Getting Everyone on the Wagon

The Kremlin tries for high--and dry--economic growth

A Soviet woman who is freezing in her new apartment discovers that shreds from a quilted workman's jacket and some cigarette butts have been stuffed into the walls instead of insulation. A laborer falls from scaffolding because someone has, in exchange for a bottle of vodka, sold the wooden planks that he should be standing on and replaced them with rotting boards. A drunkard who is supposed to be demoted for causing an uproar in the factory holds on to his job because the boss fears he might walk out and leave the place understaffed.

Ever since Communist Party Chief Yuri Andropov started his campaign against "shoddy work, inactivity and irresponsibility" after coming to power last November, the Soviet press has published countless such examples of what he had in mind. Last week the Kremlin stepped up the offensive by announcing measures aimed at combatting the twin evils of absenteeism and alcoholism.

Under the new rules, workers who are away from their jobs without a good excuse will lose a day of vacation for each day they play hooky. If they miss more than three hours of work, it will be treated as a full day's absence. The penalties for overindulging in vodka are just as harsh. Anyone found drunk on the job may be summarily fired and will have to pay for damaged goods or lost production. Describing the new decrees, the party daily Pravda blamed not only workers but also managers who did not "set an example of discipline, proper organization of their work, or full use of their working time."

Even Soviet police officers were told to shape up. Interior Minister Vitali Fedorchuk announced that some of the country's men in gray were being purged because they were "immature in an ideological and moral way." There had been complaints from Soviet citizens, he said, concerning "late reaction to hooliganism and theft, and time lags in investigating crimes." Fedorchuk also denounced alcoholism as a "great social evil." He said that drinking accounted for almost half of all crimes committed in the Soviet Union and warned that the police would "not be liberal toward drunkards."

Andropov has already tried a variety of tactics to halt the economic stagnation that had set in during the last years of Leonid Brezhnev's rule. The results have been mixed. Soviet national income has grown at the rate of 4% this year, compared with 2.9% in 1982. Andropov can also take heart from what is expected to be the best grain harvest since 1978. According to U.S. analysts, the yield may reach 200 to 210 million metric tons, well above the average of 177 million metric tons over the past four years. Still, the Soviet Union will not solve its economic troubles by cracking down on drunks and trusting in the weather.

So far, the Soviet President has been cautious about tampering with the rigid structure of centralized planning that has remained largely intact since the 1930s. Although Andropov has complained about the problems facing Soviet consumers, he has done little to divert investment to light industry. In the traditionally troubled area of agriculture, he has put into effect a program introduced by Brezhnev that sets production targets for collective farms while giving them greater flexibility to decide what crops to plant. Last month the Kremlin outlined new "economic experiments" that will give local factory managers in selected industries greater freedom to decide how to allocate investment funds and distribute wages and bonuses. But it could be years before the new guidelines are applied throughout the sprawling Soviet economy.

Several days after the reforms were announced, a confidential report on ways to improve the economy began to circulate in Moscow. The document, which was drafted for the leadership by economists at the Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, may have been leaked by officials who are pushing for more radical changes. Among other suggestions, the report called for a "profound restructuring of state economic management" and the dismantling of a middle layer of bureaucracy that mushroomed during the Brezhnev years. The document stated that major changes may cause conflict and noted with a touch of irony, "It stands to reason that executives who now occupy warm places with an ill-defined range of responsibilities but quite respectable salaries are not happy at this prospect."

Western experts see little chance that Andropov will radically change the way the Soviet economy works. Says William Hyland of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: "Andropov is pretty prudent. He is not going to start kicking in doors until he is ready." The new man in the Kremlin remains saddled with a conservative and aging Politburo. Even if Andropov were the most ardent advocate of reform, he could not hope in nine months to overcome decades of inertia.

For almost two months, U.S. surveillance satellites, aircraft and submarines have watched an unusual Soviet operation in the North Pacific. Last week the Soviets apparently found what they were looking for: a submarine that had sunk to the ocean floor near the Kamchatka peninsula, the site of a Soviet naval base.

The sunken sub is of a class that usually carries a crew of 90 and is equipped to launch eight cruise missiles. Given the time it took the Soviets to raise the vessel, it was unlikely that anyone had survived. U.S. officials could not say what had caused the sub to founder, or whether it was armed with nuclear weapons.

Moscow has remained silent about the accident. But the Soviet search-and-rescue mission may have been undertaken to forestall a U.S. effort to salvage the stricken vessel. After a Soviet sub sank north of Hawaii in 1968, the CIA, with financial help from Billionaire Howard Hughes, raised pieces of the wreck and obtained valuable information that remains classified. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.