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The Gambles Yeltsin is taking with the Price Rises

Charles Quist Adade writes from St Petersburg
***Price liberalisation in Russia is causing President Boris Yeltsin huge problems. Shops are without basic food items such as eggs, meat and apples and consumer goods sell at astronomical prices. Opinion polls suggest that only 32 per cent of Russians now support economic liberalisation while 78 per cent blame worsening living conditions on high prices. Gemini News Service reports on the difficulties facing the new leaders in Moscow.
THE new year price liberalisation embarked on by the Yeltsin adml nlstration led to a bizarre phenomenon. The number of stray dogs and cals running the streets of St. Petersburg rose sharply on the third day of the price rises.
Hard-up pet owners unable to afford expensive animal feed were already throwing their pets away back in April when Premier Valentine Pavlov increased prices of basic consumer goods by 200-300 per cent.
Pets spared by their owners in April have not been so lucky this time round. Many were thrown out on to the streets as their owners realised that the so-called Pavlovian Syndrome — a situation where government raises prices to get hoarded goods back into the shops, but shops remain as empty as before — was about to repeat itself.
Three days after the new prices came into force I window-shopped and found that while the streets were full of stray dogs and cats and many brands of imported beer and shampoos were on sale, there was no food.
That appears to be one of the absurdities of the situation in the former Soviet Union. Private traders prefer to deal In clothes, chewing gum and canned beer but not in food items, although demand for food is very high.
Shops here were without basic food Items such as eggs, meat, animal fat. proteins, sausages, and apples while the few items on the shelves like vegetable oil, bread and cream were selling at astronomical prices. For example, on January 2 vegetables, cream and oranges were selling at 24 roubles. 40-50 roubles and 19-20-roubles per kilo respectively.
More than 65 per cent of Russians — average take home pay of 350 roubles — can hardly scrape a living. For most pensioners and unemployed the new prices will mean what the Russians call "sitting on bread and milk" all day long.
Says bus driver Yuri Kaftonov. 37: "Our wages (my wife's and mine) were doubled Just before the price rise. We now receive 1.200 roubles together. But the new prices make nonsense of the wage Increase- This chicken feed is only enough for family food. How am I going to clothe my wife and child?"
Pensioners are equally hard hit. Iger Klrllleve. 67 — monthly pension 400 roubles — sounded optimistic and resigned at the same time: "I'm frugal. 1 think I can manage with my pension. I'm fed up with the doomsday predictions being thrown about. We did not live by bread alone in the past. We're not going to live by bread alone now either "
Former sales assistant Inessa Ivanovna is furious with the democrats: "They are nothing but nihilists. They de stroyed the communists and the system and now they have turned their attention on the masses
Ivanovna Is Just 50. She believes history will pass the "hardest verdict on this pack of pseudodemocrats.'
If the fury of Ivanovna was publicly expressed, that of millions of her compatriots may be Insidious Opinion polls published In the Nevskoe Vermya Indicate increasing numbers are getting exasperated with the democrats.
Only four per cent said they were satisfied with democratic rule. Perhaps more worrying for Yeltsin and his team of shock-therapists is the revelation that only 32 per cent of Russians now support price liberalisation.
About 78 per cent blame worsening (King conditions on price rises. And 50 per cent now say they supported the botched August coup.
Another opinion poll said that most Russians between 35-65 years believe life was far better under Stalin. Khruschev and Brezhnev than under Gorbachev and the democrats. Nostalgia for the good old days, of serenity and 'lability and relative abundance is strongest among citizens above pension age
If poll results are any indication. observers say. the future bodies ill for the democrats. That could mean mass support for a new team of putschists if they promise instant price freezing and stabilisation of the supply situation.
Yeltsins Vice-President, Alexander Rutskei. has mounted a strong attack on the price liberalisation strategy worked out by Prime Minister Iger Gaidar and a team of Harvard economists
It should come, he contends. after privatisation of state property, dismantling of monopolistic structures and pruning of the corrupt and unwieldly bureaucracy
Otherwise, the mafia, already enmeshed with the mo nopolistlc distributive systems, will continue In existence, creating artificial shortages to glean fat profits at the expense of the ordinary people.
Although former general and Afghan war hero Rutskei vehemently denies it, speculation is persistent that he is plotting together with some communists to overthrow Yeltsin. Rutskei has called Yeltsin's youthful ministers "teenagers In group-up men's trousers."
He complains he has been pushed off the decision-making process In the government by Premier Gaidar.
Price reforms were long overdue. but fear of "proletarian anger" prevented Gorbachev axing state subsidies In an economy constricted by Inefficiency and large scale waste
Economic forecasts suggest that although more wild price nt are not expected on top
e January 1 rises, the Pavlovian syndrome is bound to haunt the Yeltsin administration for some time
The dismembering of the Soviet Empire has led to destruction of horizontal economic ties among former Soviet republics and left the Russian economy a lame duck.
Despite everything, many Russians are expected to stay largely unruffled by the price rise. Most filled their freezers and fridges with two months’ food reserves when Yeltsin mooted the price increases last October.
Trouble for the government is likely to brew when they exhaust their reserves and face the empty shelves in the local grocery stores.
Yeltsin and his lieutenants are bracing for the mass anger. They plan to bring the two security services, the former KGB and the militia, under one umbrella to enable swift mobilisation in case of social disorder.
The stakes are high, the risks enormous. But Gaidar, counting on massive western food aid. dismissed ominous forecasts. He told the Izevestla dally: The future will bring us ... a lot goods’
CHARLES QUIST ADADE t3 a Ghanaian journalist currently studying for a PhD in St. Petersburg.