Brezhnev's nightmare

[Boojatta]

I tried to warm up the conversation by asking for the latest political jokes making the rounds in Moscow.

(...)

Unfortunately, the first story didn't divert us from the subject of food problems. Brezhnev and the failures of Soviet agriculture were current targets. The following was typical:

Brezhnev screamed in his sleep, waking his wife, Victoria.
"Lyonya, what's the matter?" she cried.
"I had a nightmare that we Communized the whole world!" Brezhnev replied in panic.
"So what? That's wonderful!"
"You think so? Well, where are we going to get bread?"

(...)

Occasionally Brezhnev himself enjoyed some of these stories, but Gromyko would never tolerate them.

From:
Breaking with Moscow
by Arkady N. Shevchenko
Copyright 1985

[Boojatta]

1. Another excerpt from Shevchenko's book:

My personal reward for being Gromyko's adviser was that I became a member of the nomenklatura hierarchy. This is a list of the most important posts in all branches of the Party, government administration, and other institutions. These positions are filled either by direct Party appointment -- Politburo or Central Committee Secretariat -- or with Party approval. Nomenklatura is a caste system which applies only to the elite class. Its many different levels enjoy varying degrees of privilege according to rank. For Politburo members there is no limit or restriction on privileges. Below this level the grading structure begins. The Central Committee establishes and defines the place of anyone who is eligible for inclusion in the various categories: high Party apparatchiki, cabinet ministers, and other persons in various important positions. Factory workers, farmers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, store managers, secretaries, and other private citizens are excluded from the system and its special privileges.

Unlike ordinary mortals, members of the elite have exclusive and extensive privileges: high salaries, good apartments, dachas, government cars with chauffeurs, special railway cars and accommodations, VIP treatment at airports, resorts and hospitals off limits to outsiders, special schools for their children, access to stores where consumer goods and food are available at reduced prices and in plentiful quantities. They live a rarefied existence far removed from the common man, and, indeed, have to go out of their way if they wish to rub elbows with the less exalted. The highest group in the nomenklatura is in fact separated from most citizens by a barrier as psychologically imposing as the Great Wall of China. This class constitutes virtually a state within a state. In fact, any information about this social stratum is actually a state secret. Neither the Soviet people nor the rest of the world is supposed to know anything at all about them.

The total number of those designated under the system, however, is not small. It includes many thousands, all ranked from highest to lowest throughout the Soviet Union. They form the backbone of the status quo in the governmental and societal structure. They will permit no one to transform that society or alter its foreign or domestic policy in any way that may affect their perquisites. It is no small irony to know that this fossilized elite controls the nation which calls on other countries to renounce stability for revolution, to give up privilege for the blessings of proletarianism.