Word: brezhnevs
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Unkind Cut. By contrast, Premier Aleksei Kosygin, who shared equal glory with Brezhnev at the last Party Congress in 1966, was cast in a lesser light, although he remains in a powerful position. In the new order of precedence in the Politburo, which was expanded by four members to 15, Kosygin dropped to No. 3, after aging President Nikolai Podgorny, 68, whose post is largely ceremonial. In an unkind cut for any politician, Kosygin's three-hour speech was carried only in edited excerpts on radio and television. Worse still, as he was speaking, Soviet TV was carrying...
...also fell to Kosygin to fill in the disillusioning details of the ninth Five-Year Plan, which Brezhnev had expounded in glowing generalities at the start of the Congress. Where Brezhnev, for instance, had announced a grandiose family-allowance plan for everyone earning less than $55 a month-which means one-sixth of the population-Kosygin brought the glummer news that the plan would not take effect until 1974. Even then, the value of free medical care and education would be added in calculating income. That would considerably reduce the number of Soviet citizens who stand to benefit...
...Metal Eaters." Similarly, Kosygin's dry statistics stripped much of the gloss from Brezhnev's promise that Russian consumer needs would be "more fully met." It will take until 1975 before 64% of Soviet families have refrigerators (compared with 32% today) and 72% have television sets and washing machines. That would be a considerable improvement, even if all goes according to plan-which has not happened in the past. But it still means that four years from now, more than a quarter of all families will still be without such appliances...
Moreover, the vaunted shift of production and resources to consumer goods, proclaimed by Brezhnev, turned out to be more apparent than real. Kosygin's figures revealed that such production is to increase between 44% and 48% over the next five years. But at the same time, the production of heavy industry-the "metal eaters," as Khrushchev used to say-will rise by almost the same amount. A considerable part of heavy-industry output goes to a defense establishment, which is roughly the same size as America's. Since the Soviet gross national product is only half as large...
...disclosure that 95% of the increase in consumer-goods output is expected to come from "increased and more efficient labor production." Labor productivity, which currently averages only half that of U.S. workers, has always been an elusive goal for the Soviet economic planners. At the 1966 Congress, Brezhnev sought to solve the problem by demanding harder work, better discipline and an end to drunkenness. Now the Soviet rulers have dropped such exhortation in favor of incentives-the promise of more consumer goods. But the new incentives, unaccompanied by economic reform, are no more likely to increase productivity than Brezhnev...