Pravda since the Central
USSR without the participation of the work collective. Sociological studies have shown in a number of enterprises that a large part of the workers lack any clear idea of how the wage fund is accumulated and distributed.... In such circumstances, how can we
Committee plenum seriously expect the participation of all the workers in the introduction of new methods of management?"
At the same time, Shalaev called for political control going deeper into the working class. "We must support the efforts of the workers themselves to introduce
SINCE THE January Central Committee plenum that marked the consolidation of Gorbachev's new course, the Soviet CP's official organ, Pravda, has been continuing and widening a campaign for the new policies.
Articles and statements dealing with domestic matters have ceased to be merely bureaucratic litanies, and give the impression that the leadership is actually trying to talk to, and convince, at least the cadres and the intelligentsia.
Unattractive realities are being admitted. That was notable in the material published on the all-union congress of trade unions at the end of February, the most important event since the Central Committee plenum.
GERRY FOLEY
In his report to the congress, published in the February 25 issue of Pravda, the union chief AS Shalaev stressed the poor performance of the authorities in providing can no longer reconcile ourselves to the fact that many ministries, departments and building organizations systematically, year after year, government's plans the last six years, not once have the housing construction plans of the Ministry of Coal Mines, of struction for Light, Food Industry
Household Appliances, of the
Construction, dustry, of Appliance
Means of Automatization and Management Systems been fulfilled."
Furthermore, there had been numerous and serious violations of the management of governing housing funds.
the recent period, the All-
'In
Central Council of Trade
Union
Unions [VTSSPS] organized a review of 14 thousand enterprises. Some facts came to light about violations of the and various departhousing law ures from the established rules. And in most cases, they occurred with the complicity of the unions, owing to a lack of principle on the part of the union committee chairs and a lack
International Viewpoint 23 March 1987 of collective leadership and open-
The union chief also pointed to corrupt practices in allocating tion trips: "In many union organizations in the Tadzhik and Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics and in
Tiumen and Orenburg oblast's and the Khaborovsk territory, trips have been alloted purely on the say so of the union committee chairs; there has been a lack of collective leadership and openness in this area. It has even happened that some union workers have been assigned vacation trips on the basis of personal relationships. That has aroused just remonstrances from the workers." Call for greater working class political control
Shalaev devoted a special point to
"In the next five year plan real possibilities freeing women physically hard and harmful work."
He evoked the need for democracy in general terms several For example: "It is impermissible for questions around improving the forms economic and social work planning to be decided by narrow circles of administrative personnel, and order. In especially important to support in every way the initiatives of brigades that have accepted responsibility for giving a collective guarantee of productive discipline.
"In the Severskii pipe factory in the Sverdlovsk and the number of violations of social order by 200 per cent .... along with the local party organs the experience of the Sverdlov oblast' in other territories of the
"That makes the Production and Social Discipline - Collective Guarantee Movement an important factor in reinforcing the collective bases of
The trade-union councils and committees are obliged to take the principle of organizing this movement to every collective."
Further on in this section of his report (entitled "Resolutely Reconstruct the Educational Work Unions"), Shalaev stressed: "At the center of our attention must always of patriotic and internationalist education."
What he meant by internationalism" immediately was combating national feeling among the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet
There has in fact been a lot of combating "nationalism" among non-Russian peoples and not much sign of fighting Great Russian nationalist sentiments, evidence of which is hardly difficult to find.
The example that Shalaev chose was that of the Kazakhs, the outburst of nationalist feeling touched off when the Kazakh party secretary was removed in December replaced by a Russian:
"Not infrequently, trade-union organizations, especially among the student youth, as was the case in
Alma Ata [the capital of Kazakhstan], have taken passive positions toward manifestations of localism, narrow nationalism and nationalist vainglory "
9
It should be remembered that up until now the bureaucratic rulers have faced active and enduring mass opposidefenders of national rights of non-Russian peoples. For example, there were tens of thousands of people in Georgia and Armendemonstrated openly against the draft of the new Soviet constioriginally would have removed Leninist guarantees for the languages of
Attacks on nationalistic"
It is notable how often the names of the Central Asian republics come up when the Soviet press is mentioning problems of corruption. Of it would be logical that in of national oppression, standards of public morality be lower. All over the world, tend to be charlatans and thieves. But it is also generally true that oppressed at least be of their own nationality.
