousands of party and state functionaries
who run the Soviet system came to enjoy virtually
tenured positions. The principal effects of this condi-
tion were: (c)
- Entrenched bureaucracies were relieved of pres-
sures for innovation needed to improve economic
performance and they undermined various insti-
tutional reforms that the Brezhnev leadership
tried to apply to energize the economy. (c)
- Throughout the system, leaders remaining in
place or moving up at a leisurely pace found
their technical and managerial competence for
handling an increasingly complex economy out
of date; but they were under no pressure to step
aside. (c)
- Careerism, cynicism, and selfish interests came
almost openly to dominate the actual values of
the ruling elite, undermining both their interest
and their ability to motivate constructive behavior
in the population. (c)
- Corruption in the form of bribery and shady
dealings on the underground economy, always
endemic to Soviet officialdom, acquired epidemic
proportions throughout the ruling elite, further
undermining its capacity to pursue official goals.
(c)
- With low mobility in the leadership system and
the ability of its members to secure education
and positions for their children, the elite assumed
some characteristics of a hereditary aristocratic
class. (c)
7. As a consequence of these phenomena, the party-
state machinery was transformed from a mobiliza-
tional tool into an obstacle to progress on all fronts. By
the late 1970s and early 1980s, on an ever wider scale,
the very members of the privileged Soviet elite were
expressing gloom and disgruntlement about the state
of affairs of which they were so much the cause and
the beneficiaries. The period of visibly enfeebled
leadership at the top, from Brezhnev's late years
through Chernenko, both symptomized and stimulat-
ed the pessimism of the ruling class. Indeed, its
members became increasingly worried about the abili-
ty of the system to cope and to assure their own
survival as its privileged element. (s)
8. If Gorbachev has achieved anything in his very
brief tenure so far, most reporting indicates that he has
reversed this mood of elite concern about inertia at the
top by both his energetic, businesslike style and his
shakeups of top-level party and state personnel. This
new degree of optimism coexists with uncertainty as to
how well the Gorbachev regime will fare in addressing
the system's problems. (s)
9. The growth of the Soviet economy has been
systematically decelerating since the 1950s as a conse-
quence of dwindling supplies of new labor, the in=
creasing cost of raw material inputs,. and the con-
straints on factor productivity improvement imposed
by the rigidities of the planning and management
system. The average annual growth of Soviet GNP
dropped from 5.3 percent in the late 1960s, to 3.7
percent in the early 1970s, to 2.6 percent in the late
1970s. Soviet GNP grew by only 1.6 percent per
annum in Brezhnev's last years (1979-82). After reach-
ing a low in 1979, GNP growth averaged 2.3 percent
from 1980 to 1984. Growth in 1985 will probably be in
the range of 2.5 to 3.0 percent. These recent improve-
ments have been the result largely of disciplinary and
incentive measures introduced under Andropov and
Gorbachev. It remains to be seen whether the upturn
in growth can be sustained. (c)
10. Growth in consumption has been a principal
casualty of the overall Soviet economic slowdown,
with an enormous impact on the Soviet popular mood.
Per capita consumption grew at 4.3 percent per
annum in the late 1960s, 2.6 percent during the first
half of the 1970s, 1.8 percent in the second half of the
1970s, and 1.2 percent in the first half of the 1980s.
From the point of view of the Soviet consumer,
accustomed to rapid improvements from an abysmal!
base in the first two decades after World War II, the
Soviet economy looked stagnant. In fact, many Soviet
citizens have had the impression that their standard of
living deteriorated in this period: (c)
- Soviet public health care has measurably deterio-
rated because of skimpy funding, sloppy per-
formance, environmental problems, and growing
alcohol abuse. In the USSR alone among industrial
nations, life expectancy has declined during the
past two decades, death rates (including infant
mortality) have increased, and control of major
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The Exceptional Sector:
The Soviet Military-Industrial Complex
During the past decade, while the rest of the Soviet
economy was slowing down and social difficulties deep-
ened, production by Soviet defense industry for the
Soviet military saw a decline in growth rates. But the
number of new weapon systems fielded reached histori-
cally high levels, and the pace of technological advance
increased. The Soviet military-industrial complex, in
short, remains the most creative sector of the Soviet
system: (s)
- During 1975-85, the USSR fielded about 200
major new or modernized military systems and
procured about 300 billion rubles' worth of mili-
tary hardware (worth $640 billion if procured in
the United States using Defense Department prac-
tices). (s)
- Through energetic domestic effort and legal and
illegal foreign acquisition, the USSR scored major
military technology advances in solid-propellant
strategic missiles, surface-to-air and air-to-air mis-
siles, long-range cruise missiles, fighters, bombers,
transport aircraft, tanks, command-and-control
systems, and reentry vehicles. (s)
- Soviet military command structures and doctrines
saw important changes, most evolutionary, but all
displaying a high order of purposefulness and
determination to solve military problems. (s)
The Soviet military-industrial complex is the high-
achievement sector of the Soviet system for a number of
reasons: (c)
- It is accorded top priority by the political leader-
ship in access to resources and quality manpower,
and given unusual flexibility to solve problems. (c)
communicable diseases has deteriorated danger-
ously. Palpably depressing the quality of life,
adverse public health trends have also impinged
negatively on demographic conditions and,
hence, future labor supply. (c)
Despite continuing massive expenditures on con-
struction and major improvements over the past
three decades, the Soviet housing shortage re-
mains critical, with deleterious effects on family
life, birthrates, alcoholism, and crime. (c)
After rapid improvements in the 1960s and early
1970s, the food situation became particularly
acute in the early 1980s. Per capita food con-
sumption rose 2 percent annually in 1983-84. But
- It is served by an elaborate effort to acquire and
apply foreign technology. (s)
- The presence of a powerful, demanding customer,
the Ministry of Defense, backed by central party
and state organs, gives military-industrial manage-
ment unique incentives to perform; their labor
force enjoys unique incentives and rewards for
work. (c)
- Military discipline affords unique coercive tools
throughout the armed forces and the military-
industrial sector. (c)
Nevertheless, the Soviet military-industrial complex
is not isolated from the problems of the surrounding
society: (c)
- Military manpower and the workforce in defense
