Checks and Balances

Power is intoxicating. It is capable of corrupting the noble; of bringing out the worst in men. Men like Hitler and Stalin were born human; power turned them into monsters.

In democracies, people delegate political power to their leaders. A well-designed democracy dilutes that power by dividing it. The trick is to create many power centres which can regulate one another. Like in a truly democratic household; the husband, the wife, and the children all have their say in a debate. The master of the house will sometimes have the last word; at other times his wife may overrule him. The children can often persuade or force the parents to give them what they want. This power struggle is evident when the family shops together or decides which movie to go to.

On a national scale, restrictions are placed on powers of a single leader or a group to minimise or eliminate the possibility of a dictatorship.

Civilised societies have five centres of power, each controlling the others and acting as a counterbalancing force.

1.       Legislative: The lawmakers. The Congress in the USA, parliament in the UK or India, ‘Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union’ succeeded by the ‘Federal assembly of Russia’ are all examples of bodies that have the power to make laws. Such legislative bodies can be split into an upper and a lower house. In the UK, the lower house is the House of Commons, similarly translated in India (Lok Sabha). Though called a lower house, it is more powerful than the upper house, the House of Lords (Rajya Sabha). The Senate is the upper chamber in the USA, and House of Representatives the lower. ‘Soviet of the nationalities’ and ‘Soviet of the Union’ were the odd-sounding Soviet equivalents. Their successors are the ‘State Duma’ (lower) and ‘Federation Council’ (upper). The two-house system was historically introduced to offer one chamber to the aristocrats and the other to common people.

2.      Executive: Donald Trump, Theresa May, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin and their cabinets belong to the executive branch. To confuse everyone, India has a President who is the Head of State. I suspect this was in lieu of the monarch (UK’s Head of State) India lost at the time of gaining independence.

3.      Judiciary: The courts. While legislative branch makes the law, and the executive branch enforces it, the judiciary is responsible for interpreting it. Soviet Union had and Russia has courts that look similar to courts elsewhere. I will discuss later what makes them different.

Legislative, executive and judiciary are the three official power centres in the modern civilised world. At one time, Religion as represented by the clergy was a key power centre. Only a few Islamic societies like Iran are still ruled by theocracy.

4.      Media: Television and press, although not official, can be extremely powerful. Through reports, investigation, stories and at times persistent campaigning, media is capable of damaging the reputation of or bringing down anybody.

5.      Social media: This is a relatively new power centre, born after the internet revolution. Social media represents public opinion. Joined as a force, people are capable of counterbalancing another power centre.

In India, due to overpopulation, human beings and vehicles are constantly fighting for space on the roads. When a mob patiently waiting to cross the road reaches its tolerance limit, it simply decides to cross. The vehicles capable of killing them stop and wait until everyone crosses. Sometimes a similar ‘people power’ is exercised by groups (activists, lobbyists) to provoke actions from the government or parliament.

United States of America

United States of America is a great, possibly the greatest, country in this respect.  In a mind-bogglingly complex but beautiful design, the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches are given power over one another so that no action can be unilaterally taken. Trump repeatedly issued executive orders to ban entry of people from seven Muslim countries into the US. Various courts stayed those orders. Trump pushed through the health bill to replace Obamacare. His own party members in the Senate rejected it. On the other hand, Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court, tilting the balance in favour of the Republicans. A Supreme Court judge is nominated by the president and grilled by the Senate before approving him. The president may veto laws made by congress, and the congress may override the veto. Confusing?

While all this is happening, CNN is running a sustained campaign to topple Trump. Late night comedians are now full-time anti-Trump and their shows are posted and shared on Twitter and Facebook. FBI is investigating the Trump family’s connections to Russia and the election fraud. To top it all, in an unprecedented move, the Air Force General John Hyten said a week ago that he will resist any illegal nuclear strike order from Trump.

This is one country where the checks and balances work in practice. There is no way Trump can become dictatorial or get anything nasty done during his term.

The maximum term of eight years for a president is another thing the Americans should be proud of. UK and India don’t have it. Mexico has only one term of six years. It functions so well that since 1934, each president has enjoyed six years, not a day more, not a day less.

As far as I know, only Uganda had an upper age limit of 75 years. Its current president is 73 years old. In order to retain power, he has managed to scrap the upper age limit this year. It is to America’s credit that the 8-year term has not been violated (even when it was felt that retaining Obama would have been better than electing Hillary or Trump).

India

I don’t think any other country has as many political parties or candidates as India. An election can be won by a candidate getting 5% votes, outsmarting the other forty candidates. Coalition is the norm. The partners bicker, fight, causing a downfall of the coalition at times.

The current Indian government has a strong mandate. They have managed to push certain reforms that weaker governments couldn’t. This is excellent.

