Roy Maidevijeff (Russia)
Store, Create Privileged Life
1988 In the autumn, hundreds of people suddenly gathered in front of a shop at No.2 Glanowski Street. Why can a small shop produce such a big news effect and attract so many people's attention?
This is a special store serving a few special customers. Today is the last day before the store is declared closed. Ordinary people in the Soviet Union called the special customers of this special store the privileged class, saying that they were "our bourgeois aristocrats". This privileged class was gradually formed in Brezhnev period and further developed and evolved in Gorbachev period. It was this privileged class that played a catalytic role in the internal disintegration of the Soviet Union and became one of the important factors to promote the drastic changes in the Soviet Union.
After the October Revolution, war and famine seriously threatened the nascent Soviet regime.
"There will be bread and everything." Vassili's well-known line in Lenin's October became a popular classic sentence for a while. It may be hard for people today to believe that as a staff member around Lenin, he will be pushed around for a small piece of bread, but this is true history.
This plot in the movie is based on a true story at that time. 19 18, the newly born Soviet regime encountered a food crisis. At a meeting of the People's Committee, Qu, then a member of the Food People's Committee, suddenly fainted, and the doctor who was urgently called in said that he was hungry. As the highest official in charge of grain in the Soviet government, he had the right to allocate millions or even tens of millions of putt grain, but he did not leave himself food to fill his stomach. Lenin immediately suggested the establishment of a "sanatorium canteen" to feed these comrades who worked day and night for the people. This is completely correct and beyond reproach.
The "sanatorium canteen" founded by Lenin at that time gradually expanded into a specialty store, and the scale, quantity and especially the nature have undergone fundamental changes.
Half a century later, only senior cadres of the Soviet Union are qualified to enter and leave the building without any signs and special documents. This is the largest exclusive store in Moscow. Every weekend, cars stop in front of the building and block the whole street.
Here, French brandy, scotch whisky, American cigarettes, Swiss chocolates, Italian ties, Austrian leather shoes, British woolen cloth, German radios, Japanese tape recorders and other rare foreign goods and rare domestic goods in the Soviet Union are all available.
There are more than one hundred such shops in Moscow alone.
The privileged class of the Soviet Union was gradually formed after Brezhnev came to power, especially in his later period.
1in April, 966, the 23rd Congress of the Soviet Union was held. At the first national congress after Brezhnev presided over the work of the Soviet Central Committee, Article 25 of party constitution was revised. Brezhnev especially praised the words of suslov, who has been in charge of ideological work for a long time: "The stability of cadres is the guarantee of success." He went from one-sided pursuit of the stability of cadres to the formation of a de facto tenure system for leading cadres. Brezhnev, suslov and other senior cadres all died in their posts.
Under the guidance of Brezhnev's cadre policy, the members of the Soviet leadership remained almost motionless for a long time.
The life tenure system of leading cadres is objectively easy to expand the ranks of privileged classes, and more and more institutions are set up to arrange more leading cadres. In the late 1970s, there were as many as 20 ministerial agencies directly under the Soviet Central Committee, most of which overlapped with government agencies.
"Special treatment", a hotbed of corruption
The Soviet Union in Brezhnev provided a suitable growth soil for the formation of the privileged class.
More "special treatment" often makes senior cadres who have just been promoted for the first time stunned. Leigh Gachev once recalled: 1983, when he was the organization minister of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union, he was equipped with a limousine the next day. When he proposed to change to a lower-grade car, he was reprimanded by the director of the general office of the Soviet Central Committee, saying that he was "special" and destroyed the atmosphere of the organ.
The enjoyment brought by privilege is unimaginable without personal experience. In Brezhnev's time, children of the privileged class could easily enter the best universities by virtue of their parents' privileged status, enter the most superior departments after graduation, and soon become powerful. Privilege can even be an amulet for unimpeded corruption.
Churbanov, Brezhnev's son-in-law, rose from a junior officer to a general with the power of his father-in-law, and later served as the first deputy minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. During this period, he took bribes of 650,000 rubles, which led to the "Ma Xu case" that shocked the whole country. Yuri, Brezhnev's son, was a dude, and he became the first deputy minister of the Soviet Foreign Trade Department at a young age.