industries suffer from the alcoholism, disease,
corruption, and educational deficiencies that af-
flict the rest of the society. (c)
- While much more effective and somewhat more
efficient than the rest of the economy, the mili-
tary-industrial complex absorbs vast resources di-
rectly and indirectly, constituting a heavy burden
on other social goals. (c)
- As military technologies become more complex
and diffuse, Soviet military power is becoming
more constrained by low technology levels in the
society at large, a source of worry to Soviet
military authorities. (c)
unsatisfied demands for quality and variety of
food, and the legendary difficulties of shopping
for it, present a fairly stagnant picture to the
Soviet consumer. (c)
11. One consequence of the economic slowdown, in
conjunction with the cadre policies of the Brezhnev
regime, has been a reduction in upward social mobil-
ity. As a Soviet publication acknowledged, "the times
for soaring careers are past." In general, the society has
become much more stratified, with most locked into a
particular category of privilege or deprivation. This
phenomenon has told against motivation at all levels
and contributed particularly to youth alienation. (c)
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C. Social Pathologies
12. Economic slowdown, rising expectations and
demands on the part of the Soviet populace, and the
general laxity of official controls over black-market
activities have contributed greatly in recent years to
behavior that the regime and the Soviet people regard
as antisocial, despite their often enthusiastic participa-
tion in it: (c)
- Corruption involving the underground or second
economy has always been a major part of Soviet
life, engaging officials and the society at large. In
recent years it has grown substantially. Many
citizens, high or low, meet the most basic needs
for goods and services "na levo" (on the "left" or
on the sly). Substantial illegal incomes are made
by supplying them. To a considerable extent,
corruption makes the system work and life more
livable. But it also involves wholesale theft of
time and goods from the state, and, quite as
pernicious, a massive erosion of standards of
honesty. Networks of speculators have been able
to operate beyond the control of the system and
exert some influence over it, at least on the local
level. (c)
- Crime appears to have risen in recent years-
including violent crime and major robberies.
Juvenile crime has become an especially serious
problem. Soviet criminologists bemoan the
growth of a criminal subculture. Rising crime
levels and widespread recognition that corrup-
tion has undermined police effectiveness have
tarnished the claim of the system to offer a high
degree of personal security, although citizens still
believe that crime in the West is even worse than
in the USSR. The growth of Soviet forced labor
facilities in the last decade probably indicates
both higher crime rates and stricter law enforce-
ment. (s)
- Alcohol abuse has reached epidemic propor-
tions in the USSR by the testimony of all sources,
including Gorbachev, well beyond the bounds of
the national habit often cited to explain it.
Rooted in the boredom of a deprived social
environment and official policies for siphoning
off excess purchasing power, hard alcohol con-
sumption evidently became the highest in the
world on a per capita basis (this in a nation where
the large Muslim minority populations drink
little). It became a major contributor to declining
public health, the growing instability of family
life, the rising crime rate, and declining labor
productivity throughout the economy. (c)
- Drug abuse, although not nearly on the level of
that in the United States, has become a mounting
problem in the Soviet Union, as indicated in all
reporting. Exposure of young soldiers to drug use
in Afghanistan has been a recent contributor. (c)
13. These pathologies manifest the general tendency
of society at large to become less disciplined and of
more areas of Soviet life to slip beyond direct regime
regulation. Alcohol abuse and corruption, mainly theft
of work time and goods for the second economy, are
clearly the most serious of these challenges to Soviet
official goals and controls. Gorbachev has moved
forcefully to deal with the alcohol problem and has
achieved some short-term positive results-less public
drunkenness and drinking on -the job. But long-term
improvements require, in addition to punitive or
"administrative" measures, the provision of substitute
goods, services, or activities; they are not yet in
evidence. The anticorruption campaigns of Andropov
and Gorbachev have taken their toll of blatantly
offending officials, but it is too early to tell how far
these measures can go in checking a phenomenon
endemic to Soviet life. (c)
D. Dissent and Oppositionist Behavior
14. Discontent with the society among Soviet citi-
zens manifests itself overwhelmingly in a retreat from
official values and activities into private modes of
belief and behavior that are largely apolitical, al-
though they may be accompanied by conscious resent-
ment of the system and genuinely antisocial actions, an
ironically accurate label the regime applies to heavy
drinking, for example. Yet there are dissident elements
throughout the system, and some forms of politically
or morally conscious modes of dissent appear to be on
the rise: (c)
- Anti-Russian nationalism and resentment of
Muscovite rule are probably harbored by many
non-Russians, who now make up a majority of
the Soviet multinational empire. These attitudes
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appear most virulent in the Baltic states, followed
by the western Ukraine, Georgia, and Central
Asia.2 Disappointing economic conditions have
apparently contributed to intensification of anti-
Russian nationalist feeling. A combination of co-
optation of local elites, economic development,
and repression have long served to keep anti-
Russian nationalism under control. Separatist ele-
ments can be found in all these areas, but they
are at present politically insignificant. Not all
national consciousness on the part of non-Russian
minorities is anti-Soviet or even anti-Russian.
Sometimes it is directed against other minorities,
and Moscow exploits these national rivalries. For
the system, the most troublesome manifestations
of nationalism arise from in-system resistance to
Moscow's goals with respect to labor movement,
regional development, and education and lan-
guage policy. Overall, we judge that ethnic self-
consciousness and resentment of Russian domi-
nance is steadily rising inside the USSR, along
with the growth of the non-Russian population.
Specific developments that have intensified this
trend locally are the impacts of Poland's turmoil
on the western Ukraine and the Baltic national-
ities and of the war in Afghanistan on the peoples
of Central Asia. (c)
- Russian nationalism, long a psychological main-
stay of the system and audibly part of Gorba-
chev's outlook, has recently displayed a faintly
discernible dissident character. For many Rus-
sians there is a search for values in Russia's past
and traditions to replace a hollow official ideology.
