Soviet Russia: More Goods, More Problems

0ne evening last year I waited on a downtown Moscow street corner to meet a friend. It was after 9:00 P.M. and a bitter November wind made me take refuge behind a huge canvas portrait of Lenin, erected for the annual celebration of the revolution. The only other person in sight was a Soviet policeman on his beat, assigned to guard the Lenin portrait. In a plush grey and red uniform, this Soviet big-city cop might have stepped out of a propaganda poster featuring youthful builders of Communism.

I struck up a conversation. He asked where life was better—in the United States or the Soviet Union. I replied that the standard of living of most Americans was vastly higher than it is in the Soviet Union. He knew all about America, he sa...