2011: A Quick Review

 

2011 is a year that has prompted numerous historical comparisons, even before it has ended. This has been a year marked by economic turmoil, widespread international protest and revolutionary activity, as evidenced by Time Magazine’s recent announcement that their coveted ‘person of the year’ was to be awarded to ‘The Protestor‘. Throughout 2011, global news coverage has frequently been dominated by the growing wave of protest and demonstrations that swept the Arab World; quickly dubbed the ‘Arab Spring’ by international media and drawing frequent comparisons with the East European revolutions of 1989. Some (including, recently, Eric Hobsbawm) have suggested that comparisan with the ‘Spring of Nations’ of 1848 is more fitting although many have questioned the value of either historical analogy. Similarly, almost twenty years to the day, in the last weeks of 2011, mounting protests against electoral fraud in Russia have evoked memories of the collapse of the communist monopoly of power and the break-up of the USSR in 1991, with the last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev recently advising current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to ‘learn the lesson of 1991’ and resign from power, although Russia-watcher Mark Galeotti has suggested that 1905 may turn out to be a more fitting historical parallel.

 

The increasingly uncertain economic climate and global financial downturn also dominated news coverage throughout 2011, particularly of late due to the growing crisis in the Eurozone. Across central and eastern Europe, economic crisis and social insecurity has generated fresh concern about ‘ostalgie’ with the release of surveys suggesting high levels of nostalgia for the communist era. In recent polls conducted in Romania 63% of participants said that  their life was better under communism, while 68% said they now believed that communism was ‘a good idea that had been poorly applied’. Similarly, a survey conducted in the Czech Republic last month revealed that 28% of participants believed they had been ‘better off’ under communism, leading to fears of a growth in ‘retroactive optimism‘.

 

Much of the subject matter presented here at The View East aims to combine historical analysis with more contemporary developments. During 2011 a range of blog posts have covered topics as diverse as the Cold War space race (with posts about Sputnik and the 50^th anniversary of Yuri Gagarin‘s first successful manned space flight); the role of popular culture (and specifically, popular music in the GDR) in undermining communism; the use and abuse of alcohol in communist Eastern Europe; espionage and coercion (with posts relating to the East German Stasi, Romanian Securitate and the notorious murder of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov) and in relation to continuing efforts to commemorate contested aspects of modern history including Katyn; the construction of the Berlin Wall, German reunification, Stalin’s legacy and the continuing controversy over Soviet-era war memorials. This summer also saw the first ‘student showcase’ here at The View East, which was a great success, with a series of excellent guest authored posts on a range of fascinating topics, researched and written by some of my students at Swansea University.

 

Something that I constantly stress to my students is the need to recognise how our knowledge and understanding of modern central and eastern Europe was, in many respects, transformed as new evidence and sources of information became accessible to historians of Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism 1989-1991; and the ways in which our understanding continues to evolve as new information and perspectives continue to emerge today. So, with that in mind, here is a quick review of some of my own personal favourite topics of interest, events and developments during 2011. This short summary is by no means exhaustive so please feel free to add suggestions of your own in the comments section below!

 

Anniversaries for Reagan and Gorbachev

 

February 2011 marked the centenary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. Today, former US President and ‘Cold Warrior’ Reagan remains highly regarded throughout the former communist block, where he is widely credited with helping to end the Cold War and open a pathway for freedom across Eastern Europe. A series of events were thus organised to mark the occasion across central and eastern Europe, where several streets, public squares and landmarks were renamed in Reagan’s honour and and the summer of 2011 saw statues of Reagan popping up in several former communist block countries, including Poland, Hungary and Georgia. To mark the centenary, the CIA also released a collection of previously classified  documents, along with a report on ‘Ronald Reagan, Intelligence and the End of the Cold War’ and a series of short documentary style videos that were made to ‘educate’ Reagan about the USSR on a range of topics including the space programme, the Soviet war in Afghanistan and the Chernobyl disaster, which can be viewed here. An exhibition held at the US National Archives in Washington DC also displayed examples of Reagan’s personal correspondence including a series of letters exchanged with Mikhail  Gorbachev and the handwritten edits made to Reagan’s famous ‘Evil Empire’ speech of 1983.

