The Kremlin's creature comforts; welcome to the communists' party.

The Kremlin's Creature Comforts

The party leadership is obsequious, obedient, and unchanging. An intelligent, independent-minded official of the Central Committee is a combination of words so paradoxical that one's tongue cannot even utter them.

Obsequiousness and obedience are rewarded in turn by privilege: special hospitals, special vacation retreats, the excellent Central Committee canteen, the equally excellent service for home delivery of groceries and other goods, the Kremlin telephone system, the free transportation. The higher you climb up the professional ladder, the more comforts surround you and the harder and more painful it is to lose them. Therefore, the more obedient and dependable you become. It has all been most carefully devised: A section chief does not have a personal car, but he has the right to order one from the Central Committee car pool for himself and his immediate staff. The deputy head of a department already has his personal Volga, while the head has another and better Volga, fitted with a car phone.

But if you have climbed all the way to the top of the establishment pyramid, then it's full communism! And it turns out that there was no need of the world revolution, maximum labor productivity, and universal harmony in order to have reached that ultimate, blissful state as prophesied by Karl Marx. It is perfectly possible to attain it in one particular country - for one particular group of people.

Lifestyles of the Red and Famous

In using the word "communism," I am not exaggerating. It is not simply a metaphor for an overbright communist future: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." And so it is for those at the top of the party pyramid. I have already mentioned their abilities, which, alas, are not outstanding. But their needs! Their needs are so great that so far it has only been possible to create real communism for a couple of dozen people - communism is created for them by the ninth directorate of the KGB, and this all-powerful directorate can do anything. The life of a party leader is beneath its unsleeping, all-seeing eye, and it satisfies his every whim. A dacha behind a high green fence encircling spacious grounds alongside the Moscow River, with a garden, tennis courts, and playing fields, a body-guard under every window, and an alarm system. Even at my level as a candidate member of the Politburo, my domestic staff consisted of three cooks, three waitresses, a housemaid, and a gardener with his own team of assistant gardeners. Surprisingly, all this luxury was incapable of producing either comfort or convenience.

It was almost impossible to meet anybody or do anything in the ordinary, normal way. If you wanted to go to the cinema, the theater, a museum, indeed any public place, a whole squad of heavies was sent there in advance. They would check and cordon off the whole place, and only then could you go yourself. But the dacha had its own cinema, and every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday a projectionist would arrive, complete with a selection of films.

As for medical treatment, the medicines and equipment are all imported, all of them the last word in scientific research and technology. The rooms in the Kremlin hospital are huge suites, also surrounded by luxury: porcelain, crystal, carpets, and chandeliers. Afraid of taking responsibility, an individual physician never makes an independent decision, and diagnoses and treatments are invariably agreed upon by a group of 5 to 10 doctors, sometimes including the most highly qualified specialists. Yet in Sverdlovsk I was looked after by one general practitioner, Tamara Kurushina, who knew me inside and out, always made a precise diagnosis in any situation, and prescribed the treatment herself, whether it was for a headache, a cold, or just general debility.

I regarded those faceless groups of consultants with great suspicion, and since I have gone back to my usual polyclinic, my head has stopped aching and I have begun to feel much better all around. I haven't been to see a doctor for several months. It may be coincidence, but it is also symbolic. When you are a member of the Politburo, your personal physician is obliged to examine you every day, but a lack of professional and personal freedom hangs over him like a sword of Damocles.

