One Surprising Thing that Both Made and Broke USSR Style Socialism

 

In the past I wrote a few articles about realities of life in USSR. They were not inaccurate per se, but they were somewhat lacking in capturing the bigger picture. A lot of information about communism often focus on negative sides, sometimes exaggerated. That will make you wonder why some like it in the first place, sure not for oppression or scarcity? Communism has both, die hard supporters who say it is the best thing in the world and many haters who abhor it with equal passion. Here I will explain why.

The key aspect of the system that made and break the USSR was the fact that workers could not be fired from their jobs. I mentioned it before but did not elaborated too much over the implications this had on society. Reality is that implications from this aspect alone both made USSR for its die-hard supporters and broke it for its haters.

I will being with the positive sides. Impossibility to fire people made jobs very secure. Not only average but pretty much every citizen of USSR could be certain that they will never lose their job or search for a new one. That by extension meant that question of paying bills or affording food or clothes were never an issue (the only issue that got worse as things progressed was shortage of goods. Inability to pay for them was never an issue). Everyone was certain they will have stable guaranteed income throughout their lives, first from salary and then from age pension.

USSR definitely made a propaganda point out of this fact. See picture in thir article. Under capitalism you can be fired at any time on a whim of your boss. Then you will not be able to afford food and shelter. That does not happen under socialism at all. Every citizens is guaranteed work and livehood.

If anyone is found of the old Soviet System it is most likely due to this fact. Being an employee was a much less stressful experience. People were a lot more relaxed knowing their jobs are never at risk.

Now to the negatives. First the macroeconomic part. Jobs for life meant that restructuring economy was hard to impossible. Certain methods of production become outdated, certain factories need to be closed. However that means people will be left without a job and that is no go in USSR. That said inability to fire workers was not the only reason for stagnation. People in charge of economy were generally conservative and averted of change as they had no insensitive to innovate. Change is a lot of work so why bother when you can do nothing instead. However inability to fire workers only further contributed towards their unwillingness to change.

However macroeconomic problem was not the only issue. Individual people sometimes had to deal with negative side of this rule as well. Since inability to fire people was absolute, certain workers took it to the extreme and abused the system. It was not uncommon for some employees to show up to work several hours late and so drunk they could not stand straight. In a capitalist economy they will be fired then and there but under socialism it was possible to someone like that to have long successful career all the way until retirement. The only thing their manager could do about them is to call police to detain them. That would solve the problem for a day, but tomorrow they will be back, most often drunk again.

Certain professions were particularly affected by that kind of behavior, particularly communal services, such as plumbers and electricians. It would be incorrect to call them tradies as in USSR they were not self-employed but rather employed by a government run communal services organisation, called (ZhEC). ZhEC will pay them monthly salary that will be the same no matter how many days they show up drunk.

Being a manager in ZhEC was a peculiar experience of spending first half of the day calling police to detain all your drunk and unruly employees, then spend the rest of the day, answering phone calls from clients who wanted to know when their pipes will be fixed. That by extension led towards another issue with soviet system: often rude customer service. The only redeeming quality was the fact that managers own salary was also unchanged no matter if pipes were fixed on not. Government paid for everything, I think repairs themselves were free of charge as well, that is if sober enough plumber would suddenly became available.

Here one might ask, why show up to work at all. Sure they will not fire you if you just stay home. Just show up on a salary day to pick up your not so hard earned pay. As I mentioned in my previous articles, not having any employment at all was a criminal offence, punishable by lengthy prison sentence. This combined with no unemployed benefits in any form, easiness to get a job and impossibility to lose it lead towards this behavior. Also you needed a compelling reason not to work, just flat out refusing doing your work could get prosecutors involved and could lead towards complicated outcomes, like corrective sentence in a penal colony. On the other hand being too drunk to stand or hold your tools, but technically "willing" to work, was good enough reason for manager to let you do nothing. If police get involved, they will only detain you for a day, until you get sober and no further action will be taken. The only problem is if the morning instead of releasing you into town, they will decide to give you a lift to your workplace, "so that you do not get lost along the way and end up in a pub again." That will force you to work on that day, but afterwards you will be free to go back home and then show up next day drunk again.

Now on how it affected an average citizen. Since certain professions were particularly prone to this routine alcoholic behavior, certain services were unavailable de-facto. Even if you get lucky enough that one day plumber is sober and could attend to look at your pipes, can you actually trust them to not fuck up? Since they are normally drunk at this time a day, they will have terrible headaches from all the drunk lifestyle they usually have. If they could not complete the job in one day or make a mistake, who knows when they will be sober again to do a follow up.

All that led towards people having to learn how to do plumbing, electrical and certain other work themselves. If they could not do it for some reason, they had to find a neighbor or a friend who could, willing and have time. Sometimes such person have to be paid. They would not take money as there was a certain stigma attached to money in USSR and shortage of goods meant that money is not as valuable as actual goods. Because of that a some sort of gift, like box of chocolate was needed to show them gratitude. All that made a simple enough tradie work into a complex multistage quest, like a summoning of Xorathian Steed. 

A little more on rude customer service I mentioned before. Sure you can understand manager of the drunk squad, but that was prevalent in many other industries as well, particularly retail. Retail suffered from shortages of goods and long ques, that contributed towards retail employees being rude, as they often had to repeat the same thing, that all meat sold out, to many customers at any given day. However broad inability to fire people had an effect as well. Employees were not trained or pressured by their managers to treat all customers with respect. Instead they just treated people how they felt and could just insult you if they did not liked something about you, like your haircut for example.

Needless to say that these grotesquely absurd issues with socialism produced enough critics and opponents of the system. Most were not against socialism in principle but just wanted their pipes fixed without all that drama as well as be able to enter a store full of goods and without ques, instead of the other way around. Ever exacerbating problem of shortages of goods eventually led towards majority thinking that change is needed. To all the critics of Yeltsin dismay, he did fixed all of that.