Along with freedom, religion, and McDonald's, the Soviet Union has discovered capitalist's old side-kick, crime. In January alone this year violent crime was up 44 percent over a year ago.
This week The Meyers Report spoke to Dr. Louise Shelley, Professor and Chairwoman of the Department of Justice Law Society. Shelley is a recognized expert on Soviet crime and sees in some ways a normality in Soviet society as it reacts to freedom and less authority."Over 700,000 people have been released from labor camps over the last three years," said Shelley. "In the past, people could be sent to these camps for the slightest offense. While they may not have been hardened criminals when they went in, they certainly were after being released. Coming home to find no work, no welfare and extreme poverty only exacerbates the situation."
"According to Soviet figures," added Shelley, "40 percent to 50 percent (of the total population) live below the poverty line. Only 2 percent of the people control the wealth. It is comparable to a distribution like South America. On a personal level my best friend in Russia was raped just before she emigrated. Another colleague was held up at knifepoint by his taxi driver. He lost money and his lap-top computer. Most of the information in the computer was about crime in Russia!
"Of course given all the social changes and poverty, if the crime figure didn't rise then there would certainly be something wrong in the society."
One of Mikhail Gorbachev's goals was to stop the nationwide problem of alcoholism. In 1986 he introduced prohibition by shutting down all liquor stores and cutting funding to the alcohol factories. Before this, 20 percent of the country's wealth was from alcohol sales.
Exactly as with prohibition in the United States, boozemaking went underground, right into the hands of organized crime. Funded by this new-gained wealth, organized crime became even more efficient and powerful. The government, now short in the kitty by 20 percent, made no provisions for the revenue decline. Instead it simply printed more money. Virtually overnight inflation rose over 100 percent.
Victor Zelensky, an Interior Ministry official rather underestimated the problem in a recent address to railway workers. Given the figures that cargo theft is up 78 percent and any box cars left unattended for more than an hour are stripped no matter what is in them, he said, "The situation is getting out of hand."
Spain
An example of how organized crime and protection money damages far more than the intended victim is what happened to Jesus de le Fuente, President of Desoto Internacional, a manufacturing company of generators and agriculture machinery in Madrid, Spain.
Desoto has been selling to the Soviet Union and acting as machinery consultants to that country for more than 10 years. A co-op was in progress to set up a subsidiary in the city of Baku with the intention that the machinery could be manufactured by the Russians themselves and bring much-needed jobs to the area.
"During my last visit the tension could be felt," said de le Fuente. "I was given more warnings than ever about where I could walk and travel safely. One police officer of high rank told me the murders and mugging on foreigners was out of control and to be very careful.
De le Fuente has now decided it just isn't worth the risk either to himself or to his workers from Spain who were going to spend time setting up the new factory. It has been cancelled, but he hopes to start rebuilding in the future. Thus, there are a few less foreigners to be mugged, but there are also quite a few jobs less for the honest, hard-working local people, and the community continues it's downward spiral.
Privatization
A very practical fear, among the countries leaders, is that as capitalism progresses and privatization becomes a reality, the people with the money to buy land and set up legitimate businesses will be the heads of the organized crime at the moment. Not exactly the best corporate leaders to head up the start of your country's industrial reform.
If Wall Street is an example, the Soviets will have enough criminals anyway without starting off beleaguered by corporate thieves.
Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, (long activists for peoples' rights), talked to The Meyers Report when the trio performed in concert at Ravinia in Illinois. "We have always been involved in the plight and fight for freedom of oppressed people," Yarrow said. "For the rest of our tour we will be singing `We Shall Overcome' for the people of the Soviet Union."
Perhaps a lot of people in the Soviet Union were wishing some newly arrived neighbors were still singing "Working on the Chain Gang."