As the Soviet Union disintegrates, its regions are turning to “autarky,” economic: self-sufficiency. The movement is fed by nationalist tensions: non-Russians increasingly believe they give more to Moscow than they get in return. The government’s new economic program iS likely to make things worse. Reacting to widespread panic buying, the Moscow city council on Friday voted to allow only locals to buy consumer products in Moscow stores. Muscovites must show proof of residence.
The push for local autonomy has Gorbachev scared. In a session of the Russian parliament last week, he and the populist leader Boris Yeltsin locked horns over the issue. Yeltsin urged the deputies to, grant local officials greater sovereignty over their own resources. Gorbachev struck back hard. “He takes the question of sovereignty to the absurd,” he snorted. “It would lead to anarchy, localism . . . According to his conception, we will tear apart not only the [Soviet] Union, but the Russian republic, too.”
So far, autarky is mostly wishful thinking. Factories have developed fewofthe horizontal links with suppliers and customers characteristic of a market system. But progressive local officials are beginning to think about establishing regional trading networks, especially in the Far East and in the Ural Mountains industrial belt. Retailing has become more localized still. Nonresident buying is restricted in dozens of cities. In Leningrad, people say the system has reduced buying sprees by visitors from neighboring cities where shelves are even emptier. “I suppose it’s not good for the economy,” says Lyndmila Aleksandrova, manager of a foreign-trade cooperative. “But I have a 5-year-old at home, and I have to think of him first.”
Autarky is most advanced in the Baltics. Gorbachev’s economic blockade of Lithuania has given the republic an incentive to sever economic links with Moscow–a development local ultranationalists view as positive. “A blockade would be a good thing for Estonia, too,” said I Juri Liim, a legislator in the Estonian parliament. “It would help us restructure our economy away from the Soviets.” Meanwhile, Lithuania’s Baltic neighbors are trying to circumvent the sanctions. Latvia sends 1.5 million kilowatts of electricity daily–a token gesture–and Estonia trucks in medicine and other consumer supplies. Baltic leaders met in April to map out a “common market.”
The self-sufficiency movement may be too advanced to be stopped. Says Yuri Boldvrev, a legislator from Leningrad: “We will not ask anybody’s permission to trade oil for meat with Lithuania.” “Anybody” of course means Gorbachev. The trend toward autarky threatens him with one more form of national collapse.