However, over the past two years, India’s ruling party (BJP) has attempted to remove or dilute the checks and balances. The finance minister long argued that the government should be authorised to appoint the judges (like in the USA). The Indian judiciary has preferred to appoint the judges itself. This inbreeding is not good in itself, but is a lesser evil compared to a political party appointing them. (Ideal would be a third party, a committee of independent competent assessors, appointing them).

The Governor of the Reserve Bank of India was supposed to be independent. In 2016, the independent governor was let go prematurely, and was replaced by a yes-man who allowed the blunder of demonetisation to take place. Checks and balances didn’t work in practice.

The two year emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi in 1975 had to be signed off by the president of India. He signed it, and allowed India to fall under dictatorship. The post of the President of India has failed to control the executive branch. It is aptly called a ‘rubber stamp’. India should consider abolishing the post.

Free media and a very vibrant social media, therefore, are India’s saviours. No other country on earth occupies so much space on Facebook and twitter, or so overwhelmingly criticises their own government.

The independent judiciary, though occasionally incompetent or corrupt; the aggressive media; and an overpowering freedom of expression on social media make dictatorship in India improbable.

United Kingdom

United Kingdom similar to the USA has many checks and balances. Brexit was fought tooth and nail by the public (Gina Miller), the courts (The Supreme Court in Jan 2017 made parliamentary approval mandatory for triggering article 50). The UK parliament has now ensured it will scrutinise the final draft before approving it. Theresa May’s plan to usurp power and push for a hard Brexit is already foiled by the competing power centres.

The anomaly in the UK is that a monarch is its Head. In theory, the Queen is above everything. The courts, the church and the government report to her.

One acid test to verify whether the checks and balances work is to see not its theoretical formulation, but practical functioning. The queen could have stopped Brexit by not signing. (Read my short story: The Royal Assent).  Not only she, but all the queens and kings in the last 300 years, have signed every document they are asked to sign. The institution of monarchy doesn’t function as the Head of the State, it’s a farce. Monarchy should be abolished not because republicans want its abolition, but because it has become a farce.

Soviet Union

Little to write here. Soviet Union was a totalitarian society, where the power of the General secretary and politburo was unchecked and unrestricted. Frightened by the cruelty of Stalin and whimsical autocracy of Khrushchev; Brezhnev and his successors tried to enforce a “collective leadership”. This is attempted in China as well. Collective leadership generally means the group of leaders (politburo) backing the opinions of the supreme leader; in the case of the Soviets, the General Secretary. 

Russia

Yeltsin was a democrat. He still ruled by decrees and when the occasion demanded silenced the parliament by bombing it.

In Putin’s Russia, the parliament and the judiciary conform to the president’s line. If an opposition candidate (e.g. Navalny) is uncomfortable, a speedy court process holds him guilty and gives a minor sentence that is major enough to disqualify him.

Putin has abandoned the principle of ‘collective leadership’. His politburo has frequently changed.

Russian media is state controlled. Except a radio station ‘Ekho Moskvy’, and a few small-circulation newspapers, the media rarely speak against Putin or the government.

On Facebook, the only Russians who criticise the political rulers are those living out of Russia. Fear is in the DNA of older Russians. And the younger Russians, like the young anywhere, are not interested in politics. (They will be if Russia were to become totalitarian again, but by then it will be too late).

Violating the two term restriction by making Medvedev a puppet president for four years was an unconscionable deception. Extending the consecutive maximum from 8 years to 12 years was a political fraud. I don’t know why the Putin critics think he will step down in 2024. He is a fit judo player and will be only 72 in 2024. He can once again invite Medvedev for a brief period before assuming presidency himself. When no checks and balances exist, this process can be continued till the end of his life.

To decide if today’s Russia is a dictatorship, it is irrelevant how competent or conscientious or great Vladimir Putin is. Political power is concentrated in his hands with no checks or counterbalancing power. 

It is indeed unfortunate that 100 years after the revolution, the Russian state continues to be classified as a dictatorship.

If the choice is between ‘progress under dictatorship’ and ‘stagnation under democracy’, I personally prefer stagnation, even chaos, under democracy. (Worse is stagnation under dictatorship, which is what happened in Brezhnev’s time). 

Summary: (a) Essential to study the checks and balancing power centres that exist in your country.

(b) Fictitious power centres such as the British monarch or the President of India contribute nothing (as a control mechanism), but are a huge cost centre. They should be scrapped.

(b) Concentration of power in the hands of a single person or a small group is dictatorship, irrespective of how good or competent the person is.

(c) Social media, the fifth power centre, is one the common man has access to. For those willing to maintain democracy in their country, that power centre should be used by fearlessly writing against dilution of checks and balances.

Ravi 

Russian Revolution Centenary: Part Four

Vladimir Lenin had associated imperialism with capitalism. Soviet Union declared itself as an anti-imperialistic State.