The December 18-19 demonstrations in Alma Ata obviously alarmed the Gorbachev leadership. This theme up many times in Pravda in
February and early March.
example, there is a long article under
"Party Life,
Self-Love." It was an attack on the
Kazakh language press for failing to
"nationalistic" moods. the [Kazakh] and magazines have not had a system the questions of internationalist education these publications did sort But this is not a subject up occasionally, constant attention....
"It is clear that most press organs treated this important question only in a formal way."
Some did worse: "In many newspapers and magazines published in the Kazakh language — especially Kazakhstan Ayel'deri ["'Kazakh Women"/, Madinet Zhane Turmys ["Culture and Life" .. only Kazakh names are to be seen, and the pictures generally only show representatives of the original nationality. This one-sided representation of the life of the multi. national republic hardly helps educate people in an understanding of the unity of interests of all Soviet people." 10
Worse still: "On December the article
Tostik' was published in Vechernaya
Alma Ata [in Russian] the opening of a kindergarten. The did not hide a feeling of enthusiasm ...• future masters of this splendid stone palace. Black-eyed, smiling, happy.' the children themselves and their parents wanted' that is said about two five-year-old kids who have hardly learned to talk
.. One wonders, is it necessary to publish such propagating national specificity even from kindergarten age?"
In the March 5 Pravda, a so-called
Kazakh national
Nurpeisov, seems to try to strike a balance. There is a problem, he says, about rural Kazakh's learning
But many Kazakhs in the cities losing their the style of "national writers" in the
USSR he says that the languages of brother peoples"
"two breasts of a common mother,"
both of which are needed to sustain a "healthy infant." But he does not anything about Russian infants Kazakh, and they are certainly not losing their language.
"theoretical article" in the February 13 Pravda took up the problem of nationalism on a more general level. It pointed especially to two problems. "Every third person in the non-Russian nationalities does not speak it [Russian] the spread of Russian among the original populations of the republics has quality of the knowledge of Russian remains a task of the day, especially among the rural populations of Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Baltic."
The second problem was that "the normal process of internationalization of culture and mixing of populations can sometimes be perceived in an un-
Some representatives different nationalities where especially intensive see this process even as a threat to the survival of their national character, culture and
It might be noted that Esil'baev also baulked at accepting processes." One of the things he objected to in the Kazakh press was a reference to the fact that the birth rates showed that the Kazakhs were becoming a majority again in Kazakhstan.
In fact, Gorbachev's first tour after the January plenum was in the Baltic republics of Latvia and Estonia where there have been strong feelings and protests against Russianization.
The Soviet leader's speech to the Estonian "aktiv" of the party, soviet and economic leaders, published in the February 22 Pravda, raised the national question in a prominent way:
"I have already had occasion to say during my stay in Latvia, and I want to tell you, that the united efforts of all the nations and nationalities of the USSR have many times over increased the possibilities of these peoples to accomplish every sort of task."
Gorbachev went on to say that the Leninist nationality policy had not always been applied without difficulties, but "the important thing is that we have created a powerful multinational flourishing state, in which extensive possibilities are assured for each nationality . We are all bound together by indissoluble ties."
"Patriotic and internationalist education"
In the March 2 Pravda, an interview appeared with I Kubilius, hero of socialist labor and rector of the
Kapsukas University in Latvia. The first question put to him was about
"patriotic and internationalist education." Kubilius said that it had not been a great success:
"Not long ago, the party committee at the university analyzed the work of giving the students an internationalist and patriotic education. The conclusion was not very reassuring Not everywhere have we freed ourselves from dogmatic declamatory stereotypes...
"In the opinion of the students, teachers shy away from analyzing the complexities of national policy; and, using boring useless phrases, talk about Latvia's contribution to the all-union chest, about the fraternal aid of the other republics and about internationalist duty of the Latvian people."
"Patriotic and internationalist education" is obviously going to be a focus of tensions and contradictions in the "reconstruction." Judging from the Soviet press, "reconstruction" in this area seems to mean tightening up rather than liberalization. In fact, in general "liberalism" is used as a pejorative term of laxness of all types, from corruption, to undue toleration of expressions of national feeling among the non-Russian nations.
A frequently recurring theme in the weeks since the January plenum has been the need for a press that seeks out abuses and offers objective information and education in applying International Viewpoint 23 March 1987