Wage-Earners: Winners and Losers

Prior to the collapse of communism, democratically oriented reformers looked to the market as a means of transforming the Soviet culture of work. In their view, decades of state socialism had created a state-dependent worker reluctant to take risks, to display initiative, to assume responsibility, to make independent decisionsthat is, to exhibit a market mentality. According to Tat'iana Zaslavskaia, the market would alter this "state-dependent mentality" by creating incentives that rewarded those managers and workers who "work better, run their operations more intelligently and prudently," and "are more aware of technological progress."1 As a result of such changes, the living conditions of most Russians would improve. Reformers were aware that the transition to the market would entail some social costs. According to Leonid Gordon, an adviser to the newly formed independent miner's union, a temporary decline in workers' living standards was an inevitable part of the transition process, "a prerequisite" for the economic expansion that would soon follow. But better living conditions would be ensured if the transition to a "civilized" market could proceed in an environment in which recently independent trade unions were free to represent the interests of workers. Under such conditions, the market would end the long-standing Soviet practice of treating workers' consumption as the residual share of national output available after higher ranking priorities for capital investment and military outlays had been met.2 Reformers also understood that marketization would end Soviet-style full employment. While there were substantial differences in estimates of its probable magnitude, it seemed clear that reductions in state subsidies, the elimination of