For some, there is a conscious belief that Com-
munist rule has subverted Russia's values and
despoiled its substance. In recent years one com-
plaint of the Russian nationalists has been that
non-Russian regions enjoy margins of prosperity
Y The Director, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Depart-
ment of State, believes that this text exaggerates the "anti-
Russian" character of ethnic nationalism in Central Asia. While it
is true that in the Baltic states and the western Ukraine local
nationalists are openly anti-Russian and anti-Soviet and seek
national independence, in Central Asia the situation is very
different. There, the extremely limited samizdat evidence suggests
that local nationalists have accepted most features of the Soviet
system and at most seek greater autonomy within it. In large part
this is because the Central Asian nationalists have no recent
experience of political independence-unlike the Baltic states,
which were separate states as late as 1940. (s)
at Russian expense. Most who would call them-
selves Russian nationalists are partisans of strong
Russian rule from the Kremlin. They were vocal-
ly unhappy during the recent period of weak
leadership. The need to take account of Russian
nationalist attitudes limits regime flexibility in
dealing with other nationalities. For the most
part, however, the Soviet leadership has skillfully
used Russian nationalism to defend its right to
rule. For many Russians, Soviet power evokes a
deep sense of national pride that the regime can
exploit. (s)
Religion today constitutes the most widespread
manifestation of rejection of the official values of
the avowedly atheistic Soviet system. Adherence
to Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism, Protestant
denominations, and Islam is observably growing.
Even the controlled Russian Orthodox Church
occasionally manifests troublesome behavior for
the regime at the grassroots level. Some religious
believers are anti-Soviet activists, especially in
the Baltic, the western Ukraine, and Central
Asia. The leadership has cracked down vigorous-
ly on most dissident religious activity, and we
expect this trend to continue. For most, religion
is not dissent but largely an alternative source of
values and inspiration, itself a substantial enough
challenge to merit regime concern. (c)
Human rights and political dissent are more
thoroughly suppressed in the USSR today than at
any time since Stalin's death. Arrests, harass-
ment, expulsions, exile, and emigration have all
but eliminated the small but vocal human rights
movements that marked the late 1960s and early
1970s, although in the Baltic states dissident
activism inspired by nationalism and religion
continues to be observed. Most Soviets are indif-
ferent or mildly hostile to political dissenters.
Distrust between the intelligentsia of Russia and
its workers and peasants obstructs any congealing
of popular discontent into political programs of
the kind that Solidarity represented in Poland.
Nevertheless, political dissent in the USSR has by
no means been expunged. Those who gave moral
support to the visible dissenters of the recent past
are still there. Some have been demoralized by
repression. But we have evidence that small
numbers of dissidents have gone underground
and become radicalized. Where in the past they
were "constitutional" dissenters-that is, using
moral example to make the system live by its
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own professed rules-some dissenters now are
more prone to consider violent actions against the
system. Some working-class youths are especially
prone to this radicalization. Their numbers are
probably very small, but their troublemaking
potential in unsettled conditions may not be. (s)
- Civil unrest-some 300 cases since 1970 of
demonstrations, strikes, riots, and other protest
disorders-has been reported by intelligence and
other available sources, which inevitably under-
state the total. Our evidence indicates such inci-
dents were a particular problem in the 1979-81
period when economic conditions were at a low
point. We know of no episodes as large and
prolonged as the food riots of 1962 in Novocher-
kassk, but some have been dramatic. In 1980,
tens of thousands of workers struck in the Russian
city of Tolyatti.. According to a 1982 report,
party members in Perm turned in their party
cards in protest over food shortages. Most such
occurrences arise from worker grievances over
food supplies or working conditions. Some disor-
ders have arisen over ethnic conflicts, and some
have been related to the Afghanistan war. Where
food or local conditions are at issue, the regime
pacifies the protesters with emergency supplies
and then arrests the ringleaders. These responses,
plus pervasive police controls, have effectively
squelched any tendency for such outbursts to
proliferate and chain together into a serious
challenge to the system. But every such incident
is a jolt to the Moscow leadership. (s)
15. Dissent is in no way out of control in the USSR.
Dissenting behavior, involving some overt action, is at
a low point because of the repressive measures applied
during the late. 1970s and 1980s,. with the. exception of
participation in religious activities. But dissenting atti-
tudes-that is, conscious adherence to moral, political,
or social beliefs that the state opposes-are probably
more widespread in the USSR today. than at any time
since Stalin's death. Inclusion of religion and anti-
Russian nationalism in this broad definition probably
means that dissenting attitudes are held by a majority
of the Soviet population to one degree or another. At
present they are not a direct challenge to regime
controls, but a manifestation of, popular alienation and,
to some extent, an obstacle to regime goals. (c)
E. The Shift in the Popular Mood
i6. As a consequence of the developments summa-
rized above, the mood of the Soviet population shifted
in the late Brezhnev period. The optimism of early
postwar decades gave way to a deep social malaise.
Soviet society has become more dissatisfied, more
demanding, and less pliable. These attitudes have been
manifested in a number of widely reported and
officially denounced phenomena: (c)
- Worker morale fell, increasing labor productivity
problems. (c)
- The population is becoming increasingly materi-
alistic, preoccupied with acquiring what good
things of life are around, and infatuated with
imported goods. (c)
- More and more citizens are dropping out of
public activities, and even official work, to pur-
sue rewarding private activities from merely
shopping to trafficking on the black market.
Subcultures beyond the regime's purview have
proliferated. (c)
- As a class, Soviet youth are particularly alienated
from the system. Significant minorities of them
are prone to engage in various types of deviant
and delinquent behavior-draft dodging, drift-
ing, rejecting home and family life, and crime.
(c)
17. In the population at large, respect for and fear
of the authority structure declined. The inclination to
cheat or get around the system is pervasive, and little
penalty is expected short of the most provocative
behavior. This means that the political and psychologi-
cal leverage of the regime over the population has
declined. (c)
18. Over the past decade morale problems within
the Soviet elite have also increased, paralleling those
within the society as a whole: (c)
- Many elite members exhibit a lower sense of
social purpose than in the past, a weaker commit-
ment to serving public as opposed to their own
private interests. (c)
- The elite's vision of the Soviet future has become
gloomier. Many middle- and lower-level officials
fear that the economy is played out and became
more apprehensive about the potential for popu-
lar unrest than at any time since the early years
of Soviet power. (c)
- Many elites during Brezhnev's final years and the
brief tenures of Andropov and Chernenko came
to see the Politburo as a geriatric group out,of
touch with reality and lacking any strategy or
competence to deal with accumulating problems.
