The Russia Conundrum

‘Well, you have more nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union than any other country in the world,’ declared an unflustered Prime Minister. ‘You have more intercontinental ballistic missiles and warheads than the West. You started intermediate weapons; we did not have any. You have more short-range ones than we have. You have more than anyone else and…’ The hapless interviewers tried to cut her off, but Mrs Thatcher was having none of it. ‘One moment!’ she commanded. ‘Please may I say this to you … All weapons of war are dangerous. Would it not be marvellous if we did not have to have them? But we can only get to that stage when we have more trust and confidence in one another. That means much more open societies. And let me put this to you: since the First World War, which finished in 1918, there has been no case where one democracy has attacked another. That is why we believe in democracy. So, you want to get rid of the weapons of war. It would be marvellous if we could, but we have to get more trust and confidence.’

Mrs Thatcher had steered the debate to the relative merits of Western democracy versus Soviet communism. Millions of television viewers pricked up their ears.

‘We have an open society,’ the prime minister continued. ‘This goes to the depth of our fundamental freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear, and freedom from want; a much more open society means that you [in the USSR] could discuss all of the things in the same way as we do … You really have two ways in which you can work: you either have a completely centralised control system in which you are told what to produce, how much it will cost, how much you are paid – and that does not really work to best advantage, as you have discovered, because it does not pay people if they do better. Or you go to what is called an incentive society when the harder you work, the more reward you get; and one has to recognise, you know, that people work not only for their country but they work to better their families. They work for a higher standard of living and so if they see the point of working harder, they will. And, you know, no matter what the theory, and there are lots of political theories – I wish there were fewer – no matter what the theory, there is no person alive and no computer which can plan a country as large as the Soviet Union, take into account all its various different conditions in all its various republics, all the various ambitions and needs and wants, the requirements of the people. You have got to disperse responsibility to the people who are much nearer to the life in those republics, towns, rural areas and then you have got to give them responsibility – and for that they must have incentives.’

The Pravda man, Tomas Kolesnichenko, tried to argue with Mrs Thatcher. The principles of a socialist society, he suggested, were the right ones and they brought real advantages. ‘Well, you have tossed out a quite provocative comment there!’ she replied. ‘So, what exactly do you think are the advantages of a socialist society?’ ‘Its planned economy,’ ventured Kolesnichenko. ‘In economy that is an advantage; and all the years of planning, not just a centralised plan, but also local…’ Mrs T pounced – her list of advantages was considerably longer: ‘Life in Britain, you know, the standard of living is high. It is higher than it has ever been. We are working very hard. In our housing we have perhaps a different system from you. Out of every hundred families, sixty-four families … own their own home, they own it! It is my ambition to get that up to seventy-five families out of every hundred. We have an excellent health service, very, very good indeed¹ and we are building more and more hospitals … Unfortunately, we do have unemployment and I do not run away from it. When you get technological change, you are almost bound to get some unemployment. It is now falling. But let me make this clear: the people who are unemployed, they live like other people, in houses. They are rented and their rent is paid for them, because they have not the income to pay. And every week they get a weekly benefit, a considerable weekly benefit. It is more if they have children and the weekly benefit for some of them will be as much as some of the wages which some people get in industry. They will get that weekly sum for as long as they are unemployed and after six months when they have been unemployed, we will take each one of them in. We will try to get them a job or will try to get them fresh training or we will put them on what is called a community programme. So, we are tackling our problems and we are hoping that we shall gradually get unemployment down so that those people too may have the higher standard of living which our other people enjoy.’