Gorbachev's conference and the
USSR sion that a healthy moral-political atmosphere prevailed in the republic, closing their eyes to such monstrous phenomena as bribery and favoritism?" The same issue carried the following quote from the chair of the executive committee of the the Artash raion soviet, R crisis of the
Mkhitarian: "Perestroika has its open and secret enemies. Every destabilization plays into their hands." (The same quote was published again in the July 14 issue.) Apbureaucracy parently, the Soviet authorities are still trying to use perestroika as a weapon against the demonstrations. That is, if you demonstrate you are endangering the liberalization, and at the same time the protests are
THE SPECIAL conference of the Soviet Communist Party fomented by covert opponents of the reforms. This seems in particular to be a club was widely hailed by the media as representing an to try to beat the local party members back epoch-making change in the Soviet Union. What problems did into line against the protests.
The Armenian authorities were also it reveal and what solutions did it offer? The transcripts of the blamed for the clash at the Zvartnots airspeeches given in the last two days of the four-day port in the July 8 Pravda. A. Sarkisian conference provide some interesting indications.!
"At the same time, I cannot fail to wrote, blame the local authorities also for the situation that has come about. I do not think that in the resolution of the conflict at the airport everything possible was done to prevent the clashes.'
A rich experience of mass politics
Very little has been said in Pravda about the organization of the protests, although this subject was played up in the first official attacks on the movement. However, such prolonged and extensive actions, obviously not led by the official bodies, must be developing some sort of leadership.
There was one claim in Pravda when the massive demonstrations resumed in May that the banned Karabakh committees were still operating. And in Pravda of July
12, Sarkisian mentioned one assembly that decided to continue the strike:
"On Sunday, a meeting was convened in the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts....As in the last month or month and a half, the meeting was led by the same people, calling themselves members of the Organizational Committee. On that evening it was decided again not to work." At the same time, Sarkisian wrote that "representatives of various strata of the population" appeared on TV and "did not support the idea of striking". (This last formulation was strangely weak, in fact.)
The political experience in Armenia in the last months has been the richest of mass politics in USSR since the onset of the Stalinist deep-freeze. So far, only a few surface features of it are yet visible.
These mobilizations already seem to have been welcomed in Eastern Europe as promising a new ally against the bureaucracy. It was notable, in that respect, that a banner that students hung up in Warsaw during Brezhnev's visit called for "sovereignty for all the peoples living in the
4 ESSR.*
International Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988
GERRY FOLEY
G ORBACHEV'S concluding
speech to the special party conference at the end of June attributed a historic importance to the affair. "This was a real, open party discussion about the main thing that concerns Communists and the entire Soviet people today, the attempt to find answers to the questions that are worrying them. Such a discussion, comrades, has never before been heard in the Palace of Congresses. and I think that there has been nothing like it in our country for nearly 60 years."
It was true that many genuine social problems were voiced, particularly in the last two days of the conference. But this is not the first time this has happened. Under Khrushchev also there were some frank admissions of problems, not the least being his memorable phrase that most of the fertilizer that reached Soviet fields was dropped by passing birds. But the frankness was more extensive and new problems were raised, such as defence of the environment and representation of women in leading posts and even — in a very general way — the violation of Lenin's policy on the national question. (It should be remembered that Lenin's last letters on the Stalin's violations of revolutionary national policy were made available for the first time under Khrushchev.)
The very fact that Gorbachev presented the conference as a break from the whole period after Stalin's assumption of power indicates the extension of the range of criticism permitted. Rejection of Stalin and his regime prevailed. (The conservative speakers tried to defend the heritage of the Stalin period only in the name of the labors and sacrifices of the older generations.)
One of the speakers at this conference said that it had to be recognized that the Soviet economy had run in the past to a large extent on the unpaid labor of the peasants. A number of speakers referred to the uninspiring conditions in the countryside and the need in particular for much more social and cultural investment to benefit the rural population. One, A.P. Aidak, a kolkhoz chairman from the Chuvash Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, even offered some suggestions about where the resources could be found.
"Enormous resources have been squandered"
"I think that they can and must be found Unlike all the other speakers (agitation in the hall [in fact, he was one of the most outspoken]), I will point out where. For decades enormous resources have been squandered, and are still being squandered on grandiose projects that turn out to be useless or even harmful. And no one takes the responsibility for that. If ordinary workers take a handful of nails out, they have to answer for it....But what about KaraBogaz-Gol? Who answered for the millions that were lost? And for the damage done to
Aidak introduced his conclusion by saying, "The people are waiting to see what the conference will do. This is really the last chance."
He went on to say that there were three conditions for the success of perestroika: "The first is to guarantee the greatest authority of our Communist Party. In order to 1. For comment on the first two days of the congress, see TV 145.
do that it is necessary to do away with privileges wherever they may be. The second is to solve the problem of food. In order to do that it is necessary to achieve real and not verbal equality for peasants. We have to realize that we have 'abused' them for so many years. Third, in order to assure initiative, it is necessary to eliminate the fear of a return to the cult of the personality and lawlessness. For that it is necessary to limit leaders to two terms in office without exception."
The limitation of leaders to two terms was one of the major institutional changes adopted by the conference. The speakers generally supported it. One even expressed the idea that such a provision would have prevented Stalinism and the "stagnation" of the Brezhnev years. It is an important formal reform. But in even Mexico, for example, where the limitation of the president's term was one of the main issues in the revolution, every president since the consolidation of the regime has chosen his successor. Without a general change in the system of political power, the effect of such a reform can only be limited.
