most of them bowdlerized, but he was never allowed to publish a book. This attitude changed only after his death, especially with the onset of glasnost; a small collection of lyrics appeared in 1982, and since then there has been a torrent of publication and discussion.
Vysotsky’s songs imply a crude but coherent system of values whose core is masculinist individualism. The consequences may be tragic for him, but he still rises to the test. The appeal of this hero, to men and women alike throughout the social spectrum of Soviet Russia, made Vysotsky an idol who was felt to speak for the people more genuinely than any other contemporary; there is no more telling case of the discontinuity between popular acclaim and official recognition in the Brezhnev period. See also: DISSIDENT MOVEMENT; MUSIC; OKUDZHAVA, BULAT SHALOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beumers, Birgit. (1997). Yury Liubimov at the Taganka Theatre, 1964-1994. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic. Shkolnikova, Mariya. (1996-2002). Vladimir Vysotsky: The Official Site. «http://www.kulichki.com/vv/eng» Smith, Gerald Stanton. (1984). Songs to Seven Strings: Russian Guitar Poetry and Soviet “Mass Song.” Bloom-ington: Indiana University Press.
Wages in the Soviet Union were supposed to conform to Marx’s notion of the lower stage of communist society in which workers would be paid according to their contributions to the social product and on the basis of equal rewards for equal work. Factors taken into account in the assignment of wage levels typically included the arduousness and dangerousness of work, skill levels or necessary qualifications, and the degree of responsibility. Occupations in which women predominated, such as teaching, medicine, infant care, cleaning, and clerical and sales work, invariably were graded below male-dominated occupations.
In early 1918 Lenin advocated the use of piecework as opposed to time-based wages as an appropriate system to stimulate labor discipline and productivity. He also grudgingly acknowledged the necessity of paying specialists (e.g., managers and engineers) more than ordinary workers. Although these policies were opposed by the Left Communist faction and many rank-and-file Bolsheviks, they were incorporated into the wage scales constructed by respective trade unions. During the years of war communism, labor was in effect an obligatory service to the embattled state, which in turn assumed the responsibility to provide work and at least a caloric minimum in the form of employee rations. Payment in kind was ubiquitous, and no sooner did workers receive their wage than they repaired to the black market to barter it for other goods.
The semblance of a normal monetary system of wages, based on contractual agreements between trade unions and corresponding trusts, developed under the New Economic Policy, and wages rose steadily. By 1927 nominal wages were estimated to be about 11 percent above the 1913 average, and this did not include the socialized wage consisting of free medical care, social insurance, and other welfare provisions. Whereas the First Five-Year Plan envisioned a further increase in nominal wages of 44 percent and real wages of nearly 68 percent- in fact, the standard of living of wage earners plummeted. It is estimated that by 1932 real wages were at about 50 percent of their 1928 level. Moreover, shortages in cooperative stores drove workers to rely on the private market, where prices of agricultural produce were approximately eight times higher than in 1928. The prevailing labor shortage caused employers to resort to various sleights of hand to attract and retain workers. They included paying workers at grades higher than
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those outlined in wage handbooks, granting special bonuses that amounted to permanent additions to their basic pay, paying for fictitious piece work and defective output, and manipulating the use of the progressive bonus system for overfulfillment of production quotas. Despite their technical illegality, these practices became permanent features of Soviet economic life.
In 1931 the state introduced a wage-scale reform under the banner of combating petty bourgeois egalitarianism that widened differentials between lower and higher wage-tariff categories. Simultaneously it expanded the use of progressive piece-rates that would rise with the increase of individual workers’ actual output. This approach remained in force until the late 1950s when a new wage reform was gradually phased in. It entailed increases in basic wages and production quotas, the reduction in the number of wage scales and the simplification of rates within each scale, the elimination of progressive piece-rates, and a modest shift of pieceworkers to time- based wages. The major objective of the reforms-to create a stable and predictable system of incentives-appears to have failed largely because of the uncertainties and irregularities of supplies and managerial collusion with workers in compensating for them. Hence the Brezhnev-era aphorism, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” See also: ECONOMIC GROWTH, SOVIET; MONETARY OVERHANG; WAR COMMUNISM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Filtzer, Donald. (1986). Soviet Workers and Stalinist Industrialization: The Formation of Modern Soviet Production Relations, 1928-1941. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Filtzer, Donald. (1992). Soviet Workers and De- Staliniza-tion: The Consolidation of the Modern System of Soviet Production Relations, 1953-1964. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
WANDERERS, THE See GOLDEN AGE OF RUSSIAN LITERATURE; NATIONALISM IN THE ARTS.
The Bolshevik Party seized power in Russia in October 1917. Historians use the term war commu1658 nism for the economic system of Soviet Russia during the civil war that followed this revolution. This term, not used at the time, was first applied when the civil war had already drawn to a close. In the spring of 1921, advocating a shift toward a more liberalized internal market, Lenin described the system as “that peculiar war communism, forced on us by extreme want, ruin and war.” He went on to define its core as the centralized system of confiscating all of the peasants’ food surpluses, and more, in order to feed the urban workers and the soldiers of the Red Army. He meant that war communism was a temporary phenomenon-not real communism-just a necessary evil required by wartime circumstances. He intended thereby to distance himself from it and inaugurate a more relaxed regime later known as the New Economic Policy (NEP).
A few years later, however, Stalin adopted policies that resembled war communism in several features, including specifically the confiscation of peasant food surpluses. Consequently many historians now reject Lenin’s claim that war communism was an unintended consequence of special circumstances, and argue that the Bolsheviks always intended to build a society based on centralization and force.
It took more than six months for a full-scale civil war to break out after the October 1917 revolution. The Bolsheviks did not try immediately to centralize the economy. They negotiated for a separate peace with Germany to take Russia out of World War I. They brought representatives of the non-Bolshevik left into a coalition government. While they legislated to nationalize the landed estates of the aristocracy, they sought a coexistence of capitalist and commercial private property with state regulation and workers’ rights of inspection.
The results, however, threatened the Bolsheviks with a loss of control on each front. The peace treaty signed with Germany in March 1918 provoked military intervention by Russia’s former allies. Its humiliating terms drove the Bolsheviks’ coalition partners toward the monarchist counterrevolution. Under the treaty, Russia lost the Ukraine; this cut the food available to Russia’s nonfarm population. The wartime system of food distribution that the Bolsheviks had inherited from the imperial government was ineffective: While the urban population was entitled to receive a food ration at low fixed prices, at the same prices the peasants would not sell food to the government for distribution. As the situation worsened, many groups of
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workers blamed the factory owners, expelled them, and declared the factories to be state property. In the countryside, instead of government takeover of the great estates, the peasants divided the land among themselves.
