The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

1972 FREE ENTERPRISE AND THE. RUSSIANS 467ownership of the means of production,and the Kremlin's. crucialstrategy is the utter material dependenceof its subjects upon thestate. (That the state one niceday should wither away, nobodywhile of sound mind takes seriously.)Is there a hankering of the Russionpeople for personal independenceand private enterprise? Agenuine yearning? Or is the Russianunderground opposition merelyhostile to the most tyrannicalaspects of the present governmentwhile accepting in its hearta socialist order? There isa widespreadbelief in the West (inAmerica, probably, more than inEurope) that the memory of personalproperty and free enterprisein the USSR is dead as a doornailand that what the Russianstoday desire is merely a bit moreprivacy, freedom of expression,and a chance to read flashy Americanperiodicals. By and large thisview is not true to fact. To thecontrary, the critique of the totalitarianexcesses of the regimeis more and more being supplantedwith a mounting protest againstthe system itself. The once someekly expressed preference fora "genuine Marxism-Leninism" toStalinism or Neo-Stalinism is increasinglyreplaced with violentattacks against Marxism. I thinkthere would be an even more generalattack in the undergroundpublications against all forms ofsocialism if there were a betterunderstanding of the nature andpossibility of private enterpriseon a large scale.A Cruel System of ControlsIn the mid-nineteen-thirties aHungarian Communist writer.Erwin Sinko, settled for morethan a year in Moscow. In hisbrilliant account of that periodpublished in German, Der Romarneines Romans (Cologne, 1962 and1967), he provides us with a greatmany interesting observations andinsights. (Sinko died as a Titoistin Yugoslavia only a few yearsago). He was in the USSR at thebeginning of the Big Purges butshamefacedly admits that he wasnot aware of them.He saw that the USSR was producinggoods far more expensivelythan Western Europe (largely onaccount of poor work ethics andthe frightening bureaucracy) andquotes his Jewish landlord to theeffect that he would never becomea Bolshevik because Socialism isintrinsically cruel. He also offersus a wonderful, lively portrait ofa cobbler who then still was ableto pur,sue his humble trade on astreet corner almost literallycrushed by taxes designed to ruinhis business. But the man held outheroically to keep his precarious