(c)
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- Elite discipline eroded, as reflected in more open
criticism of the leadership and system to foreign-
ers, and an increase in defections to the West. (c)
- Reporting available to us on attitudes within the
KGB and the Soviet military-the ultimate cus-
todians of coercive power in the system-indi-
cates that these elites became particularly pessi-
mistic and disgruntled about the Soviet scene in
the early 1980s. The party leadership was un-
doubtedly aware of and concerned especially
about these trends. (s NF
19. Arising in part from economic slowdown, these
negative moods clearly had further negative impact on
the condition of the economy.
- Shirking of work and responsibility throughout
the labor force and the administrative bureau-
cracy.
- Counterproductively high labor turnover.
- Theft of worktime and state goods for private
- A labor force less pliable and fearful of coercion.
- A decline in the relevance of official institutions
of all kinds for the real lives and behavior of
people. (c)
20. Although not new, these phenomena told par-
ticularly against labor productivity on which economic
performance is increasingly dependent. Associated
trends, such as declining health standards and low
birth rates, worked against growth of the labor force.
It is too early to tell how successful Gorbachev will be
in counteracting these phenomena, but he has shown
willingness to take forceful action in addressing them.
(c)
21. Although more isolated from the outside world
than any industrialized country, the USSR is far less
isolated today than it was two decades ago. External
influences clearly played a role in the downturn of the
Soviet popular mood in the late 1970s and early 1980s:
(c)
- The very success of the USSR in asserting itself
on the world scene, and the pride of the regime
and much of the population in this achievement,
had a tendency to bring the outside world into
Soviet public consciousness in a variety of ways,
such as officially sanctioned travel, importation
of Western goods, and even the regime's
own propaganda. However distorted in the offi-
cial media, the contrast between Soviet and
Western living conditions was increasingly obvi-
ous and important to Soviet citizens. (c)
- Western radiobroadcasts to the USSR find in-
creasingly attentive audiences in a more educat-
ed population. Western and East European tele-
vision can be received by some populations in the
Baltic, Byelorussian, and Ukrainian regions. (c)
- Workers' assertiveness in Poland, while generally
offensive to the Soviet population, conveyed the
message that even these people, better off than
Soviets on the average, could take action. (c)
22. Changes in the Soviet population itself interact-
ed with outside influences in propelling the downturn
in popular morale. More urbanized, more educated,
and more remote from the privations of the prewar
and war years, the population tended increasingly to
measure its situation and prospects against the
achievements and expectations generated in the 1950s
and 1960s, years of rapid progress and high hopes for
the standard of living. Outside sources of information
told about better conditions abroad and undermined
regime credibility. They were particularly powerful in
shaping the outlook of Soviet youth, deepening their
alienation from official values. (c)
II. Leadership Perceptions and Responses From
Brezhnev to Gorbachev
23. Gorbachev represents a new order of commit-
ment by the Soviet regime to face the social discontent
besetting the system. The Brezhnev-Kosygin leader-
ship tried, in a dilatory manner, to implement a
limited reform in the management structure in the
mid-1960s, and was thoroughly defeated by the sine-
cured bureaucracy. By the early 1970s Brezhnev was
urging a shift from an "extensive" strategy (more
capital and labor) to an "intensive" strategy (more
productivity) for economic development, but did not.
follow through. By the late 1970s and early 1980s the
Brezhnev regime recognized that economic problems
were aggravating social problems, and that these prob-
lems could produce a social crisis with profound
political implications for the system. (c)
24. Although Politburo members are largely insulat-
ed from direct contact with the population, they have
voluminous information about developments in Soviet
society. Soviet leaders have publicly displayed aware-
ness that popular discontent has grown stronger in
recent years while regime instruments for maintaining
social tranquillity and motivating the work force have
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grown weaker. The Soviet leadership has appeared
concerned primarily about the mutually reinforcing
downward spiral of economic conditions and popular
morale, but also sensitive to the possibile development
of a threat to political control. (c)
25. The Polish crisis of 1979-82 became an object
lesson of major proportions. In Poland, many members
of the Soviet elite-Andropov and Chernenko among
them-saw a potential mirror of their own society. In
addition, Soviet leaders have probably believed to
some extent their own propaganda to the effect that
the United States was seeking to undermine the Soviet
system by breaking its economy in a renewed arms
competition, use of economic sanctions, and increased
subversive measures. More recently Soviet leaders
have confronted growing public antipathy to the war
in Afghanistan, which, while incapable of influencing
their immediate policies on the war, interacts with
other expressions of popular discontent. (s)
26. Conflicts over the best strategy for dealing with
the USSR's economic and social problems were clearly
an issue in the politics of succession to the general-
secretaryship from Brezhnev to Gorbachev, although
personal and bureaucratic alignments within the top
leadership played the decisive role. (s)
27. In any case, a distinction emerged between a
relatively passive Brezhnev-Chernenko stance and a
more activist Andropov-Gorbachev stance on the cru-
cial issues. Both points of view appeared to appreciate
the gravity of the USSR's socioeconomic situation.
Especially in Brezhnev's last years, Chernenko made
clear his fear that economic stagnation and an in-
competent management elite, "detached from the
people," harbored the risk of a social crisis. The
difference of perspective concerned what should be
done and was rooted both in different appreciations of
what the system could risk and what the various
constituencies of the players demanded. The Brezh-
nev-Chernenko perspective was clearly more confi-
dent, or at least hopeful, that exhortation could im-
prove the situation. It was plainly fearful that more
direct attacks on the system's problems could endanger
the two leaders' power bases in the party-state bureau-
cracy, but also possibly introduce new sources of
instability into the system. The Brezhnev approach
was to pacify elites by providing job security and
tolerating corruption, and to permit the population an
expansion of de facto freedom to pursue private
interests in exchange for political quiescence. (c)
28. There is good evidence, however, that the dom-
inant trend within the leadership in recent years has
been toward the more activist strategy exemplified by
Andropov and Gorbachev. This point of view was
particularly alarmed by the erosion of the party's
moral authority and the consequent weakening of real
central control throughout the society and the elite.