Many intellectuals were impressed by the anti-imperialist stance of communism. It appealed to Indians in particular. Before 1947, imperialists had ruled over India for at least 400 straight years. Babur, from today’s Uzbekistan, had established the Mughal Empire in India in the year 1526. (Babri mosque, demolished in 1992, was named after him). Mughals, weakened by the middle of the nineteenth century, were replaced by the British Empire. My parents and grandparents were born in British India, and some of my earlier ancestors presumably had Muslim rulers.

The two empires operated differently. The Mughal Empire began in Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Turkey, Iran and other Muslim land). It kept expanding by attacking territories in the south. At its peak, near the end of the 17^th century, it had conquered most of India. The Indian continent was, in some sense, contiguous (adjoining) to the land the Mughals came from. The distance from Samarkand to Delhi was 2000 km. With no sea between them, cavalry could cover it in a few weeks.

The Mughals began to spread across India, marry the locals (Rajputs), and impose their language, music, and religion on the local population. Their rulers ruled from Agra, Lahore or Delhi. Today, the Indian continent (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) has more than half a billion Muslims. This is the result of the Mughal rule several centuries earlier.

British Empire, on the other hand, ruled through remote control. No British king or queen Victoria ever shifted base to India. The British simply meant to exploit India as a colony, plunder its wealth. Those who naively think that British rule was good for India should watch the 15-minute clip of Dr Shashi Tharoor’s celebrated debate speech at the Oxford University.

Which of the two empires had a greater impact on India? In terms of damage, certainly the British. As Tharoor points out in his speech, when the British came to India, India was one of the richest countries in the world with 23% of the global GDP. India was the world leader in textiles, steel and shipbuilding. Poverty was unknown. After 200 years of exploitation, expropriation and looting by the British, it was reduced to one of the poorest countries by 1947.

Imperialism is War ! 

The Soviet Union was more like the Mughal Empire, contiguous, and there was much exchange and inter-marriages as a result of the union. Unlike the British leaving India, or French leaving Africa, Russians were not expected to leave the non-Russian republics when the empire ended. In 1991, twenty-five million Russians found themselves on the wrong side of the Russian border. Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) were always strongly anti-Russian. They had won independence in the First World War and considered Russia occupying them illegally after the Second. Those republics denied or made difficult citizenship for those Russians living within their boundaries.

Soviet Union had simply replaced the Russian empire. Lenin’s calling it an anti-imperialist state was as duplicitous as Donald Trump saying nobody has more respect for women than Trump does.

In 1991, due to its prolonged economic failure, USSR was ripe for a breakdown. It could have adopted market economy, and continued its existence. This didn’t happen. It is remarkable that along with its collapse, the union disintegrated into fifteen sovereign states. The disintegration was proof that Soviet Union was an empire, the constituents of which sought independence for a long time. This was further corroborated by the formation of a “Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)” among those nations. The British formed ‘Commonwealth’ as a proxy term for their empire. This was to pretend the empire’s continuation. Both the British Commonwealth and the CIS are powerless bodies. They are like a divorced couple trying to maintain cordial relations.

*****

The Soviet Empire replacing the Russian Empire 100 years ago had fifteen official republics. A staunch Russian nationalist may argue it was a voluntary union in that the Soviet constitution, at least on paper, allowed any republic to secede.

Then what about Poland? Hungary? Bulgaria? Romania? East Germany? Czechoslovakia? (Possibly Afghanistan from 1979).

Russian language, the state planning system, government owning everything, the Soviet way of life, politics, secret police force were all forced on these foreign states. I visited Poland in 1987. It was in a worse shape than the USSR. One of my most memorable memories is a Polish man with a garland of coarse toilet papers around his neck. He was going around displaying that as a trophy. (Toilet paper was also in shortage). Another memory from that trip is my near-death on a Warsaw- Szczecin train in which people were crammed like cattle. For over eight hours, I was squeezed in a mass of flesh, unable to move in any direction, trying desperately to breathe properly.

Poland and other Soviet satellites undoubtedly looked at the USSR as an imperialist power. Twenty-five years after its end, all have joined the EU; some have allowed their territory for American military bases, and all have extinguished Russian language from education.

*****

The British Empire, Islamic empire and Soviet empire were the three largest empires in history, in terms of the landmass they occupied. While my parents’ generation saw the fall of the British Empire, I witnessed the fall of the Soviet. (I celebrated as heartily as my parents must have).

Interestingly, Soviet Empire, in one respect, differed from both the British and the Mughal empires. During the existence of the USSR, Russian population suffered as much as the Estonians, Uzbeks, Armenians, Poles, or East Germans. When the empire came down, Russians in Moscow forcefully brought down the massive statues of Lenin.

You may remember the image of Yeltsin standing on a tank in front of the parliament and declaring independence from the Soviet tyranny. If the Russian people celebrated the end of the USSR, who were the imperialists?

