Do people in the East want the free market? Opinion polls taken in late 1993 in Russia showed only 27 percent of all respondents supported a market economy. By large majorities, people believed that state control over prices and 1/4
over private business is "useful," and that "the state should provide everyone with a job and never tolerate unemployment." In Poland, 92 percent wanted to keep the state welfare system, and lopsided majorities wanted to retain subsidized 2/4
housing and foods and return to full employment (Monthly Review, 12/94). "Most people here," reports a New York Times Moscow correspondent (6/23/96), "are suspicious of private property, wonder what was so bad about a system that 3/4
supplied health care at low cost from birth to death, and hope that prices are once again reined in by the government" #abolishNATO 4/4

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Sep 11
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