Temporizing and evasions would only allow the prob-
lems to worsen, with more serious ultimate conse-
quences for the regime. (s)
29. As leadership concern about domestic problems
increased during Brezhnev's last years, the Politburo
began to experiment with new ways of managing
them. From about 1979, elements of a more urgent
approach began to emerge. Brezhnev's death gave
impetus to major policy initiatives under Andropov,
continued in a muted fashion by Gorbachev and
others during the Chernenko interregnum, and resur-
facing as the main line when Gorbachev became
General Secretary in March 1985. (c)
30. Despite many inconsistencies and waverings in
Soviet domestic policy during the period since 1979-
the products of controversy and uncertainty among
Soviet leaders-there have been four central lines of
policy: (c)
- The leadership has moved to strengthen the
social fabric and to tighten discipline across the
board-by enforcing higher performance stan-
dards for workers and officials, moving to root
out official corruption, strengthening law en-
forcement agencies, taking steps to limit Western
influence on Soviet society, embarking on a stern
campaign to curtail alcohol consumption (proba-
bly the most dramatic social innovation since de-
Stalinization), increasing penalties for lapses in
military discipline and tightening up on draft
deferments, undertaking an educational reform
intended to remold youth attitudes and bring
more people into the work force at early ages,
and bolstering the family as a base of social
stability. (c)
- The regime has attempted to shore up its persua-
siveness and to combat popular cynicism by
speaking more bluntly, working to improve the
quality of domestic propaganda and information,
by appearing more responsive to public opinion
and consumer interests, and by more openly
exploiting Russian nationalism as a prop of the
system. (c)
- Under Andropov and Gorbachev, the regime has
attempted to enhance the image of the Politburo
and to reinvigorate the political system by far-
reaching cadre renewal moves, intended to bring
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more able officials into leadership posts and to
motivate others to perform better. The aim here
has been to fortify the legitimacy of the system
by attempting to be tougher on itself and thereby
more effective. (c)
- Major new programs for increasing the supply
and improving the distribution of food and con-
sumer goods have been launched. (c)
31. Under Gorbachev the basic elements of a long-
term strategy for revitalizing the economy have be-
gun-but only barely-to emerge: (c)
- First has come the so-called "human factors"
element. Through cadre renewal, tighter disci-
pline, and more persuasive exhortation-resting
to a large extent on revived hopes for a better
future in the population-Gorbachev aims to get
an immediate boost to economic performance
from raised productivity. The 1986-90 plan im-
plies an ambitious average annual growth in
GNP of about 3.5 percent a year for the rest of
the decade. (c)
- Gorbachev has ordered a major redirection of
investment resources into the machine-building
sector for the purpose of a massive (50 percent)
retooling of industry by 1990. This strategic shift
is intended to spur the modernization of the
whole economy in the 1990s and beyond. (c)
- Although he has so far spoken in only general
terms, Gorbachev has placed reform of the eco-
nomic management system squarely on the agenda.
He has indicated that he will pursue the dual,
and partly contradictory, goals of more effective
central planning and increased autonomy at the
enterprise level, all aimed at raising productivity
and the pace of technological advance. He has
also indicated a willingness to consider legaliza-
tion of some small-scale private economic activity
in the service sector, and a further expansion of
private agricultural plots for city dwellers and
workers. (c)
- Eastern Europe has been told by Moscow that it
must give more to the Soviet economy in con-
sumer and capital goods, and get less from it in
the way of subsidized delivery of raw materials
and energy. (c)
32. The resource allocation priorities signaled by
the Gorbachev regime are largely consistent with past
trends. The investment strategy calls for a shift of
investment emphasis toward machine building, rather
than a major increase in total allocations to investment
at the expense of the other claimants on resources-
consumption and defense. Ambitious goals for con-
sumer goods have been announced and the population
has been led to expect a brighter future, largely on the
basis of its own work. Military programs in train and
impending suggest no reduction in the relative share of
defense spending and rates of growth near or perhaps
slightly more rapid than in the recent past. Gorba-
chev's foreign policy and arms control initiatives
appear aimed at averting the need for more rapid
growth in defense spending than currently planned. (s)
33. We believe that there is a good deal of uncer-
tainty and risk in Gorbachev's strategy for spurring
economic growth and shoring up social discipline, and
we suspect he knows this. The success of his strategy
depends most of all on the behavior of the wider ruling
elite and the population of the USSR. The new faces,
style, and promises of the Gorbachev leadership have
produced an upsurge of hope and expectations
throughout the Soviet system. But they have yet to be
transformed into lasting improvements in social per-
formance, and are susceptible to disillusionment. (c)
III. Prospects for the Soviet System and Society
A. Leadership Strategies
34. Starting from where it is, the Gorbachev leader-
ship has only one realistic direction in which to move
in addressing the manifold economic and social prob-
lems of the system, that of a mixed strategy of cautious
reforms on the economic front coupled with cadre
renewal and tightened disciplinary controls to contain
the effects of continuing social ills and the political
spinoffs of any liberalizing steps Gorbachev may take
in the economy. (c)
35. The mixed, but essentially conservative, strate-
gy that the Gorbachev regime pursues over the next
five years will probably have the following elements:
(c)
- In the workplace, further intensification of disci-
plinary measures directed against officials and
workers, with a considerable reduction of job
security; in the party, enforcement of stricter
standards of conduct and more demanding ad-
missions criteria. (c)
- Increased efforts through the party and other
organizations to restore positive social values,
such as honesty, self-sacrifice, patriotism, and
sobriety; and sharply increased pressures against
those with illegal incomes in the name of social
justice. (c)
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- Cautious experimentation with legalized small-
scale private enterprise in the service sector. (c)
- Cautious reforms of the management system that
reduce bureaucracy, simplify performance indi-
cators, concentrate central planning on more
strategic goals such as technological moderniza-
tion, and make more use of pricing mechanisms
in economic decisions; give more autonomy to
factory management to set some enterprise tar-
gets, negotiate contracts, deploy labor resources,
and possibly to engage in foreign trade; and give
material incentives to managers and workers to
increase productivity and technological innova-
tion. (c)
- Modest loosening of conditions for foreign partic-
ipation in the Soviet economy. (c)
- A mixed policy on the cultural-intellectual front
that seeks to make the spiritual life of the elite
and the populace more appealing, while vigilant-
ly squelching anti-Soviet tendencies. (c)
- Resource allocation policies largely as they are
