VADIM BELOTSERKOVSKY
37
Solzhenitsyn rejects not only materialism but, actually, a scientific
approach to social and economic problems . Yet , almost all experts
familiar with the structure of Soviet industry , including many of its
own managers, know perfectlywell that the system is now based not on
any ideology, but on the authoritarian , centralized administration of
the country 's nationalized economy. There is no competition, no
standard of quality ; intercommunication and initiative are greatly
hampered ; machinery and materials are neglected and wasted . As a
result we see incalculable losses which must be urgently compensated
" outside the plan" and-this is the central point-the needs of the
machines come first . Machines cannot be persuaded or coerced into
working without secured supply . People work for the sake of machines,
and new factories are built so that the old ones will not come to a halt .
Soviet propaganda calls this" industrialization" and Solzhenitsyn calls
it " (evil) competition with the West." Competition, particularly in
~
1(;
area of armaments is a factor , of course, but it is an aggravating
factor and not the decisive one.
Under such conditions the authorities simply cannot afford to
soften authoritarian pressures such as, for instance, censorship . As
Arkady Belinkov, the Soviet dissident writer and critic (who escaped to
West Germany and died in the United States in 1970) , expressed it,
" The problem is not that the authorities do not want to
grant
freedom ,
but that they are
unable
to do it." Ideology was, of course, to blame for
the creation of such a system . .. in the year 1918. To change the
situation today, however, one obviously has to start not from the
eggshell out of which the " authoritarian" chicken was hatched, but
from the chicken itself!
It
is essential to decentralize and "separate
industry from the state" (Otto Schick's formulation), as is well
understood by the major part of the scientific-technical intelligentsia
and by many workers. But this first mandatory step meets resistance
from the ·proliferated bureaucratic officials who do not want to part
with their authoritarian power, nor indeed to part with their power at
all. And it is clear that a large part of the present gigantic government
bureaucracy would have to be abolished .
The situation is further aggravated by the extreme overexpansion
ofheavy industry during the last fifty-five years, to which the arms race
contributed . This impedes the kind of economic flexibility still