 

A statue of former US President Ronald Reagan, unveiled in the Georgian capital Tblisi in November 2011. The centenary of Reagan's birth was celebrated throughout the former communist block in 2011.

 

Today, citizens of the former East Block tend to view Reagan much more kindly than his Cold War counterpart, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who celebrated his 80^th birthday back in March. Still feted in the West, Gorbachev was the guest of honour at a celebratory birthday gala in London and and was also personally congratulated by current Russian President Medvedev, receiving a Russian medal of honour. In a series of interviews, Gorbachev claimed he remained proud of role in ending communism, although for many, his legacy remains muddied.  April 2011 saw the 25^th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, while August 1991 marked the twentieth anniversary of the failed military coup launched by communist hardliners hoping to depose Gorbachev from power and halt his reforms and finally, the 25 December 2011 was 20 years to the day since Gorbachev announced his resignation from power and the formal dissolution of the USSR. Recently released archival documents have also provided historians with more detailed information about the dying days of the Soviet Union as a desperate Gorbachev tried to hold the USSR  together.

 

March 2011 - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev shakes hands with Mikhail Gorbachev during a meeting to celebrate his 80th birthday. Gorbachev was awarded the Order of St Andrew the Apostle, Russia's highest honour.

 

Half a Century Since the Construction of the Berlin Wall

 

August 2011 marked 50 years since the construction of the famous wall which divided Berlin 1961-1989 and became one of the most iconic symbols of Cold War Europe. The anniversary was commemorated in Germany as I discussed in my earlier blog post here and was also widely covered by international media including the Guardian and the BBC here in the UK. I particularly enjoyed these interactive photographs, published in Spiegel Online, depicting changes to the East-West German border. In October, the CIA and US National Archives also released a collection of recently declassified documents relating to the Berlin Crisis of August 1961, which have been published online here.

 

13 August 2011 - A display in Berlin commemorates the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall.

 

Thirty Years Since Martial Law Crushed Solidarity in Poland

 

13  December marked 30 years since General Jaruzelski’s declaration of Martial Law in Poland in 1981, as the emergent Solidarity trade union was declared illegal and forced underground. NATO have released a fascinating series of archived documents relating to events in Poland 1980-81 which have been published online here.  Today Jaruzelski still argues that he ordered the domestic crackdown to avoid Soviet invasion, claiming in a recent book that  his actions were a ‘necessary evil’ . but intelligence contained in the newly available NATO reports suggest that the Soviet leadership were actually ‘keen to avoid’ military intervention in Poland. Fresh attempts to prosecute 88 year old Jaruzelski for his repressive actions were halted due to ill health in 2011, as the former communist leader was diagnosed with lymphoma in March 2011 and has been undergoing regular chemotherapy this year.

 

13 December 2011 marked 30 years since General Wojciech Jaruzelski's declaration of Martial Law in Poland, designed to crush the growing Polish opposition movement, Solidarity.

 

The Communist-Era Secret Police

 

Stories about communist-era state security are always a crowd pleaser and 2011 saw a series of new revelations from the archives of the notorious East German Ministerium für Staatssicherheit or Stasi. I particularly liked the archived photos that were published in Spiegel Online, taken during a course to teach Stasi agents the art of disguise, as discussed in my previous blog post here and, in a similar vein, information from Polish files about espionage techniques used by Polish State Security which was published in October. In November, new research published in the German Press suggested that the Stasi had a much larger network of spies in West Germany than was previously thought, with over 3000 individuals employed as Inofizelle Mitarbeiter or ‘unofficial informers’, to spy on family, friends, neighbours and colleagues. The Stasi even compiled files on leading figures such as German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and former East German leader Erich Honecker, gathering information that was later used as leverage to force his resignation in October 1989. A new book published in September also detailed the extent of Stasi infiltration in Sweden, with information published in the German media suggesting that Swedish furniture manufacturer  IKEA used East German prisoners as a cheap source of labour in the 1970s and early 1980s.

 

‘Tourist with Camera’ – a favoured disguise used by Stasi surveillance agents, unearthed from the Stasi archives and part of a new exhibition that went on display in Germany earlier this year.