1982 65438+ 10 In October, a Soviet citizen was going to travel abroad by plane from Moscow airport, and customs officers found a large number of diamonds from a hidden pocket on him. It has been verified that this is the personal collection of the greatest lion tamer on earth, Buli Mimo Eva. Shortly thereafter, Boris, the artist of this circus, was arrested. Zvikov and Reva Toff, the head of the circus. Diamonds and other valuables worth about $6,543,800 were found in Zvikov's home, while western currency worth about ￡ 500,000 and expensive jewelry and paintings were seized in Reva's room. These items belong to Brezhnev's daughter galina.
In the later period of Brezhnev, corruption in Moscow and other countries became more and more serious.
1980, a detective accidentally bought a batch of canned herring, but after opening it, he found that it contained expensive caviar. Why does herring turn into caviar? After a hard investigation, the case finally came to light. It turned out that a large number of officials of the Soviet fishery department reached a secret deal with a company, packaging the expensive caviar produced in Sochi and astrakhan into cans with herring trademarks, transporting them abroad, buying them by western companies at the price of herring, and then selling them in reverse. From the huge profits, Soviet participants shared the so-called huge profits and deposited them in Swiss banks. This reselling activity lasted for ten years.
It was verified that the case caused millions of dollars worth of economic losses to the Soviet Union, involving senior officials such as the Deputy Minister of Fisheries and the Deputy Director of Fisheries Production and Marketing Department, as well as hotel personnel from the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Food Industry, the Pacific Fleet, Moscow and other cities, reaching more than 300 people.
The privileged class of Su * * * first originated from official positions. Some people think that the higher the official position, the more privileges. If you want to be an official or be promoted, you must please or bribe the relevant leaders, so the position has a price. In some areas, even the party secretary clearly marked the price. 1969, the first secretary of a district Committee in Azerbaijan was worth 200,000 rubles, and the second secretary was 65,438+10,000 rubles.
In order to safeguard vested interests, the privileged class opposes any reform involving their own privileges, and it is even more impossible to actively curb corruption spreading to the whole party and society. Brezhnev satirizes reform: what changes? Just do the work well. By the end of 1970s, kosygin, chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers, and his assistants had drafted a report on economic reform, which aroused the dissatisfaction and resistance of some bureaucratic privileged classes. As a result, kosygin's assistant was fired.
The disintegration of the system is the way out for wealth.
In Gorbachev's era, the privileged class was not only satisfied with pursuing their own enjoyment, but also hoped to possess all the privileges for a long time and pass them on to future generations.
During this period, the privileged class used various powers in their hands to obtain personal interests. In particular, those economic bureaucrats who directly manage the wealth of state-owned enterprises rely on Gorbachev's chaotic opportunity to promote commercialization, marketization and economic liberalization, engage in a "flop economy" and directly take state property for themselves; Some engage in power and money transactions, obtain export preferences and quotas, export raw materials and arms, and steal social wealth; Some people have made huge profits in securities and futures trading and set up financial institutions such as banks. Later, a few of them evolved into new financial oligarchs.
199 1 year, most of the multimillionaires in Moscow are former party and government cadres. In June of the same year, a survey showed that 76.7% of senior Soviet cadres believed that they should take the capitalist road. It is these so-called "* * * producers" who ruined Sue's life.
These people not only get enough personal economic benefits, but also continue to hold high positions and control state power. After the drastic changes in the Soviet Union, in Russia, except for a few people at the top of the power pyramid, a large number of cadres have become Russian dignitaries.
Famous American economists include David? Coates and others deeply analyzed this strange phenomenon. They believe that under the socialist system of the Soviet Union, it is almost impossible to accumulate material wealth through legal channels. Soviet leaders who illegally accumulate material wealth are always worried about being discovered or prosecuted one day. Therefore, the disintegration of the Soviet system stems from the pursuit of personal interests by the ruling elite in the country.