The Kremlin ration, a special allocation of normally unobtainable products, is paid for by the top echelon at half its normal price, and it consists of the highest-quality foods. In Moscow, a total of some 40,000 people enjoy the privilege of these special rations, in various categories of quantity and quality. There are whole sections of GUM - the huge department store that faces the Kremlin across Red Square - closed to the public and specially reserved for the highest of the elite, while for officials a rung or two lower on the ladder there are other special shops. And so on down the scale, all organized by rank. All are called "special": special workshops, special dry cleaners, special polyclinics, special hospitals, special houses, special services. What a cynical use of the word! A specialist is supposed to be someone who has a particular training or talent. There was a time when a highly skilled craftsman really was a specialist. Nowadays in our country the word "special" has a specific meaning, of which we are all too well aware. It is applied to the excellent food products that are prepared in special kitchens and are subjected to special medical tests; to the medicines packed in several layers of wrapping paper and guaranteed safe by the signatures of several doctors (only medicine certified in this way can be given to the Kremlin elite). How many such special people are there, one wonders, pampered by the system even in what seem like the most insignificant details?

When the elite want to go on vacation, they can choose virtually any place in the warm south. There is bound to be a special dacha there. For the rest of the year these dachas are empty. There are other opportunities to go on leave too, because a two-week winter holiday supplements the summer break. Excellent sports facilities exist for "special" use only, for example on the Lenin Hills - indoor and outdoor tennis courts, a large swimming pool, and a sauna. Then there are the personal airplanes, and IL-62 or a TU-134, in which a Central Committee secretary, a candidate member, or a full member of the Politburo flies alone, except for his bodyguard and the cabin crew.

The joke is that none of these riches belong to those who enjoy the special privileges. All these marvelous things - dachas, rations, a stretch of seaside fenced off from everyone else - belong to the system. And just as the system has given them, so can it take them away. It is an idea of pure genius. A man - Ivanov, say, or Petrov - climbs his way up the career ladder, and the system gives him one class of special privileges. Then, as he rises higher, another class. The higher he goes, the more special are the delights handed out to him. Soon Ivanov begins to think he is an important person. He eats what ordinary mortals only dream of, takes his holidays in places where the proletariat are not even allowed to come near the surrounding fence. And stupid Ivanov doesn't realize that it is not he who is being thus favored by the position he occupies, and that if he suddenly stops serving the system faithfully, Petrov or somebody else will instantly be put in his place. Within this system nothing belongs to the individual. Stalin cunningly brought this machinery to such a state of perfection that even the wives of his immediate colleagues did not belong to them. They, too, belonged to the system. The system could take those wives away and imprison them, just as Stalin imprisoned the wives of Kalinin and Molotov, and neither man dared to utter so much as a squeak of protest.

Times have changed, but the essence of the system remains the same. As before, a wide selection of perks is being handed out to the position that a person occupies, but each "gift" - from a soft armchair with its numbered metal tag on up to the bottle of normally unavailable medicine stamped "safe" by the fourth directorate of the KGB - bears the seal of the system. This is so the individual (who, as before, is no more than a little cog in the machine) will never forget to whom all this really belongs.

Here are some examples of the privilege system, based on my own experience. Every Central Committee secretary, every member or candidate member of the Politburo, is assigned an officer in charge of his bodyguard; this man is his aide-de-camp and organizes his life. My bodyguard commander, a most attentive man, was named Yuri Fyodorovich. One of his chief duties was to see to the fulfillment of any wish that might be expressed by his... I almost said lord and master, for whose safety and comfort he was responsible.

Do you want a new suit? Precisely at the appointed hour comes a discreet knock on the door of your office. In walks a tailor, who takes your measurements and returns the next day for a fitting. Soon you have an elegant new suit.

Do you need a present for your wife for March 9, International Women's Day in the USSR? No problem: You are brought a catalog with a choice of gifts to satisfy even the most sophisticated taste. All you have to do is choose! The attitude toward families is most considerate. There is a Volga for their use, bearing prestigious Kremlin license plates, with drivers working in shifts, taking your wife to work or the children to and from the dacha. The big ZIL, of course, is reserved for the father of the family.

Party favors

Sometimes this essentially cynical system will exhibit an equally cynical lapse where the immediate family members of the head of the clan are concerned. When, for instance, the chief bodyguard was instructing my wife and children that they must not feed me fruit and vegetables bought in the market because they might be poisoned, one of my daughters asked timidly whether she and my wife might eat market-bought produce. She was told that they could but that I must not. In other words, you can go ahead and be poisoned, but he is sacred.

