By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — A recent opinion poll indicates that Soviet citizens are not universally impressed by the glimpses they are getting of capitalism — from privately owned firms to stock exchanges and dole queues.
Published in the Moscow-based Economy and life, the poll was conducted in Russia, the Ukraine and Lithuania by a Soviet research organisation on behalf of the British Times-Mirror group.
The results, we can assume, are not what the Times-Mirror group was hoping for. Seventy-nine per cent of those interviewed in Russia, 86% of those in the Ukraine and 69% in Lithuania thought the state should control large industrial enterprises.
In all three republics, large majorities rejected the concept of private telephone systems and radio and television stations, and opposed privatisation of transport, education and electricity generation. Only 16% favoured private ownership of newspapers, and no more than 31% thought items of mass consumption should be produced by private firms.
Forty-three per cent agreed shops should be privatised, but even in Lithuania no more than 20% wanted to privatise banks.
Meanwhile, 54% of the Russians, 53% of the Ukrainians, and 76% of the Lithuanians responded positively to the question: "Do you support the establishment of market mechanisms in the economy?"
The picture that emerges of the type of economy that most Soviet citizens want is as follows: it would combine social ownership of most of the means of production with the use of market mechanisms (such as competition between enterprises on the basis of quality and price). The financial sector and mass communications media would be collectively owned.
Only in one area — agriculture — did a majority of those surveyed favour privatisation. But surveys last year suggested that only a small minority of peasants are interested in becoming private farmers.
The evidence suggests that the various peoples of the USSR were given their way, even in the Baltic republics, they would construct economies firmly within the framework of socialism. There is nothing inherently anti-socialist about the use of a range of market mechanisms.
But the humane, egalitarian and in general very sensible preferences of most of the population are not even faintly echoed
in economic programs now in force in most of the republics, where large, state-owned enterprises are being turned into joint-stock concerns and sold off. The logic of this is that the economy will eventually be dominated by wealthy capitalists.
The political contradictions revealed by the poll are monumental. Large numbers who might be thought to love Russian President Boris Yeltsin clearly have no sympathy for what he is setting out to do. Yeltsin was elected in July 1990 with 57% of the vote after a campaign in which he revealed almost no policies. The poll suggests that support for his real agenda of capitalist restoration stands at no more than 20%.