THORNETT won a trip to raise funds for the new Socialist Movement paper socialist.
He went in April, on When our plane arrived in for the pot-holed runways and But this was nothing compared to the scene as we drove through the suburbs. Weknew they were enormous. The volved in a quest to buy someOur guide told us that the next day the price of all food, transport would be raised by the rouble devalued by 500 per cent. It is hard to imagine the Price rises In many cases these were the first price rises since 1928, for transport since 1939. Next day the shops would be closed and then the following day, 3 April, the new prices would apply. There was an air of impending catastrophe.
Our hotel was in the old working class Vyborg district, close the famous Putilov factory, (now the Kirov works), the centre of the revolutionary convulsions of 1905 and 1917 Now the people had nothing in this most run down part of the city.
People were inadequately clothed in the freezing weather and lived in broken down blocks of flats. They were surrounded by a desolate environment which had been deteriorating for decades. I had seen such conditions in Govan in Glasgow in the Public transport was extensive and frequent but falling apart on unrepaired roads broken up by winter. The water in Leningrad comes out of the tap a dirty brown colour and is unfit to drink.
Despair
This all left a feeling of despair and anger at what Stalinism had done to the visions of 1917. We were looking at a bureaucratised command economy which had lost its ability, to command, and a people who had lost all confidence the 'socialist system.
The enormity of the price increases hit us the following day when we saw the official exchange rate rise from 10 to 48 roubles to the pound. Our guide told us that her wage was R120 a month. The average wage is R230 and the wage for a surgeon R300 a per month, equivalent to just £6!
To offset the impact of the price rises the government gave everyone a 'token' wage increase of R60 a month.
The following day the shops had more in them and the queues were shorter. But the new prices were staggering when set against the wage levels. A pair of shoes cost R200 and a woollen jumper be tween R200 and R300, against an average monthly wage of R230. A metro ticket had risen from 5 kopecs to 15: even the world-famous transport system is becoming relatively expensive.
Food
The rent for a flat is about three per cent of wages and electricity and telephone equally cheap. But this is little Gorbachev: running out of ideas as well as food. How much longer can it go on like this?
consolation if clothes and manufactured goods are beyond your means, and food is difficult to get and of very poor quality. Foreign travel is theoretically possible but in practice impos sible if your month's wage converts into £6. Even though many people have more than one job our impression was that the price rises must lead to a social explosion. It was no surprise to learn, after returning to that mass strikes had broken out.
Our tour started with the famous Peter and Paul fortress. We were shocked when we realised that even the tour itineraries were changing. We were told about the Fortress not as the place where the Provisional Government were taken after their arrest by revolutionary workers in 1917, but as the burial place of Peter the Great, who we were told is now very popular with the Russian people! We discovered that many people are supporting attempts to find the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and bring him to his 'rightful place' in the Peter and Paul!
At the Winter Palace, it was Peter the Great all over again. You would not have known that the palace had been the seat of the Provisional Government and had been stormed in the October revolution.
In fact most revolutionary sights are now off the tourist itinerary altogether. We left the tour and made our own way to the Smolny Institute - the headquarters of the Bolsheviks and the seat of the revolutionary soviet government before it moved to Moscow. Lenin's room in the building, which our guide book, told us still had 250,000 visitors a vear, was closed to the public. We had to find the Tauride Palace, the seat of the Petrograd Soviet and venue for the 2nd congress of the comintern in 1919, and the Leningrad Duma building ourselves.
The market is everywhere. Hotel workers try to sell you watches and make currency deals as they serve you dinner. Our attempt to retrace the steps of Petrograd masses along the Nevsky Prospect resulted in us being assailed by dozens blackmarketeers selling anything for hard currency. Our walk was impossible.
Life was noticeably better in Moscow - although still very difficult. Our hotel was 16 kilometres from the centre in the midst of miles of huge drab blocks of flats. Our guide told us that 20 per cent of Moscow families share a flat with another family. And virtually all young couples start their life together with parents. You have to be married to even be considered for a flat.
At the Kremlin where we were again told about the Tsars and the history of the churches. Prompted by questions our guide explained that 'communism' had failed and the country now had to turn towards capitalism. An old British CP loyalist in the group, who was visibly shaken by the state of things, suggested that there were parts of the world where people were worse off -Bangladesh for example', she suggested. This did not make our guide feel any better.
Weskipped the convent tour No. 1 and went to the Lenin museum only visitors in the huge buildinfire were given our own English speaking guide who had clearly not yet come to Half way through the one and tourists had gone. He was morthe museum had been taken off The version of history he was part of the problem rather told us with some pride, had in 1912 in order to establish it as a 'pure Bolshevik party'. He the revolution without mentowards the rehabilitation of reached his tour script - alphotos with Trotsky included.
This distortion has clearly done great damage. The conregime with Lenin has done its museum to join a two hundred Pushkin Square, night out - is in some ways the greatest condemnation of what has taken place in the Soviet images of the reemergence of religion. A small church nearto our hotel was inundated with people - many of them older women. Wę estimated that it was visited by about 1,000 people an hour on a housing estate of 50,000 people.
The position of women was depressing as well. Women are in the workforce, but they are also the ones who join the queues at the end of thé day. Pornography is back on the streets in a big way and prostitution, at least in the tourist hotels, is extensive.
"The problem with our revolution', our guide told us, 'is that all the rich were eliminated and now we are all poor. It was a view shaped by the distortion of history and the failure of the command economy. We left asking 'how long can the USSR survive'. The answer must be 'not much longer.
May 1, 1991
TOWARDS the end of the Gulf war, NEAL ASCHERSON, well-known left wing commentator for the Independent on Sunday, wrote a column ('Confessions of a Reluctant Warmonger') defending the US attack. PAUL CLARKE, a member of the Socialist Outlook editorial board, wrote to him accusing him of backing a barbaric imperialist war. The following correspondence ensued. 55gt Butch Johason Set Duane Farmenter