today with some tendency to give consumption a
larger share if growth rates pick up on a sus-
tained basis; more efforts to develop civilian
spinoffs from military technologies. (c)
36. We believe that the option of a wholesale
conservative retrenchment in the direction of Stalinist
modes of rule is not a realistic course for the present
leadership, although some apparatchiks may hanker
for such a reactionary course. Stalin ruled the elite
with nearly absolute power. He controlled the society
through tightly centralized bureaucratic controls and
fear. Gorbachev is very unlikely to acquire Stalin-style
powers over the elite, although he could become the
most powerful General Secretary since Stalin. The
Stalinist structure of the Soviet system remains intact;
but Stalin-style controls over the population have
seriously weakened and to reassert them in the old
form would conflict directly with the avowed goals of
growth and modernization in contemporary condi-
tions. The neo-Stalinist option remains a possibility at a
later date, however, should other domestic policies fail
to improve social conditions, unleash increased turmoil
in the society, and generate new insecurity in the
ruling elite and the population to the point that
retention of control overwhelms all other Kremlin
goals. (c)
37. Systemic liberalization is an option in theory. It
could involve such steps as: (c)
- Sharp reductions in the powers of central plan-
ners and management and the introduction of
market mechanisms in large portions of the
economy. (c)
- A shift of resources from defense and heavy
industry in the direction of consumption. (c)
- Liberalization of cultural and intellectual life,
and creation of new openings for real popular
participation in political affairs of the country.
(c)
38. In practice this is not an option either, however
much some elements of the society and elite might
desire steps in this direction. First, those who hold
political power would see such steps as essentially
dismantling their capacity to rule and the privileges
that stem from it. Second, they will persuasively argue
that it would not work, that such a profound change to
the system would not only disenfranchise the present
ruling classes, but would produce political chaos,
economic collapse, and possibly a revolution. Third,
such a course would also create fears among ordinary
Soviets about maintaining social order and personal
security in a more liberal political and competitive
economic environment. (c)
39. Some steps along the lines of the liberal option
might occur, however, not so much as a deliberate
strategy of the present regime, but rather as responses to
new pressures deriving from the achievements and
failures of the much more conservative strategy it is
likely to pursue. But any such steps are likely to be seen
as very risky by any leaders who are products of the
present Soviet system, and be very controversial. (c)
40. More of the content of Gorbachev's domestic
strategy will soon emerge in the proceedings of the 27th
Congress, and it will continue to evolve thereafter. It
will very probably bear the stamp of the outlook shared
by him and his newly promoted colleagues: a belief that
the system can be made to work on the basis of modest
reforms, more discipline, and the skills of a more
educated and pragmatic leadership cohort. (c)
B. Responses of the System and Society
41. The evolution of the system and the society
under the influence of Gorbachev's policies will be
shaped by conflicting forces that will make a balance
between controls and dynamism hard to strike. (c)
42. Powerful features of the Soviet system guard
against social problems and ameliorative measures
getting out of hand and producing severe challenges to
that system:
- A culture of profound political passivity through-
out the society, coupled with a fear of turmoil
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and insecurity on the part of both the intelli-
gentsia and the population as a whole.
The existence of a kind of "social contract" in
which the regime has delivered personal and
social security and a modicum of welfare in
return for a modicum of work and general
obedience.
- A 'Pervasive system of government controls over
what people do, know, and think. (c)
43. These safeguards are also obstacles in some
degree to the efforts of the regime to spur growth and
modernization. Although eroded by heightened con-
sumer expectations and reduced system performance,
the "social contract" still inflicts drag on the Soviet
system in the form of widespread belief among Soviets
that they are owed a secure livelihood in return for
indifferent work, a quality of life equal to their fellow
citizens other than members of the elite, and an
absence of risk in social affairs. Gorbachev has made it
clear that people must work harder before-perhaps
by some years, if we understand his plans correctly-
they get welfare benefits. But the Soviet population
has become much less ready to deliver current work
effort in exchange for promises of future welfare. The
control mechanisms are invested in a vast party, state,
and police apparatus that constitutes a passive opposi-
tion to innovation needed for growth and moderniza-
tion. Despite Gorbachev's pleas, this apparatus cannot
be transformed quickly into a deft mobilizational tool
from the virtually parasitic aristocracy it became in
the last 20 years. All the new cadres must come out of
that very system. The political passivity of the Soviet
culture has a downside-the reluctance of people to
take initiative in collective innovation from below, on
which the modernization goals of the system clearly
depend. (c)
44. At the same time the strength of sources for
change within the system, and their potential for
unleashing turbulence that challenges the system,
should not be overlooked: (c)
- Ever since the revolution, the party leadership
has been the principal engine of social change.
Gorbachev plainly intends to rev it up if he can.
There is enough left in the ideology, coupled
with Russian nationalism, and a sense that the
system's survival is on the line in the very long
term, to inspire a determined quest for economic
and social progress from the top, taking some
controlled risks along the way. Large numbers of
new leaders and managers are being promoted
throughout the party and state structure. Even
though they come out of the system, they have a
potential for generating change by virtue of
better education, pragmatism, and the desire to
make their mark while they can. (c)
- There is a lot of entrepreneurial talent in the
diverse, increasingly educated, and urbanized
population of the Soviet Union. The second
economy is vivid testimony. The capacity for
improvisation amidst prohibitive conditions is
great, if incentives are provided. (c)
- The population and the elite have already shown
themselves tentatively responsive to the summons
of the Gorbachev leadership for more discipline
and better work. (c)
- The scale of the economy and its accumulated
slack give considerable room for near-term
growth if the work force can be stimulated and
possible adversities, such as an oil shortfall, can
be avoided. (c)
- The regime could provide the requisite economic
and political conditions for Western capital and
technology to become much more available and
to provide the system a major boost. (c)
45. For the regime, the downside of these factors,
including its own capacity for innovation and leader-
ship, is that they carry some risk of disrupting the
control and stabilizing mechanisms of the system if
policies fail or, perhaps, succeed too well. Gorbachev's
promises and exhortations could increase popular dis-
gruntlement if consumption levels do not improve.