To understand this, we need to discuss bullying in schools.

*****

In a school class, a single boy or a small group of boys are bullies. That small group is capable of dominating the majority, occasionally terrifying them. The remaining students in the class are either the victims or neutral. Some are forced to join or support the bullies in order to protect themselves. The source of the bully power is the bully himself.

In most societies, political power is similar to that of the school bullies. You will notice that even in democratic societies a very tiny section of politicians are elected by millions. India’s lower house, the more powerful body, has 545 individuals (one of them is India’s prime minister). The upper house has 245 individuals. This bunch of 790 people together has all the federal political power over the 1.3 billion Indians. It’s a minuscule percent, one person out of 1.5 million in central power. In absence of additional checks, such power can always be abused. The power of school bullies is limited by strong teachers or rigorous anti-bullying school policies. Without such checks, the school bullies will cause havoc.

The Soviet dictators were like school bullies with no checks on them. Lenin and Stalin legitimised unfettered dictatorship of the communist party and its General Secretary. For seventy years, a small group of Communist dictators ruled unashamedly (the talk was about a dictatorship of the proletariat, but in reality it was a dictatorship over the proletariat). The power of the politburo was absolute, not subject to external checks or criticism. Just like they suffered under Tsar, many Russians suffered under the Soviet rule. Though the Latvians and Czechoslovakians looked at Russians as the imperialists, it was not the Russian people but this small section of Soviet bullies who had formed the empire.

This point is valid in most democratic and dictator societies. I have close friends in Russia, America and England. Should I blame them for Putin or Trump or Brexit? Absolutely not. When I am critical about the British Empire it has nothing to do with my British friends or their ancestors. It has to do with a few British thugs (one may add people like Winston Churchill to that group) keen to build and expand the empire.

Masses are generally apathetic or helpless. In the USA, a democratic icon, nobody can any longer become its president without having access to some 2 billion dollars.  Financial power, also concentrated in the hands of a small group, operates in collusion with political power. What is an average American voter, given a choice between Trump and Hillary, supposed to do? He is almost as helpless as an ordinary Russian under Tsar, Stalin, Brezhnev or Putin. The only difference is that the helpless creature in America is free to shout or protest. The Soviet citizen never was.

Soviet Communism experiment: Lesson no. 4A: One should not judge a person or people by the political situation or leaders in their country. It is wrong and nonsensical.

*****

An empire tries to expand its boundaries, primarily by conquering foreign lands and subjugating foreign people. Usually the vanquished belong to a different race, different religion, speak a different language, have their own customs, traditions, and folktales.

Ukrainians and Belarusians were Slavic people, closer to Russians. (That doesn’t always help as shown by the current Russia-Ukraine conflict). But people in the six Muslim republics and the three Baltic republics were very different. Forcing them into the Soviet Union didn’t work out.

Is that a danger for the European Union? No doubt, European Union is voluntary; far more civilised and has enough checks and balances. However, perception rather than reality that people different than you are ruling over you is likely to cause EU’s downfall in future. Brexit leaders managed to convince sections of population that Britain was reporting to Brussels. I am in Poland at the time of writing this essay. Poland is now in the clutches of vicious ultra-nationalists. Modern Nazis are the rulers in Austria. Though they didn’t seize the power, nationalists also have a strong mandate in France. It is possible that European Union may disintegrate much before celebrating its own centenary.

Soviet communism experiment: Lesson no. 4b: European Union is as abstract a concept as the Soviet Union was. No such homogeneous nation or people exist. If perceived as an Empire ruling over its subjects, it can collapse and disintegrate in the same way the Soviet Union did. That is the unfortunate lesson from the Soviet case study.

Ravi

Russian Revolution Centenary: Part Three

Totalitarianism is the ultimate form of dictatorship. A totalitarian State pervades every aspect of its citizens’ lives.

Music

In 1984, a group of Soviet composers was on an official visit to India. Working with them was my first assignment as a Russian interpreter. Nurilla Zakirov, an Uzbek composer from Tashkent, was part of the group. (Open diary 25: 2008) In private conversations with me, he said, “I would have loved to experiment with different types of music, I can’t. If they could ban Shostakovich’s fourth symphony (note: in Stalin’s time: R.), what will they do to me? I must compose music in the Soviet socialist spirit.”

Literature

Not only music, but literature was strictly censored. I had several arguments with my Russian teachers, asking them as to why Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago was banned. It was one of the finest Russian novels I had read, and my teacher, a PhD in Russian literature, was prohibited from reading it. Years later, my Russian wife showed me a photocopy of Animal farm. Her father had taken great risks in obtaining that book in the black market, and until the collapse of the USSR, the family had hidden it inside the house.

Education

Shall we introduce television now or when they introduce colour?

