To finish this section on a happier note, we can add that the Council of Ministers did finally issue a decree regulating pensions for leading state and party officials in 1984 – one year before Gorbachev’s arrival in power.
A WELFARE STATE… FOR PARTY AND STATE BIGWIGS
Even if there were surprising gaps when it came to pensions, the kinds of perks offered by the regime to its rulers – who were also party and state employees receiving a salary (though they were not the owners or co-owners of the units under their command) – mean that we can legitimately speak of a welfare state. Obviously, this welfare state also existed for poorer layers of the population, but in the case of the privileged it assumed luxurious proportions in the given Soviet conditions. In an economy constantly suffering shortages of every variety, a good wage was not enough. Special access was also required to products and services that were in short supply and available exclusively to the privileged few. Hence the development of a perverse mechanism involving high-ranking employees, lobbying hard for perks as a condition of good performance, and their powerful employers (Central Committee, Council of Ministers, ministries) using these perks as a carrot (granting them) or a stick (withdrawing them). This threatened one day to exceed what the system could afford, for it revolved around the redistribution of existing resources, not the creation of new ones. Inevitably, it revealed new motivational realities on both sides. The appetites of administrators went on growing, beyond the system’s limits. That some of the highest-level apparatchiks remained ardent partisans of their ‘socialism’ is readily explicable: no other system would have afforded them as much. We can judge for ourselves from some examples of the degree of material comfort extended to top apparatchiks as they climbed the ladder of the central apparatus.
Almost incredulous, a Central Committee secretary has recounted the perks offered him. We are in 1986, but the information is also valid for the earlier period. It comes from the former ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin.[10] Dobrynin knew the leadership well, but had only a vague idea of the universe of the party apparatus. In March 1986 he became secretary of the Central Committee in his capacity as head of the International Department. The following day, he met a representative of the ninth directorate of the KGB, which was responsible for the personal security of leading figures and the material perks granted to Politburo and Secretariat members (it was frequently referred to as ‘the Politburo’s nanny’). ‘I found myself in a world apart’, Dobrynin writes. According to the current rules, he was entitled to three bodyguards, a Zil limousine, and a dacha near Moscow at Sosnovyi Bor – the ‘Sosnovka’ occupied by Marshal Zhukov until his death – with the following staff attached to it: two cooks, two gardeners, four waitresses, and guards. The building comprised two floors, with a large dining room, a living room, several bedrooms and a projection room. There was another building nearby, with a tennis court, a sauna, an orangery and an orchard. ‘What a contrast with the Muscovite life I’d been used to!’ And yet Dobrynin was simply one of several Central Committee secretaries, not a Politburo member, let alone general-secretary. What was a Politburo member entitled to? He does not say. More than a Central Committee secretary, obviously, but a lot less than the general-secretary. In any event, it is worth registering the (doubtless sincere) astonishment of this highly placed – and hence already privileged – Muscovite.
Whatever the amenities they enjoyed, Politburo members could always demand more. But some of them – a majority, perhaps – were not really interested in luxury, and certainly not in ostentatious luxury, with the well-known exception of Brezhnev.
Ligachev’s personal experience offers us a glimpse of the Politburo’s working life in its twilight years in the early 1980s.[11] After Andropov’s death, the Central Committee elected Konstantin Chernenko as general-secretary. He was proposed by Prime Minister Tikhonov and seconded by Gromyko – an unproblematic election. A year later, Chernenko caused some consternation by proposing that Gorbachev – Andropov’s protege – should chair Secretariat meetings, effectively making him the regime’s number two. There was opposition from some quarters, but Chernenko, although not at all close to Gorbachev, insisted. The position of number two was not a formal one. Ligachev remembers that in 1984 there were people who sought to find compromising material on Gorbachev from the time when he was regional secretary of the Stavropol region, but does not name them. The use of compromising documents was a favourite weapon in leadership infighting: one side to a conflict would try to dig up dirt to dish on the other. Access to police material or information from the ‘underworld’ could be a precious asset.
Chernenko received detailed briefings on the state of health of other leaders from Tchazov, the Health Minister. But the health of the general-secretary himself was kept top-secret: even other Politburo members were largely ignorant. Such secrecy was fertile ground for rumours and allowed some members of the leadership, who had personal access to the sick general-secretary, to manipulate him to personal or group advantage.
The Central Committee building on the Staraia Ploshchad was itself a highly secret place. But those in the know would tell you that, traditionally, office no. 6 on the ninth floor was the general-secretary’s. Office no. 2 was known as ‘Suslov’s office’. It was from there (I think) that the Central Committee Secretariat was managed.
The Politburo convened every Thursday at 11 AM precisely, either at the Kremlin or Staraia Ploshchad. In the Kremlin, on the third floor of the old part of the building, the general-secretary had an office as well as a reception room. This was also where the ‘nut-tree hall’ was located, with its large round table around which leaders discussed problems informally before the Politburo session began. While candidate members and Central Committee secretaries attended the latter, they did not participate in the informal discussions.
Under Brezhnev, Politburo meetings were short. It took an hour, or even forty minutes, to approve decisions that had been prepared in advance. Under Andropov, the Politburo’s work was more serious and deliberations could last hours. The Politburo had to decide on important appointments – something it did rapidly under Brezhnev and more attentively under Andropov.
A brief passage in Ligachev’s memoirs adds an interesting note to this collective portrait. One day – probably in 1983 – one of the most powerful partisans of the conservative wing, the long-time defence head Ustinov (who died in 1984), said to the newly arrived Ligachev: ‘Yegor, you are one of us, part of our circle.’ Ligachev says that he did not understand what was meant by this. In fact, Ustinov was giving the provincial newcomer to understand that there were factions in the Politburo. His own comprised the conservative ‘state patriots’, and after his death, the lack of Ligachev’s support for ‘us’ was sorely felt. By then, Ligachev was already in Gorbachev’s camp. Subsequently, during perestroika, he rejoined the conservative faction. In his memoirs, Ligachev comments that Gromyko, Ustinov and Chernenko – the figures from the previous generation – can be taxed with a whole variety of failures: they were responsible for the fact that the state was ‘on the verge of collapse’ in the 1980s. However, he adds that it was to their credit that they opted not to pursue Brezhnev’s line but to back Gorbachev instead. In this respect, they proved superior to all the last-minute turncoats who abandoned politics to concentrate on their own personal interests. Gromyko had been the first Politburo member to propose Gorbachev for the post of general-secretary, which had secured him unanimous endorsement not only in the Politburo but also from the Central Committee secretaries. According to Ligachev, things could have turned out quite differently.