Even modest management reforms are likely to involve
some redistribution of political power in local Soviet
affairs and perhaps among central organizations, which
could unleash political conflict. The industrial modern-
ization strategy could produce bottlenecks in other parts
of the economy. Disciplinary pressures and cadre reju-
venation policies will heighten tension and insecurity
within the elite, as they are supposed to; but there could
be politically consequential backlashes. Wage differen-
tiation and, possibly, the threat of unemployment used
to motivate workers could easily break the "social
contract" and excite class frictions. A large-scale influx
of Western capital and technology, especially if accom-
panied by foreign experts and managers, could produce
unwanted external influences on the bureaucracy and
in the population. (c)
C. Outlook
46. By most contemporary standards, the Soviet
Union is a very stable country. Over the next five
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years, and for the foreseeable future, the troubles of
the society will not present a challenge to the system of
political control that guarantees Kremlin rule, nor will
they threaten the economy with collapse. But during
the rest of the 1980s and well beyond, the domestic
affairs of the USSR will be dominated by the efforts of
the regime to grapple with these manifold problems,
which will also have an influence on Soviet foreign
and national security behavior. (c)
47. Gorbachev has imparted a sense of movement
to the system that has had some positive effects on
many citizens and officials. His campaign to rejuve-
nate and energize the Soviet ruling establishment,
especially the party and state bureaucracies, is already
well advanced and will make further progress over the
next several years. Generational turnover in the elite is
giving the system a new image of pragmatism, compe-
tence, energy, toughness, and somewhat greater open-
ness-the same image that Gorbachev is trying to
cultivate personally. He may well be able to achieve
an improvement in economic growth rates, at least for
a while. If growth does in fact accelerate, this could
help stabilize some of the system's social problems. (c)
48. Considerable uncertainty about economic per-
formance over the next five years, nonetheless, faces
the Gorbachev regime. Gorbachev's strategy depends
heavily on getting a productivity boost out of "human
factors"-that is, increased discipline and motivation
in management and the work force. The returns on his
new investment strategy for technological retooling of
industry cannot be realized until the 1990s, even if
they are successful, which is uncertain. In the mean-
time, this strategy heightens the danger of bottlenecks
with which the system is already beset. For example,
there is at least an even chance that falling oil
production will cut into domestic and East European
supplies, causing severe disruptions beyond the in-
evitable shortfalls in hard currency earnings the oil
downturn now portends. Gorbachev also needs good
weather. A. couple of bad harvests could return the
Soviet food situation to the poor conditions of the early
1980s. (c)
49. In the longer run, amelioration of those social
problems that are most tightly hinged to the economy
and consumption levels depends on the ability of the
regime to implement management reforms that pro-
mote the introduction of new technology throughout
the economy. We believe the Gorbachev regime will
move cautiously on management reforms, seeking to
minimize political opposition and avoid structural
disruptions. Its ability to find the right combination of
measures to increase enterprise initiative and worker
motivation while preserving the essentials of central
planning is uncertain, however. It will find borne out
what many in the elite already know: namely, that the
things the regime can decide on-such as management
structure, planning levers and indicators, and price
mechanisms-are not only very hard to implement in
practice, but are only part of the larger obstacles to
technological modernization and growth. Psychologi-
cal obstacles to collective innovation and risk taking,
deeply rooted in Soviet culture, will continue to inhibit
technological modernization for years to come, no
matter how effective the Gorbachev leadership is. (c)
50. Some of the social problems of the system, such
as the closed-class quality of the ruling elite, spreading
attitudinal dissent in the form of religious adherence
and anti-Russian nationalism, and youth alienation,
are not rooted primarily in economic conditions. They
lie in the nature of the political system, in the spiritual
void left by ideology and fading memories of a hard
but heroic past, and most basically in the lack of
political participation that educated populations tend
to demand in developing countries. The depth and
longevity of these social problems are such that the
regime is unlikely to make serious headway in easing
them for the next five years. Rather, they are likely to
fester and some actually get worse. While they are
unlikely to get out of hand, the probability is fairly
high that more incidents of civil unrest, such as strikes
and worker protests will occur in the USSR even if the
economy improves, simply from the uneven impact of
improvements. (c)
51. The course Gorbachev seems most likely to
follow will probably, at least in the short run, increase
rather than decrease tensions inside the system-
among economic administrators, the population at
large, and the party itself. Managers and workers will
be under greater pressure. Uncertainties about such
matters as job security, performance measures, lines of
authority, and standards of permissibility will increase.
Cadre renewal will be accompanied by increased
insecurity and tensions within the party-state elite.
Gorbachev will try to achieve both improved system
performance and more of what he is calling social
justice by rewarding strong achievers in the system,
penalizing poor performers, and punishing entrepre-
neurs operating outside the system. These very meas-
ures, however, will increase anxiety among all people
in the system and resentment by those who stand to
lose. As the regime seeks to define its policies in the
years ahead, it will inevitably create a somewhat more
fluid environment for the intelligentsia that will test
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the boundaries of official tolerance regarding cultural,
economic, and even political issues. Setting new limits
will spark controversies and heighten tensions with the
intelligentsia. It is precisely these tensions that the
leadership is counting on to move the system out of its
lethargy, and the leadership expects to control them.
