Soviet citizens wanted a consumer society and got it, but the demand for law turned out to be very limited

Already 10 years ago, when the next anniversary of perestroika was celebrated, many people asked the question: “Why didn’t it work out?” But my position then was and now remains atypical. I think that everything worked out. Just everything! The question is - what did you want? There is an idea that perestroika and subsequent events were a liberal revolution that should have led to the establishment of democracy, free competition, integration into European structures and the creation of a democratic union of strong states. But it seems to me that the nature of this revolution was different. It was an anti-scarcity revolution, because if we look at life in the USSR in the late 1970s or mid-1980s, we won’t find any particular cannibalism. There was no collapse of the “tyrannical regime” as in Romania. The problem was different.

People were pressured by the need to stand in lines for several hours a day, travel by train for food, and make an appointment for a refrigerator two years in advance.

Even if you take a member of the Politburo, how was he different from the majority? A few - maybe the presence of a VCR in the country. That is, he has reached the level of the European middle class, and not upper-middle, but middle-middle. So there are no feasting rich people surrounding the tyrant. And there is the terrible pressure of shortages and the desire to escape from a deficit economy. It happened? A classic consumer society with a wide range of opportunities has established itself in Russia. The choice in Moscow stores (at least recently) could be wider than in Berlin, London or Paris.

There is even an explanation: we have not yet decided “which club we don’t go to,” but in the West they have already decided on this.

In this sense, perestroika has been fully implemented, the consumer society is already somewhat tired, it is clear that other vectors are needed. Political support over the past decades has gone to those who provide access to a certain phase of market choice. Gorbachev gave full choice where he could give it: access to information, literature, political ideas. And this was enough for several years: the country read voraciously, discussed it, and then asked: “And now, where is the sausage?” And Yeltsin already gave this, and note that he was not overthrown, despite the shock reforms. Why? Because here it is - freedom of choice. Yes, there is no money, you cry because of the discrepancy between income and choice, but you can buy everything. Well, Putin then brought this consumer revolution to the regional centers.

So Gorbachev took the first great step in the anti-scarcity revolution. However, I do not agree with the assertions that he began reforms without a clear goal. I just believe that among the long line of rulers, people like Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, who know what they want, are rare. Because this man has been preparing himself for supreme power for decades. He read books, he turned from a rural machine operator into a person who understood very subtle things, into a worthy interlocutor for Thatcher and other world leaders. His memoirs tell how the philosopher Merab Mamardashvili, Zdenek Mlynarz, the father of the Prague Spring, Yuri Levada, the founder of the new wave of Soviet and Russian sociology, visited the room in the hostel on Stromynka, where Raisa Maksimovna lived with three other girls. And it’s not just that he talked to them on the street - he competed with them for women! He had to show that he was not inferior intellectually. Not only the intellectual environment helped him formulate the right ideas, but also his folk experience as a person from the Stavropol region who remembered nearby history, for example, dispossession.

Gorbachev understood that he was moving towards a transformation of the system, but certainly not towards capitalism, but rather towards a Swedish-style society.

He definitely did not want the collapse of the Union and even now he believes that it could have been preserved. He belongs to that rare breed of historical figures who distribute their own power rather than concentrate it. The next ones belonged to a different breed, much more traditional. They say about Louis Bonaparte that they wanted to make him the first French president, and he became the last French emperor. Gorbachev could have been the last Soviet emperor, but he made himself a president.

He owns two great results, each of which is now in question. The first is Russian freedom. And the second is peace, the end of the Cold War. The degree of respect with which Europe treats Gorbachev is something few people in Russia understand. It's not just about the unification of Germany. The fact is that people no longer wake up at night from the nightmare thoughts of a world war. Now this is so firmly ingrained in our heads that we do not see real threats even where they exist. In a sense, this is a product of the Gorbachev era, because over 30 years people have become accustomed to the fact that there are no world wars. And they do exist.

True, since Khrushchev’s time, war has ceased to be easily acceptable for the Soviet consciousness. Gorbachev completed the work begun before him. Just as Gorbachev did not start the movement towards freedom from scratch. In my opinion, there is some socio-economic logic here. Russia is moving impulsively in its development. We have been in the process of incomplete modernization for 300 years, since the time of Peter, first an attempt to make a leap with the mobilization of resources, hitting our head on the ceiling, sliding, stagnation and a new attempt to enter into change.

