The Russians don t do as well at the grocery store as they do at the gasoline pump. For example, bread is 75 cents a loaf. Sugar costs four times as much if you buy it in the Soviet Union. Recently Russians were introduced to Pepsi Cola at 55 cents a bottle. In the United States, the winners of Nobel Prizes for literature are honored, while in Russia they are jailed, sent to an insane asylum or as in the case of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, exiled.
Russian society has a unique system of rewards and punishments for their labor force.
In the communist countries the workers receive pay on the basis of their skill, rate of output and type of work performed, That part is a lot like our own system. But the communist supplement it with a unique system of punishments where laborers are penalized and even sentenced to forced labor if they are found guilty of excessive absenteeism, tardiness and other poor work habits. Russian industry could tell you about at least two of their former managers who decided they were no longer going to abide by the communist labor system. They refused to work and were brought to trial and sentenced to five years of forced labor. They refused to work at the labor camps and were again tried and sentenced to ten years.