Agricultural production, though higher, could not
keep pace with what was required.
Increased use of fertilisers, higher payments to
farmers, the introduction of a number of incen-
tives, including licences for larger private plots
and allowing sales on a free market once produc-
tion quotas were reached, all these reforms of the
Brezhnev years failed to satisfy the growing
demand. The deficit had to be covered by grain
imports, above all from the plenitude of American
overproduction, until the invasion of Afghanistan
in 1979 and the resulting US grain embargo
forced a switch to other suppliers. More meat was
made available; between 1970 and 1985, the
average consumption rose by half. But grain pro-
duction continued to vary widely from year to
year. About 210 million tonnes was the normal
annual requirement. A bumper harvest in 1978
produced 237 million tonnes, which covered all
the grain requirements of the Soviet Union; but
the following year the figure dropped to 180
million tonnes; in 1980 it rose to 189 million
tonnes, only to drop again in 1981 to a cata-
strophic 160 million tonnes, requiring the impor-
tation of 46 million tonnes of grain from abroad,
which used up valuable foreign currency reserves.
Incentives and reforms and high investment were
producing far from satisfactory results during the
closing years of the Brezhnev era.
With more money earned, the average
monthly wage almost doubling, farmers, trans-
port and construction workers doing even better
and miners trebling their income, the ordinary
Russian was living better and standing longer in
queues chasing the subsidised goods in state
shops or buying goods at high prices in the free
and semi-black markets. Vodka consumption and
alcoholism became an ever growing problem. The
available goods, other than those satisfying the
basic needs of shelter and food, were inordinately
expensive by Western standards and were gener-
ally of poor quality. But it needs to be borne in
mind that a much smaller proportion of the wage
packet had to be spent on housing and the basics,
whose costs were fixed arbitrarily low. The high
prices for other consumer goods acted as a form
of indirect tax to mop up excess money.
Even so, the available consumer goods could
not absorb the wages and millions of roubles
piled up in savings accounts. The miner could not
buy better housing despite his savings; he was
rouble-rich but continued to live primitively. The
most prized possession of newly weds was privacy
and a home of their own. But young marrieds had
to live for years with in-laws until a modest home
could be allocated. The next most prized posses-
sion was a car. The mass production of Fiat-
designed cars also started in the Brezhnev years
and, though by Western standards the proportion
of car owners was low, by Soviet standards it was
remarkable that one in seven families possessed a
car, almost every household had a television set,
a third of them in colour, a refrigerator and a
washing machine. Leaving aside the chronic lack
of space and the large number of extended family
households that ensued, in terms of domestic
labour-saving devices the average Soviet house-
hold had catapulted from pre-revolutionary con-
ditions to the modern age in less than two
decades. But if other indicators are considered,
such as telephones and personal computers, the
differential between the West and the Soviet
Union remained huge. The economy as a whole
was grossly inefficient in use of resources and
burdened by out-of-date factories. Even more
trouble was in store as machines wore out, and
pipes, valves and pumps in the oil industry leaked
and rusted. The Soviet Union could not even take
advantage of its rich resources, its grain rotting
for lack of transport and proper storage capacity.
It was heading for a complete breakdown.
The negative aspects of the Soviet command
economy and the one-party state hierarchy were
very evident. The burden of a stifling bureaucracy,
the almost universal need for bribery, without
which little got done, and the irrational division
between rival authorities, ministries and party
organisations were hindrances enough. In addi-
tion, the privileges enjoyed by the nomenklatura,
their special shops, hospitals and holiday resorts,
attracted jealousy and resentment. The residual
heavy-handedness of the security services per-
sisted during the Brezhnev years. Long hours of
work were the norm for the average Soviet
citizen. The protection of the law was never