Of course, development is happening, but we are simultaneously reaching the trajectory of the 25 leading countries - and we are not holding back, we are slipping. Demobilization after the most powerful leap—Stalin’s—began when Gorbachev was still a graduate student. Demobilization is usually the happiest time in Russian history, because Catherine II is also demobilization, she abolishes the forced service of the nobility. Alexander II, 100 years later, takes another step - he gives freedom to the peasants. The time of Catherine and Alexander is the wave when the most serious successes were achieved. What time are we proud of? Gagarin. This is Khrushchev's demobilization. Then she froze. It's not about politics, not about the views of Leonid Brezhnev or anyone else.

My explanation, as an economist, is different. In 1965, two processes began: the Kosygin reforms and the development of Samotlor oil.

In 1965, we began to enter the raw materials model, which we are now painfully trying to get out of.

Choosing between difficult reforms and an easy pension, the government, and not only the government, chose a pension. Oil rent is a pension. Why did Gorbachev manage to escape from this for a while? Because the rent is no longer enough to support a decent life. Gorbachev continued the demobilization phase. Why didn’t we enter a period of takeoff and development after that and why didn’t we get serious results? This is an interesting question.

Here it is worth recalling the book “Violence and Social Order” by North, Wallis and Weingast and “Why Nations Fail” by Acemoglu and Robinson. This is right about us! North, Wallis and Weingast managed to identify the threshold conditions for successful modernization in countries such as England, France and the USA. It all started with solving three questions. Write laws for yourself and extend their effect to others, and not make laws for others, and exceptions for the elites. Organizations should not be created for a specific person, but so that they outlive the creator. And collectively control the instruments of violence, rather than dividing them among each other. There are only three conditions. Now let's look at the USSR. In fact, the post-Stalin Politburo introduced collective control over the means of violence. Out of fear that this repressive machine was very close, which was supposed to drag them down. Organizations that outlive the creator. Of course, the CPSU, Komsomol, All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. Without Comrade Lenin, Comrade Stalin, Comrade Malenkov, Comrade Khrushchev and Comrade Brezhnev, they lived to see Comrade Gorbachev.

So, there are depersonalized organizations, there is collective control of violence, what is there not? There is no making laws for oneself and extending them to others, as in Magna Carta. The barons introduced the principle for themselves - no one can be convicted except by the court of their peers, and then it extended to the whole society. Gorbachev tried to do this.

But then a glitch occurred. Perhaps because society's demand for law was very narrow.

This is evident from the speed of restoration of traditional Russian institutions, when power is not distributed, but contracted. For me personally, 1993 was a tragic event not only because shells flew into parliament, but because shells flew into parliament . There are things that cannot be done. They could besiege it as much as they like, but they cannot shoot parliament as the image of the legislative power.

It seems that the demand for law, which was brewing below, and the supply of law, which came from above, did not agree. But the main thing, it seems to me, is not even this. The main thing is that it was not possible to solve the shortage problem. Glances are glances, but life goes on now. Gorbachev took over politics, but the last Soviet governments were extremely unsuccessful. It amazes me that no one asks Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov the question of how he managed to accumulate such global debts that we have been paying off for 20 years, and at the same time it is not clear where it all went. Not in the sense that they were stolen. In no case. They just squandered it.

While Gorbachev could delay solving the deficit problem, he moved forward. But the prevailing point of view was: give it to us here and now. Markets, shops. To hell with your socialism, we don’t need social democracy. Whoever promises to provide us with these markets faster will rule. And so it happened.

We must not forget that Gorbachev was and remains a social democrat.

For him, the problem of shortages could not be the main one. For him, the main issue was and remains social justice. I think he saw distant things very correctly. But I didn’t see that it was impossible to move forward without solving the deficit problem. It was possible to accumulate debts to alleviate tensions and gain a few years, but at the same time start doing something: small-scale privatization, cooperatives, etc.

I would say there are two layers to perestroika. On the one hand, this is an anti-deficit revolution, and on the other, this is completed demobilization, which should lead somewhere to a different type of takeoff, a non-mobilization takeoff. And Gorbachev definitely led there, he is the successor of Alexander II and Catherine II, and not Peter I and Joseph Stalin, that’s for sure.

Perestroika: 30 years of anti-deficit revolution