 

The Death of Vaclav Havel

 

2011 ended on something of a sombre note, as news broke of the death of communist-era dissident and former Czechoslovakian/Czech President Vaclav Havel on 18 December. An iconic figure, Havel’s death dominated the news in the lead up to Christmas, (only eclipsed by the subsequent breaking news about North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s death on December 17!) with numerous obituaries and tributes to Havel and his legacy appearing in the media (such as this excellent tribute in The Economist, ‘Living in Truth‘), as discussed in more detail in my recent blog post here. Havel’s funeral on 23 December was attended by world leaders, past and present and received widespread media coverage. In recent interviews, such as this one, given shortly before his death, Havel commented on a range of contemporary issues including the Arab revolutions and the global economic crisis. RIP Vaclav – you will be missed.

 

December 2011 - News breaks of the death of playwright, communist-era dissident and former Czech President Vaclav Havel. Hundreds of candles were lit in Prague's Wenceslas Square in his memory, thousands of mourners gathered to pay their respects and tributes poured in from around the globe.

 

The Growth of Social Networking

 

The use of social networking as a tool for organising and fuelling protest and opposition movements has also been a regular feature in the news throughout 2011 with particular reference to the Arab Spring, the UK riots and the recent ‘Occupy’ movement. Many more universities and academics are also now realising the potential benefits of using social media sites to promote their interests, and achievements, disseminate their research to a wider audience and engage in intellectual debate with a wider circle of individuals working on similar areas of interest, both within and beyond academia.  The potential benefits of Twitter and other social networking sites for academics has been promoted by the LSE and their Impact Blog during 2011, including this handy ‘Twitter guide for Academics‘.  On a more personal note, promoting The View East via Twitter has also helped me develop a much stronger online profile and contributed to an increased readership in 2011, something I discussed further in a September blog post here.

 

Was 2011 the year of the 'Twitter Revolution'?

 

As 2011 ends, our twitter feed @thevieweast is heading for 500 regular twitter followers; most days The View East receives well over 100 hits, the number of regular email subscribers has almost doubled and I’ve been able to reach a much wider audience – some older blog content I wrote relating to Solidarity was recently published in a Macmillan textbook History for Southern Africa and in the last twelve months I have given interviews to ABC Australia, Voice of America, and Radio 4, all in relation to subjects I’d written about here at The View East. So, as 2011 draws to a close, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have read, commented, followed and re-tweeted from The View East in 2011 – A very Happy New Year to you all, and I’m looking forward to more of the same in 2012!

 

Happy New Year from The View East!

Student Showcase: Forthcoming Guest Authored Blog Posts by Swansea University Students.

 

During July, The View East is very pleased to be hosting a ‘student showcase’, featuring a number of short articles written by history students from Swansea University.

 

During the final year of undergraduate study, many students invest a lot of time and energy into their studies and produce some really excellent work as a result. However, the vast majority of work produced by undergraduate students is generally not accessible to a wider audience. Most dissertations, essays and research projects are read only by the student themselves, their supervisor, one or two other examiners and perhaps a couple of family members or close friends who may be drafted in to proofread the finished article. Reading through some of the excellent work submitted by students I’ve worked with at Swansea University over the course of the last year led me to reflect that this was rather a shame. Hence my idea to host a ‘student showcase’ here on The View East was born, by asking some of my students to write short articles related to some of the research they had conducted over the past year.

 

The students I approached have risen admirably to the challenge! Over the next three weeks The View East will feature seven short guest authored articles. All articles have been written by students from the Department of History and Classics at Swansea University. All of the authors have recently completed the final year of their undergraduate degrees and will be graduating this month. All of the students featured here either took my ‘special subject’, specialising in the study of Eastern Europe 1945-1989 during the final year of their degree, or chose to research and write their dissertation on some aspect of modern East European history, under my supervision. All of the students featured as guest authors consistently produced excellent work over the course of the year, just a small sample of which is included here. Sadly, it was not possible to feature the great work done by all of the students I have had the pleasure of working with this year, as many (particularly in the case of my dissertation group) produced excellent research, but on topics that lie outside of the scope of this blog’s focus.

 

By way of a brief introduction, our guest authors during the next three weeks are writing on the following topics:

 

Week 1:

On Monday 11 July we begin with Harry Hopkinson’s fascinating article Sputnik: Bluff of the Century. Here Harry explores the implications of the successful launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957, not only in terms of technological and military developments but also in terms of its wider impact on the development of the Cold War.

