There is general dissatisfaction with the pace of life, which they call "the tempo."
"Complaints concerning the 'tempo' involved high work norms, overtime (without pay, usually, for white-collar workers), long and difficult hours spent in transit to and from work, compulsory attendance at meetings outside regular working hours, precious time spent queuing up for scarce goods and strict laws of labor discipline which made one liable to strong penalties for being late to work."
The picture of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in the Soviet is a changing one, the authors note, and "so are the expectations and aspirations of succeeding generations of Soviet citizens.
"The youngest people in the Soviet population take for granted many de- privations and more politicalization of their lives than do the older people."
With this picture of how life looks to the Soviet citizen, and with scores of detailed reports from emigres on the organization and workings of various institutions--factories, collective farms, courts, schools, the army, the bureaucracy, and others--the behavioral scientists sought for a series of basic themes in the working of the system. For this, they draw on the observations of other American students of the Soviet and on Soviet materials, as well as on the interview data.
Here, in brief, is the kind of pattern they found:
1. While the long-range goals are fixed--strengthening the present Soviet structure and creating a Communist world under Soviet leadership--there is flexibility in short-range action.
The ruling group emphasizes "rational planning" in its propaganda, but it often "plays by ear" and muddles.
Rigidity and Flexibility
"There have been, from a shorter-range point of view, enough sudden alternations in both domestic and foreign policy, both between rigidity and flexibility and between drastically contrasting courses of policy and action, to justify naming 'cyclical behavior' one of the most distinctive operating characteristics of the Soviet system.
"If the regime should at any time be lured into tightening controls over such mechanisms too drastically, the system would probably soon be in trouble."
The authors conclude:
"Our pessimistic finding is that the new regime can gain much more solid popular support if it supplies more consumer goods and better housing, eases up on the terror, makes some concessions to the peasants, and relieves somewhat the frantic pace at which all the population has been driven.
"Such a change of policy would not only alleviate many of the day-to-day grievances of the citizen, but also change his basic image of the regime as a harsh and depriving force."