Word: co-op
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...proud member. Better yet, call them yuccies -- young upwardly mobile Communists. Osadchuk pays herself a monthly salary of 700 rubles, or $1,120, about three times the average Soviet salary and enough for her family to live very comfortably. Says she: "We buy anything we want." Thanks to the co-op movement, employee profit sharing and other budding forms of entrepreneurship, many Soviets are suddenly earning enough money to do more than just scrape by. They are enjoying a taste of the good life, and some are even becoming wealthy, at least by Soviet standards...
Vladimir Yakovlev, 30, a former journalist, has cashed in on the co-op movement by starting a company to collect and sell information about such ventures. Yakovlev launched the firm, called Fakt, two years ago and already has more than 30 offices in the Soviet Union. Yakovlev, who last fall visited the U.S. for the first time to learn more about foreign trade, pays himself 1,500 rubles a month ($2,400), five times as much as he made as a journalist. His most enviable perk is a company car and driver. "I spend a lot of money every month...
Like Fedorov's restaurant, the co-op movement has taken off -- but it faces a bumpy ride. Although they now account for only about 1% of the country's economy, the 48,000 Soviet co-ops (there were only a handful a year ago) employ some 770,000 workers. The services they offer read like a Yellow Pages directory: animal grooming, auto repairs, computer maintenance, hairstyling, plumbing, translating -- even operating pay toilets...
Despite Gorbachev's strong support for the co-op movement, many apparatchiks remain hostile. Under prodding from the bureaucracy, the Soviet Council of Ministers last December imposed stringent new limits on co-ops in such sensitive areas as medicine, education and publishing. More crackdowns are imminent. One Moscow businessman charges that the bureaucrats are jealous of his success, constantly asking how much money he makes rather than how much in taxes he pays. This entrepreneur is appalled by the system's endemic shakedowns: "Say I'm in private publishing, which is no longer allowed under the new cooperative decree...
Self-financing brings cash -- and confusion. -- The co-op movement is running into resentment. -- Meet the yuccies. -- Joint misadventures...