On Wednesday 13 July we have the first of a trio of articles focusing on various aspects of the history of the GDR. In this article Rosie Shelmerdine provides a fresh and timely analysis of the 1953 East German Uprising, exploring the true nature of the rebellion by asking whether the events of June 1953 are best considered as ‘Western Provocation, Workers Protest or Attempted Revolution?’.

Our first week concludes on Friday 15 July, with James Shingler’s intriguing article ‘Rocking the Wall’, which follows on nicely from Rosie’s study of a popular uprising by exploring a rather different aspect of protest and resistance in the GDR, focusing on the impact of popular music in 1970s and 1980s East Germany.

 

Week 2:

The second week of the student showcase opens by concluding our focus on the GDR. On Monday 18 July David Cook’s article ‘Living with the Enemy’ provides an insightful and intelligent analysis of the infamous East German secret police – the Stasi.

On Thursday 21 July Nelson Duque’s article ‘Inside Ceausescu’s Romania: An Unquestionably Efficient Police State’ follows nicely on from David’s study of the Stasi by considering the repressive nature of another East European regime: that of Ceausescu’s Romania and his much feared secret police, the Securitate.

 

Week 3:

On Monday 25th July our penultimate article, written by Carla Giudice, takes us back to the immediate aftermath of World War Two by considering some of the factors that influenced the contrasting fates of three leading individuals who featured in the 1945 Nuremberg War Crimes Trials: the ‘Good Nazi’ Albert Speer, the ‘Bad Nazi’ Herman Goering and the ‘Mad Nazi’ Rudolf Hess.

In recent months there has been a renewed focus on war crimes in relation to the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, due to the recent arrest and indictment of former Bosnian Serb Army chief Ratko Mladic on charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity. On Wednesday 27th July, our final guest authored article by Simon Andrew thus provides a fitting conclusion to the student showcase, by considering some of the circumstances surrounding the bloody break up of Yugoslavia.

 

 

Budem Zdorovi! Na Zdravi! Prost! The Uses and Abuses of Alcohol in the Communist Bloc.

A new study claims that heavy drinking and cases of alcoholism were widespread in communist East Germany. Extracts from a forthcoming book by Thomas Kochan, The Blue Strangler: Drinking Habits in the GDR, recently published in Deutsche Welle describe how drinking to excess was ‘the norm’ in the GDR, with alcohol consumed ‘at the workbench, in the office and at party headquarters’. Kochan also estimates that by the close of the 1970s around 5% of all adults were suffering from alcohol addiction (four times the rate in West Germany) and that by the 1980s the average GDR citizen was drinking 23 bottles of liquor (double the average in West Germany), 12 litres of wine and 146 litres of beer annually. Recently, I too have been reading about the uses and abuses of alcohol in the communist bloc, in relation to an article I’m writing about social deviance under communism, so news of Kochan’s study caught my eye. The GDR was by no means an isolated case however, and many of Kochan’s findings can be more broadly applied across the Soviet bloc.

Thomas Kochan's new book 'The Blue Strangler' explores drinking habits in the GDR, where Kochan claims that drinking to excess was 'the norm'.

 

Alcohol Consumption in the Communist Bloc.

Kochan’s analysis of drinking habits in the GDR paints a rather contrary picture to the image that the East European regimes attempted to cultivate. Alcohol dependency was presented very much as a ‘western problem’. Alcohol, it was claimed, was used as something of a placebo, to dull proletarian perception and inhibit the formation of revolutionary consciousness, while excessive drinking was portrayed as a product of the inequalities and frustrations of capitalist society. Under communism, the authorities confidently predicted that levels of alcoholism would soon begin to decrease.

Even gauging the true level of alcohol consumption in the communist bloc is something of a difficult task however. Only limited statistical information is available. Sales of alcohol were often recorded under the more general classification of ‘other foodstuffs’ (a category which also included ice cream, coffee and spices) and the official statistics collated also failed to account for the popular consumption of samogon – varieties of illegally produced ‘homebrew’, distilled from potatoes, grain and sugar – which was cheaply produced and readily available on the black market. By the 1980s samogon is estimated to have accounted for up to 50% of total alcohol consumption in the USSR (Treml, Alcohol in the USSR, 1982). From the 1960s no statistics relating to alcohol production, consumption or addiction were openly published and the state-controlled media gave only occasional coverage to drunkenness, which tended to be presented as a small scale ‘aberrant’ behaviour, only afflicting a minority of citizens.  