Education in the USSR was excessively patriotic, even the history textbooks. For the Russian students, television was invented by Vladimir Zvorykin (never heard of John Logie Baird). Alexander Popov gifted radio to mankind (not Marconi). Alexander Mozhaisky built the first aeroplane. (Who are Wright brothers?) Alexander Lodygin is the inventor of the light bulb. (Thomas Edison came much later.)

If you think I am talking of ancient times, take the case of my teacher’s granddaughter currently completing Masters in Economics at a Moscow university. We met in December 2016. I asked her what branch of economics she was studying. She looked puzzled. I asked her whether it was the Adam Smith or the Milton Friedman type. She had not heard the name of a single economist I know, nobody from Benham to Samuelson, certainly not Krugman. Despite the USSR failing in Economics, I suspect the same economics continues to be taught in the Russian universities.

These days, we see photo-shopped fake pictures. Soviets had perfected that art in Stalin’s time. Nikolai Yezhov, Commissar for Internal Affairs under Stalin, was not only secretly shot dead in a basement, but disappeared from pictures as well. Many such people became “non-persons”. They disappeared from the Soviet textbooks, as if they had never existed. The heroes in earlier textbooks became the villains in later editions. In the 1930s, history kept changing so often that the Soviet children often studied without any history textbooks.

Soviet education didn’t tolerate non-conforming individuals. Left-handed children were forcefully converted into right-handed. Outside India, I have the largest number of friends in Russia. Not a single one of them is left-handed. Left-handedness was a stigma, a disorder to be treated, disciplined and cured, until 1985, when the health ministry and in the following year the education ministry, officially announced protection of left-handed kids in the USSR. During Gorbachev’s perestroika, the scientists were finally permitted to release the research that showed how harmful the left-to-right conversion was.

Religion

I have written about this extensively in the past. Propagation of religion was banned. Atheism was promoted as part of the Marxist-Leninist ideology. In the 1980s, Soviet followers of religious sects were imprisoned, sent to psychiatric hospitals. Sergei Zuev alias Sucharu Das, a Hare Krishna devotee, whose house I regularly visited to teach Sanskrit and eat vegetarian food, had been sent to a penal colony for 2 ½ years. Other than meditation, he was accused of vegetarianism, a dangerous concept for the Soviet state.

Jeans

In the USSR, blue jeans represented freedom, capitalism and the West. For most part of Soviet history, jeans could be procured only from the black marketers. A Soviet worker needed to part with two months’ salary to get hold of a pair of jeans, which rarely fit him anyway. During the “1957 World festival of youth and students” held in Moscow, the Soviet youth was first exposed to blue jeans worn by the visiting American students.

Traffickers were called the free market sharks, enemies of the State. In 1961, two such smugglers, Rokotov and Faibishenko, were sentenced to death. Their charge sheet included a charge: trafficking in jeans. In the 1980s, some fortunate Soviet tourists could buy jeans in Hungary. But most of them preferred not to wear them at work.

(It is noteworthy that last year, Kim-Jong Un banned jeans and piercings in North Korea).

Pravda

Pravda, translated as “truth” was the official government newspaper. For the communist party members, its subscription was mandatory. Pravda was not allowed to report air crashes. As a result, Aeroflot was the world’s safest airline during the Soviet years. Despite Gorbachev’s glasnost, Pravda didn’t report the Chernobyl accident for four days. By then the rest of the world knew about it.

Elections

Voting was a right of a Soviet citizen, and it was mandatory for him/her to exercise it. Only one party (Communist party) was allowed to take part in the elections. Elections always had a single candidate, and the voter had the choice of voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’. However, in order to vote a ‘no’, you needed to enter a booth, and make a mark with a pen kept in the booth. Only suicidal voters attempted going inside a booth. As a result, most Soviet elections display proud statistics of more than 99% of the eligible voters voting, and more than 99% of them endorsing the single candidate wholeheartedly.

Xerox copies

If you think I am offering examples from Stalin’s or Brezhnev’s time as evidence of the Soviet totalitarianism, you are mistaken. True, it was diluted during Gorbachev’s time, but the all-permeating totalitarian structure remained in place.

Albert Traxler, an Austrian, was my roommate at my Moscow university. His father was a successful businessman trading with the USSR. In 1987, I had gone with Albert to his father’s Moscow office. Albert needed to photocopy some documents. He showed me a ledger. After Xeroxing, one needed to make an entry in that ledger as to how many copies were taken and of which documents. ‘The State auditors visit us to check that’, Albert explained. ‘They don’t want anybody in this country taking photocopies of banned books or undesirable materials.’ Apart from the ledger entries, the auditors would check the level of toner in the printer to ensure it matches with the number of copies made.

I thought I was immune to surprises the Soviet State could spring up, but the photocopy register shocked me.