But its ability to manage all the side effects is not
certain. (c)
52. The Soviet system of rule is optimized for
maintaining tight central control over political and
economic life. While this system served to drive the
country through forced-draft industrialization in the
era of steel and coal, it is highly unsuited to achieving
the desired pace of technological advances throughout
the economy under modern conditions. Unless the
system is reformed in fundamental ways, it will
hamper the growth its leaders seek because it stifles
the innovation on which technolgical and social prog-
ress depends. But the liberalization that would permit
and encourage innovation on the scale the system seeks
would be unacceptable to the regime because it would
inevitably entail reductions in centralized political
power. (c)
53. This is the essential dilemma of the Soviet
system. How the Soviet leadership will manage this
dilemma in the long term is unclear to us and to the
Soviets themselves. We believe there is a fundamental
and growing tension between popular aspirations and
the system's ability to satisfy them. There is also
growing tension between the regime's goals for growth
and modernization, on the one hand, and the mainte-
nance of central controls, on the other. We cannot
foresee the time when it could happen, but we do not
exclude the possibility that these tensions could even-
tually confront the regime with challenges that it
cannot effectively contain without systemic change
and the risks to control that would accompany such
change. (c)
IV. Implications for the United States
54. The Soviet Union is a powerful and acquisitive
actor on the international scene, using an assertive
diplomacy backed by a combination of military power,
propaganda, and subversive tactics to advance its
interests. Its ruling elite, now and for the foreseeable
future, sees its mission in history, its security, and its
legitimacy in maximizing its ability to control political
life within and outside Soviet borders. The domestic
problems of the USSR are unlikely to alter this quality
of the Soviet system and the international appetites
that spring from it. (c)
55. The nature of the Soviet system gives it strategic
persistence and the potential for tactical flexibility in
foreign affairs. Increasingly, however, the domestic
problems of the system pose some significant con-
straints on its ability to satisfy its international aspira-
tions with ease: (c)
- Domestic realities have long since undermined
the appeal of the Soviet Union as a model for
emulation by either advanced or developing
societies, and make it very unlikely this instru-
ment of influence will be restored to Moscow. (c)
- The Soviet "model" for export today is really a
formula for a self-appointed dictatorial elite to
seize and maintain political power, armed with
Leninist tactics and Soviet weapons, and operat-
ing in readymade conditions of social turmoil.
Soviet use of this tool is not directly constrained
by the USSR's domestic troubles. But those trou-
bles may, in some situations, heighten the politi-
cal dangers involved for the Kremlin if it has to
back a distant Leninist revolution by threatening
confrontation with the United States or by enter-
ing sustained, costly military conflict. The danger
is that foreign adventures that are seen by the
population to jeopardize national security or cost
too much could undermine rather than add to
the legitimacy of Kremlin rule. The war in
Afghanistan shows, so far, that Moscow can
manage this danger. But Soviet popular unhappi-
ness with this war is slowly growing. (c)
- Soviet domestic problems have heightened the
regime's sense of vulnerability to various foreign
influences. In the future, this perception will act
as a significant constraint on Moscow's accep-
tance of conditions for improved East-West rela-
tions that involve opening up Soviet society to
greater foreign influence. This will tend to re-
duce Soviet diplomatic leverage to the extent
that Western bargaining partners make demands
enlarging the degree of contact between the
Soviet population and the outside world. The
sense of domestic vulnerability. will also sustain
an edge of pugnacity and defensiveness on the
part of Soviet leaders when human rights and
related societal issues are broached. We do not
believe, however, that their perception of a
troubled internal order will itself propel Soviet
leaders in the direction of risky foreign adven-
tures they would not otherwise contemplate.
Rather, it will tend to persuade them that a
successful foreign policy at low risk is ever more
important to their internal credibility. (c)
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- Soviet domestic problems are a constraint on
Soviet capabilities for military technological
competition with the West, especially with re-
spect to mass production of high-technology
items. Focused weapons technology efforts at
home and acquisition of foreign technology by
legal and illegal means will continue to support a
formidable military-technological performance
by the USSR in most areas of weaponry. But
these efforts are unlikely to keep Soviet military
technology fully competitive if the United States
and its allies sustain a high level of commitment
to military technology advance in such areas as
SDI, Stealth, improved nonnuclear munitions,
and battle management capability, which chal-
lenge Soviet forces and doctrines severely. To
compete effectively in all these areas requires
broader modernization of the Soviet economy
and technology base, but achieving that modern-
ization probably precludes substantial accelera-
tion of Soviet defense efforts in the near term. (s)
- The Soviet economy needs more and better
labor. Economic and demographic conditions
now clash with historic levels of military man-
power in the USSR. The principal effect here
could be that the Gorbachev regime may be
interested in ways to reduce standing military
manpower levels somewhat as it searches for
economic growth recipes. (c)
56. The most immediate implication of domestic
conditions for Soviet foreign policy is that they have
sharply heightened the desire of the Gorbachev re-
gime to achieve some restoration of the atmosphere of
detente seen in the early 1970s.3 Gorbachev's predeces-
sors from Lenin on, at one time or another, sought a
breathing space on international fronts to help them
manage domestic problems while still advancing Soviet
international power. Like them, Gorbachev wants some
breathing space. As the Soviets see it, restoration of such
a detente atmosphere in East-West relations, by reduc-
ing US challenges, would ease the Soviet task of
balancing defense, investment, and consumption priori-
ties, while still allowing Moscow to pursue established
foreign policy goals such as weakening US alliances and
expanding Soviet influence in the Third World. For
now the Soviets do not appear willing to pay any price
for this detente that entails altering their own behavior
and goals on security issues of importance to the United
States. Gorbachev wants his breathing space on the
cheap. He is likely to maintain this stance until he
determines whether his domestic strategies and foreign
policies are working. This may take several years. (s)
57. But, if he fails to get either domestic revitalization
or an international breathing space on the cheap, Gorba-
chev would most likely opt for tactical accommodation
with the United States in order to gain the advantage of
economic interaction with the West, facilitating both
relief from domestic economic constraints and continued
military modernization. At the same time, the Soviets
would continue to pursue greater influence in the Third
World and efforts to divide US alliances. (s)
3 There is an alternative view-held by the Director, Defense
Intelligence Agency, and the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence,
Department of the Air Force-which holds that the Gorbachev
regime regards the advancement of its foreign and strategic goals
as the primary determinant of, and motivating factor behind,
Soviet behavior in the international arena, not Soviet internal
problems. (s)
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