However, the available evidence points to a clear increase in the consumption of alcohol generally and in cases of alcohol abuse and dependency more specifically, throughout the communist bloc. McKee’s study Alcohol in Russia (1999) suggests that Soviet consumption more than doubled between 1955 and 1979, when the average annual level of alcohol consumption reached 15.2 litres per person. Stephen White’s book Russia Goes Dry (1996) estimates that during the 1970s expenditure on alcohol accounted for 15-20% of the average households disposable income in the USSR (a figure he describes as ‘exceptionally high by international standards’), and from the 1970s to the 1980s legal sales of alcohol rose by a total of 77%. A similar trend was also recorded across Eastern Europe: between 1960 and 1985 levels of recorded alcohol consumption tripled in Hungary and Czechoslovakia and doubled in Bulgaria and in Poland during the 1970s, food spending increased by just 4%, while spending on alcohol increased by as much as 45%! (Volgyes, Social Deviance in Eastern Europe). Although this increase can partly be explained by inflation and general price rises, these figures still represent a disproportionate increase in consumption.

"нет!" - Communist propaganda discouraged excessive drinking but in reality levels of alcohol consumption remained high across the communist bloc.

 

I’ve been giving some thought as to why levels of alcohol consumption may have remained so high in the communist bloc:

Social Acceptability: Although the regimes’ officially tried to discourage heavy drinking, in practice social attitudes remained much more tolerant. Alcohol continued to play a significant role in the social sphere under communism, remaining popularly associated with a wide range of public holidays, festivities and celebrations involving family, friends and workmates. Social drinking was common practice regardless of an individuals’ socio-economic status, level of education, age or gender. While heavy drinking was traditionally perceived as being a male activity, it also became increasingly acceptable for women to drink socially and cases of alcoholism among women increased across the communist block For example, in 1940 only 4% of women were classed as ‘heavy drinkers’ in the USSR but by the early 1990s this had increased to 15%, while almost 90% of women admitted to more moderate consumption of alcohol on a regular basis (White). In The Blue Strangler Kochan even talks about womens’ magazines promoting a ‘Vodka and Sausage Diet’ to East German readers in the 1980s!

Economic Function: Good quality Russian vodka, Hungarian palinka (fruit brandy) and French cognac were all popular commodities on the communist-era black market, with bribes involving alcohol commonly used to ‘grease the wheels’ of economic exchange. Kochan points out that in the GDR, a good imported cognac cost around 80 marks at a time when the average workers salary was only 500 marks, so was a popular ‘gift’, often presented to those in positions of authority or influence as a mark of respect, to secure favours and establish beneficial relationships. For those who could not afford access to such ‘luxuries’ however, the black market also provided ready access to the aforementioned samogon – illegally distilled, cheaply produced and often highly concentrated ‘moonshine’.

Escapism: Many individuals who drank heavily claimed they did so because alcohol provided them with a means of escapism; a temporary refuge from the deprivation, drabness and frustrations of everyday life under communism. One report, compiled in 1970s Bulgaria, suggested that ‘the monotonous lives led by many youngsters, disillusionment and imitation of bad Western habits’ encouraged high levels of youth drinking, while a second report, compiled by Charter 77 in 1983, claimed that alcoholism in Eastern Europe was ‘aggravated by the drabness, monotony and regimentation’ of everyday life under communism.

 The Hangover.

The latter decades of communism saw increasing official concern about levels of drunkenness and alcohol dependency across the communist bloc. Lower levels of economic production were blamed on excessive alcohol consumption. Absenteeism from work was frequently the result of alcohol-related illness and it is noticeable that levels of absenteeism tended to spike on days directly following payday and public holidays! The growing practice of drinking during working hours was also blamed for increasing the number of accidents in the workplace. More broadly, drunkenness was often cited as a causative factor for other social ills including divorce, juvenile delinquency, crime, suicide, illness, birth defects and rising mortality rates. Drunkenness was cited as the biggest single cause of accidental drowning inEastern Europeand each year during the harsh winters there were numerous reports published about hapless drunks who had fallen asleep outside and died due to exposure to the elements.