Exit visa

Soviets had a domestic passport, on which they couldn’t travel abroad. Obtaining a passport to travel internationally was a lengthy, humiliating process (unless your father worked in the politburo). A Russian friend of mine told me how she would stand in a queue outside an office from 04.00 in the morning in freezing cold. At around 08.00 there would be a roll-call (Перекличка) by volunteers. It established your number in the queue. If you didn’t manage to get in that day, that number was lost. Next morning you queued up from scratch once again. Because of the competition, the aspiring passport candidate would wait for weeks, sometimes months.

Getting a passport was not enough. Before you could go abroad, you needed an “exit visa”. This was the permission from Soviet state, without which no foreign government could issue a visa. In most cases, the wait for the exit visa was so long that ordinary citizens missed the deadline. It was the obvious aim of the Soviet state to deny its citizens an opportunity to visit other countries, particularly those in the West.

The ‘exit visa’ rules applied to foreigners as well. In 1987, the same Albert Traxler went to Odessa. He was booked on a ship to take him back to Western Europe from where he would go home to Austria. He had forgotten to take his exit visa from the institute. Despite having the Austrian passport, a ticket on the ferry, and nothing left to do in the USSR, he was sent back from Odessa to Moscow to retrieve the exit visa.

People were discouraged from going abroad, and information that could come from abroad was severely restricted. Soviet state used jammers wherever they could to block BBC and Voice of America. Bringing video cassettes from abroad was illegal.

Police state

The Soviet state had a right to stop any citizen on the streets without reason, and verify his documents. In 1997, when Moscow celebrated its 850^th anniversary, this paranoia reached its peak. I was stopped on the streets every five minutes, by every policeman, who couldn’t distinguish between Chechens and Hindus. It took me a few years after leaving Russia for that instant discomfort at the sight of a policeman to disappear.

During my runs at Patriarshi ponds, policemen twice stopped me to demand my ID. My fluency in Russian saved me.

In 1994, in the south of Moscow, I was handcuffed, frisked, my jacket torn to check if I had hidden drugs inside. The police then let me go without a word of apology.

At least on three occasions, the custom officer at the airport didn’t let me go to catch my flight until I gave him gifts (which he saw in my bag on the x-ray monitor).

Racial profiling was common. In the UK, police are prohibited from using racial descriptions (they can say a tall man, but not a black man). In the USSR, racial profiling was normal. Even today, respectable newspapers occasionally use the word negr.

Movement inside the country was severely restricted. Soviets going outside their own city had to register after three days. They couldn’t become a member of a library, couldn’t work or live officially outside the place mentioned in their passport. For foreigners, visiting cities not mentioned on the visa was a crime.

An American friend of mine, Jennifer, called her mother from the Moscow post office. In 1986, international calls were put through an operator. Jennifer could hear her mother very well, her mother could hear Jennifer very well, but the operator kept telling Jennifer: “please speak louder, I can’t hear you properly.”

What is particularly mind-boggling is that the Soviet State managed to reach sophistication in surveillance and policing of its own citizens at a time when there was no internet, no mobiles, and for many years no computers. I shudder to imagine what USSR would have done if they had access to all those things.

Surveillance in modern world

Modern technology and the bogey of terrorism have encouraged many countries including the USA and the UK to become surveillance states. They are not yet police states in the sense that police can’t arbitrarily stop citizens and demand documents.

Until a few years ago, I was very proud of India, a country whose citizens in principle could live their entire lives without identity documents. Unfortunately, that time is over. India has now introduced a biometric Aadhar card, an ID for each citizen to create the world’s biggest biometric database. It is mandatory in practice though not by law. Bank accounts and mobile phones will be deactivated unless connected to the Aadhar card. (Currently challenged in India’s Supreme Court).

This is a dangerous worldwide trend. The power of the State over an individual is enhancing exponentially even in democratic nations. A powerful surveillance State can first become a police State. A police and surveillance State can become a totalitarian State. Next week, I will discuss what is needed to avoid or postpone this.  

Soviet Communism experiment: Lesson no.3: A totalitarian State can never become part of a civilised world. It is normally a fearful, rude, unhappy, paranoid State that ill-treats its own citizens. (Currently North Korea, Cuba, some Islamic and African states). If you feel your country is becoming a police or surveillance State, protest and resist as much as you can. If your country becomes totalitarian (regulating music, literature, food, clothes, education), run away from it as quickly as you can. Before your State stops you from leaving it.  

Ravi  

Russian Revolution Centenary: Part Two

I landed in Moscow for the first time on Sun. 7 September 1986. That was the first time in my life when I could not find any food to buy. The university canteens were shut, and not a single cafe or shop was open in the vicinity. Fortunately, my mother, worried about her son going to this strange new land, had forced me to carry some Indian food within my 20 kg weight limit. Even with its wartime-like rationing, I exhausted all of it in a week. On 14 September, it was Sunday again, and I was keen not to starve. My French flatmate Marc, who knew Moscow better, suggested we both go to the town’s centre and eat at the Prague restaurant.