Muscovites usually stop and watch whenever a government ZIL flashes past, with a hiss of tires, at great speed. They do not watch out of any great respect for the occupant of the car but because it is really an impressive sight. Even before the ZIL has driven out of your gateway, the police all along your route have been notified. The lights are green all the way, the car races ahead without a stop, and you drive quickly and pleasantly. Senior party officials have forgotten that there are such things as traffic jams and red lights.

Politburo members are escorted by an additional car, a Volga. When I received a number of threatening letters, I was allotted a Volga to accompany me. Thus for a while it became impossible to kill me. I was surrounded by extra guards. Fortunately, they were soon reassigned.

The ZIL, however, was with me around the clock. Wherever I might be, the car and its radio were always near. If I drove out of town to spend the night at the dacha, the driver away at any moment. The dacha is a story in itself. As I mentioned earlier, before it was assigned to me, it had been occupied by Gorbachev, who had moved into another, specially built for him.

When I drove up to the dacha for the first time, I was met at the door by the commander of the bodyguard, who introduced me to the domestic staff. Then we began our inspection of the house. Even from the outside I had been overwhelmed by the size of the place. I entered a hall measuring about 30 by 15 feet, with an enormous fireplace, marble paneling, parquet floor, large carpets, chandeliers, and luxurious furniture. We went on, passing through first one room, then a second, a third, and a fourth, each of which sported a television set. Also on the ground floor was an enormous veranda with a glass roof, and a small movie theater-cum-billiard room. I lost count of the number of bathrooms and lavatories. There was a dining room with an incredible 30-foot-long table and behind it a kitchen big enough to feed an army, with a refrigerator that constituted a separate under-ground room. We went up the steps of a broad staircase to the second floor. Again there was a vast hallway with an open fireplace, and a door opened into the solarium, furnished with rocking chairs and chaise longues. After that came the study, the bedrooms, two more rooms intended for I know not what, more lavatories and bathrooms. Everywhere was crystal, antique and modern chandeliers, oak and parquet floors.

And who pays for all this? The KGB. It would be interesting to know, by the way, how all this expenditure is accounted for and under what heading of the KGB's budget. Combating spies? Subversion of foreigners by bribery? Or perhaps a more romantic heading, such as satellite intelligence in space.

There is also a wide choice of places at which to spend one's holidays: Pitsunda and Gagra on the Georgian coast of the Black Sea; the Crimea; the Valdai Hills, a beautiful region midway between Moscow and Leningrad. These summer dachas are as luxurious as the year-round residences. One is driven to the beach by car, even though the distance is no more than a couple of hundred yards. I used to walk as part of my attempt to get a little exercise. I also organized two volleyball teams. My daughter and I, my assistant, and my driver played against the guards. They were young, strong, and fit, but even so we often won. In short, I tried my best to introduce something human, competitive, and energetic into that oasis of artificial communist perfection.

It may be a somewhat controversial opinion of mine, but I do believe that perestroika would not have ground to a halt, despite the tactical mistakes that have been made, if only Gorbachev had been able to get rid of his reluctance to deal with the question of the leadership's privileges - if he himself had renounced all those completely useless, though pleasant, customary perquisites; if he had not built a new house for himself on the Lenin Hills and a new dacha outside Moscow; if he had not had his dacha at Pitsunda rebuilt and then an ultramodern one put up at Thorosin in the Crimea. And then, to cap it all, at the Congress of People's Deputies he announced with pathos that he has no personal dacha. Doesn't he realize how hypocritical that sounded?

Boris Yeltsin, a member of the People's Parliament, is the author of Against the Grain from which this article is excerpted by permission of Summit Books [C] 1990 by Boris Yeltsin.