As time wore on the economic and social ‘hangover’ became increasingly difficult to ignore. However, state policy remained primarily reactive, based on a combination of promoting re-education, disseminating anti-alcohol propaganda (leaflets with such enticing titles as How Drink Corrupts Man were frequently distributed in schools, workplaces and subway stations, while some fine examples of Soviet anti-alcohol propaganda can be viewed here!) and attempts to restrict the availability of alcohol through legal channels. A number of ‘sobriety clubs’ were also promoted across Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. Some short-term custodial care was provided, most commonly in the form of meditsinskii vytrezvitel or ‘sobering up stations’, which operated in many communist bloc countries including Czechoslovakia, Poland and the USSR. These ‘stations’ aimed to get drunkards off the streets and provide them with a hot shower or steam bath and a bed for the night while they sobered up, in exchange for a nominal charge. A handful of more intensive rehabilitation centres were established but were under-funded and under-resourced. Generally, little in the way of longer-term treatment to reduce alcohol dependency was developed because ideologically, alcoholism continued to be viewed as a ‘culpable deviancy’ rather than as a medical sickness.

Soviet Anti-Alcohol Propaganda: the caption on the poster reads "Prisoner".

Anti-Alcohol Campaigns.

As early as 1958 however, Soviet Premier Khrushchev called for a ‘more determined struggle against alcoholism’. Memorandums encouraged Communist Party officials to ‘set a good example’ by not publicly indulging in heavy drinking or attending drunken parties! Despite this, several communist leaders gained reputations as voracious drinkers – one of Brezhnev’s contemporaries described how, in the evenings, he ‘laced into vodka at a terrifying rate’. A number of ‘anti-alcohol’ campaigns were implemented in various countries across the communist block throughout the 1970s and 1980s but these early campaigns were half hearted at best and met with very limited success, as they failed to tackle the root cause of the problem.

It was under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev during  the final years of the USSRthat the most serious state-led attempt to reduce alcohol consumption occurred, in the form of the infamous Anti-Alcohol campaign launched in May 1985. Gorbachev’s campaign introduced stricter legislation regulating the production and sale of alcohol, higher prices, promotion of a new propaganda campaign and the emergence of a temperance movement which came to boast 12 million members. At the same time, the Glasnost of the 1980s provided the first real indications that the scale of alcohol dependency in the communist bloc was significantly higher than the regimes had previously allowed, as the media began to publish stories that really addressed the true extent of the problem.

Although launched with the best of intentions, the campaign was deeply unpopular, quickly earning Gorbachev the derogatory title of the ‘mineral’nyi sekretar’ – the ‘Mineral-water Secretary’. Long queues formed outside of state sanctioned liquor stores during the limited hours when they were open and illegal alcohol production became ‘big business’. Gorbachev’s campaign thus had an effect similar to that of prohibition in 1920s America, as illegal distillation was quickly taken over by criminal gangs. Methods of production became increasingly sophisticated and much more extensive – even leading to a sugar shortage in 1986-87! As a result, the number of samogon producers prosecuted in the USSR increased from 80,000 in 1985 to 397,000 by 1987 (Tarschys, The Success of a Failure: Gorbachev’s Alcohol Policy, 1985-88, 1993). Many of the most desperate drinkers turned to other substitutes, consuming cleaning products, cologne and narcotic drugs, which placed a larger burden on the already overstretched medical sector. Between 1986-1987 more than 10 million individuals were arrested for violation of the new anti-alcohol legislation. Perhaps most damaging however, were the economic results of the campaign. Between 1960s-1980s sales of alcoholic beverages in theUSSR had nearly quadrupled in value and by the mid-1980s receipts from alcohol equated to about 1/3 of total government revenue (White). The anti-alcohol campaign thus led to a total estimated loss in revenue to the Soviet state of 50-100 billion rubles, at a time when economic revitalisation was seen as a priority. Little wonder then, that the campaign was prematurely abandoned in October 1988!