“Shouldn’t be expensive”, he said looking at my anxious face. “We should go early, because it may take some time for us to enter it.”

I think we reached the famous restaurant by around 11.00. The street was full of people, all part of a disciplined serpentine queue. In fact, restaurant Prague had a large empty courtyard in front so that hundreds of people could wait in peace. Marc and I knew each other for about six days. Marc’s ancestors were from Russia. So he was more patient. We talked a lot. Once you invest 2-3 hours standing in a queue, you can’t leave it. As a matter of experience, I can confirm you can’t leave it until you get the dividend (in this case, food). We finally got in at around 6 pm, after waiting on the road for nearly seven hours. I ordered an egg omelette and bread from the rude, screaming waiter. (On a Bombay street, I could get the same in three minutes). Marc was right. Despite being a centrally located restaurant, restaurant Prague was quite cheap.

*****

From then on, queues became a part of my daily life for several years. I comforted myself by saying I was a foreigner who could leave Russia any time. After marrying a Russian girl, that argument sounded weak.

You queued for milk and bread in the mornings. Old babushkas, fattened by eating only bread and potatoes during the war years, literally wrestled to enter the shop or reach the counter. Places like hairdressers had queues that you couldn’t see. On entering, you asked “who is the last one?” The “last one” nodded. You then claimed your place after him. He was then free to leave the salon and queue up in other places. It was both an art and a science to judge the time needed in each queue and reappear before your turn came.

Products without queues were not worth buying. If there was no queue for it, it must be bad, Soviets knew.

The first McDonalds in Russia, the world’s biggest at that time, opened in Moscow in January 1990. For the first few years, you needed to wait for 7-8 hours before you could enter this fast food place. The Big Mac cost merely 5 kopecks.  

*****

Queues were not the only amusement in our daily lives. Before going to Moscow, I always used Colgate toothpaste. Moscow made me change my toothpaste. Thanks to my living in communist times, I still use two different toothpastes, one in the morning, another in the night. In the USSR, you asked for toothpaste and bought whichever was available. If the shop didn’t ration the stocks, and if the boorish woman at the counter allowed, you picked up a dozen toothpastes.

Not only toothpastes, your clothes, shoes, watches, perfumes, shampoos, buying everything was a matter of chance. Jackets and overcoats vied with each other in their dull heavy-ness. My bear-like soviet overcoat was so ugly; I preferred to use a second-hand jacket given by my Austrian flatmate. (Soviet quality: The Soviet microprocessors were the largest in the world, the watches the fastest and Zenit cameras the heaviest.)

Each purchase was a feat – a product of intelligence, luck and lots of burnt calories in a queue. In an earlier diary, I have told the story of a Russian federal minister whom I helped buy lenses and a frame separately in an Indian town. At the Soviet optician, you opted for your dioptric number with whatever frame, or for an available frame with whatever number.

*****

In 1986, officially, 100 US dollars fetched you 60 roubles. However, in the black market, they fetched 600 roubles, ten times more. Aeroflot tickets were not available for six months. But if you knew the right people, and inserted a few right notes inside your passport, you could procure a ticket for next week. If your mother was dying of cancer, the treatment was free, but the next appointment was available after three years. However, parting with your annual salary would allow her to get treated in her lifetime.

*****

How did all that change? How did the queues vanish from Moscow?

The Soviet Union’s economy was planned. All wages and prices were artificially repressed. The Gosplan (central planning committee) decided what to produce, how much and at what price. Factories were given production targets, not sales targets. Because everything produced was bound to be sold (thanks to the wisdom of the planning committee).

Gosplan, in their five-year plans, followed a method called “material balances”. This meant planning both supply and demand of raw materials and finished products in units, not costs or prices. For example, if a seven-story shoe shop covered an area with 50,000 people, Gosplan would order 100,000 pairs of shoes for that area, prices didn’t matter. When the pairs hit the shoe mall, the 50,000 people queued up. A few lucky ones got the right size, less lucky ones managed with shoes a little too tight or loose, and others continued to use their old shoes. Consumers complained of shortages. Soviet State produced the planning figures to show how people were lying.

Since the State owned everything including the people’s labour, the prices for goods and services could be anything the State wished. A Soviet economist once said they used the prices from the capitalist countries to get an idea of how to price equivalent goods. When he was asked what would happen if the whole world became communist (as originally intended), he answered: “I’m afraid we’ll need to keep at least one country capitalist, so the rest of the world could use its prices as benchmark.”

*****

Stalin, a believer in super-specialisation had a grand plan. He wanted the USSR to produce only steel, lots and lots of steel, enough for the needs of the entire world. (Stalin got his name from Stal=steel in Russian). Later, that steel would be bartered against all consumer products the Soviet people needed. Such fantastic ideas are the product of the command economy. Unfortunately, other nations were not made part of Stalin’s daydream. USSR produced steel in excess that nobody wanted. Soviet people, however sturdy, couldn’t eat steel for lunch. When the USSR collapsed, less than 60% of the country’s GDP came from consumer goods, and negligible from services. It had 45,000 nuclear weapons, an all-time world record, and people queuing for bread and milk.

*****

An illiterate lady haggling at the bazaar, or a literate man searching the internet for the cheapest air tickets know what the market economy means.

In a market economy, sellers can keep raising the price until queues vanish. If a product is not moving, prices can be dropped until consumers flock back. If the State fixes the maximum price for bananas at 5 cents per dozen, bananas will immediately be in huge shortage. If the government taxes tobacco or alcohol unreasonably high, smuggling of those products will begin immediately. Market economy is a beautiful levelling mechanism that juggles between demand and supply to find the right price point.

Market economy is also about consumer focus and competition. 

   

Consumer orientation

Years ago, my school friend Hemant, a nuclear physicist, worked in the Kolar Gold Fields. Kolar is a South Indian town where gold was mined. Hemant was posted there for three years. He regularly visited a tiny tobacconist stall to buy ‘Honeydew’, the brand he smoked. When the assignment was over, and it was time to return to Bombay, he casually mentioned his impending departure to the tobacconist.

“Oh,” the tobacconist said, “in that case I’ll stop buying Honeydew from tomorrow.”

“Why?” Hemant asked, surprised.

“You’re the only one in this town who smokes Honeydew. For the past three years, I was buying it only for you.”

*****

Market economy and its constituents, like this tobacconist, are focused on serving and satisfying the consumer. In 2001, as a single man I often dined at a Mexican place close to my house in Warsaw. As soon as I sat at the table, the waiter would place a ‘double grapefruit juice no ice’ on my table without my asking for it. In the Soviet Union, I never had any such experience.

Competition and super-specialisation

 Since the Soviet state owned everything, there was no competition. State planners believed in super specialisation and created giant monopolies. I remember around 1992 or 1993, the ice cream packaging factory broke down. Ice cream was produced in another factory. For the next few months, in Moscow, we went to buy ice cream with steel containers from our own houses, much as one would buy milk in our childhood.

India’s mistake

China remains a communist country. During the cold war India was under the Soviet influence. Both avoided a USSR-type collapse, because they partially allowed market economy and free enterprise.

India made the mistake of offering subsidies on food, oil and gas, electricity, transport, fertilizers and many others. Paradoxically, a poor country can’t afford to become a welfare state. India’s interfering with the market economy often resulted in mass-scale corruption, theft and black market. Many such subsidies continue, keeping the cost of living down.

Had India not followed the Soviet route of 5-year State plans and heavy subsidies, India’s population would have been less than half of what it is. High cost of living is a great contraceptive. Fortunately, 25 years after the USSR collapsed, India has finally woken up to the fact that State planning doesn’t work. The twelfth 5-year plan ended in March this year turned out to be the last one. Indian Gosplan is finally over, thank goodness. Let the markets decide.

Education and medical: Should they be free?

Since I am such a strong proponent of market economy and free market (no govt interference), I must discuss free education and free medical, the two things Soviets were proud of (until they realised some western capitalist countries also offered both).

Education was free in the USSR. Medical services were free on paper, but in practice you needed to give the doctor anything from a vodka bottle to real cash. The quality of medical services was poor. (Read how a Moscow hospital treated me for antritis in my open diary week 15: 2009).

Education at all levels is free in Germany. My brother, an Indian citizen, studied at a German university for eight years and paid zero tuition fees. (Everything else was expensive, though). The education subsidy in Germany is not as bad as the food or fuel subsidy for two reasons.

a.      Education can’t be hoarded like potatoes or diesel. Education is rarely an attractive or addictive product. Students normally go to schools or colleges with the same degree of enthusiasm as a clerk working for the State accounts department.

b.      Since education is free throughout Germany, a certain quality can be maintained. In countries where both free and paid schools exist, the quality in the free schools starts falling.

*****

Free medical service is another debatable topic that can’t be covered in this short article. Health insurance was meant to be a vehicle, but USA has shown how it can become a scam. In the UK, NHS is severely under pressure. Certainly, wherever medical services and products are expensive, and uninsured, people pay more attention to their health.

*****

If one, and only one, factor were to be chosen for the failure of the Soviet Union, I would say it was the State planning system replacing the market economy.

Soviet Communism experiment: Lesson no.2: Market economy functions, State planning doesn’t. State is never as consumer focused as the market forces. Subsidies or repression of prices give rise to corruption, black markets, rationing, queues and inferior service.

Ravi