Call for abolition of privileges
Aidak clearly spoke as a representative of the Chuvash, a people of mixed Finnic and Turkish origins who are concentrated in an enclave in the east-central region of the Russian SSR. They number between 1 and 2 millions. He also complained of regional problems, notably a failure to promote agriculture in the centre of the
He was one of the most radical speakers, notably in calling for the abolition privileges of party members. Most of the other speakers who raised this question did so only to deny that such privileges existed and to argue that stories about them were no more than malicious gossip.
On two points, however, Aidak was in the mainstream of the conference - that is, the need to strengthen the moral and political authority of the party and the need to clarify responsibility in administration. These concerns do not necessarily go hand in hand with a radical attitude. They are clearly needed to make any system of govemment function efficiently. Their absence is extremely costly and more and more difficult for the system to bear, as most of the
Gorbachev himself
Seeking security at any cost, and therefore avoiding responsibility, is one of the characteristics of bureaucratic rulers. But the Soviet chiefs now have to recognize that this irresponsibility has been leading their administration blindly to disaster. The worst forms of this result from the way the bureaucracy took power surreptitiously, adopting forms designed to cover up its rule — most importantly a system of parallel government. Real power was invested
COMMUNIST
PARTY
in the party leadership, but a whole apparatus of soviets was maintained alongside the party structures as a facade.
The institutional changes introduced by the conference seem to have been designed to try to rationalize this structure somewhat. This also produced a clear contradiction in the program of the perestroika. While the reformers talk about the need for dividing the party and the state, they have actually formally fused the position of party general secretary and head of state, as well as apparently (there were some equivocations) those of local party heads and heads of local soviets.
There has been a lot of speculation about the reasons for this apparent contradiction. But it seems to fit in with a long term trend to bring the formal situation more in line with reality. In the Baltic republics for example, which were the last areas incorporated into the Soviet Union, no distinction is made between the press of the party and the government, unlike the formal separation that still continues to made between Pravda, as the organ of the party and Izvestia, as the organ of the Soviet. Maintaining the pretence of a division becomes increasingly costly and confusing
The introduction of a People's Assembly to elect the Supreme Soviet seems to fit into the same pattern. The role of the Supreme Soviet has always been to be formally representative. It decides practically nothing, and everyone knows it, but its makeup is designed to appear representative of the social groups that are supposed to rule in the Soviet Union. What is stressed when it meets is how many delegates are workers, peasants and so on.
Boris Kagarlitsky, a leader of the independent clubs, has speculated that the Assembly may also serve as a retreat for bureaucrats ousted in the multi-candidate elections the leadership has promised. In fact, in the experimental multi-candidate elections that have been held, the voters have tended to use their limited choice to eliminate the most senior party candidates. These bureaucrats could rise to the top again in quotas to be elected to represent specific groups.
Real separation of party and state could only come if the Communist Party actually had to win political support on its own. And after 60 years of fusion with the state,
USSR NEU TRICIS that would require renouncing its constitutional leading role and accepting the right of other parties to exist, transforming the soviets into multi-party bodies. Not a single speaker recommended that. One did raise the question of whether a single party system could guarantee democracy. That was L. I. Abalkin, director of the Economics Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He drew fire from a number of speakers, but the delegates were demonstratively not prepared even to consider the question, although there has been some talk of experimenting with official extra parties subordinated to the CP but formally separate from it, as exist in most East European
"The press is the only possible opposition"
One of the leading "reconstructers," V. G. Afanasyev, the chief editor of Pravda, even argued that since in principle there could be no socialist opposition, the press would have to play the necessary role of critic. He did this apparently in a defensive way, responding to a mood among delegates clearly hostile to the concrete glasnost engaged in by some publications:
"I am not going to repeat the words in the report [the opening speech by Gorbachev] that...contains an assessment of our press's work as in general positive. The press has done quite a bit to reestablish historical truth, social justice, criticism of our failings and omissions on a whole series of other questions. If I were chair of this assembly, I would put the question: Dear comrade delegates, do you agree with that assessment? I think that not a single hand would be raised against. But nonetheless a question bothers me. Why is there a certain, I would say quite marked, hostility to the press floating around in this hall, hostility to press workers? (noise in the hall)"
Gorbachev interrupted him to say that no area was now exempt from criticism. And then Afanasyev went on to make his point about the press being the only possible opposition, since a "class base" was lacking for any other kind.
Many speakers did make a point of atsacking the pressed d press ros kes. the 5 sorest point seemed to be reports about the July 25, 1988 • #146 International Viewpoint
USSR sins and failings of local officials. In fact, one of the features of Gorbachev's perestroika policy is to use the press to try to change methods of work in the local units, at the expense of bureaucrats too set in their ways or clearly incompetent or corrupt. This has obviously hurt. Proposals for a new law on the press or a libel law seemed to be a mark of conservative speakers, including notably Boris Yeltsin's successor as head of the Moscow district committee, V. K. Mesyats, who followed up such a proposal with these remarks:
"Poison, cynicism and disillusion"
"Of course - and it has been stressed at this conference that in the recent period expressions of demagogy have come to the fore — every imaginable sort of scandal monger, loud mouth and anarchistic element have been raising their heads. Under the flag of democracy they have been trying to spread doubt among the people about the party's course, harming perestroika. Voices are being raised about the loss of the party's resources, about introducing a multi-party system. The problem has been complicated by the fact that many party, Soviet and economic leaders, fearing that they will seen as opponents of democratization, have not sufficiently opposed all this rubbish. They have been avoiding sharp discussions, in part showing confusion, indecisiveness and even outright ideological impotence."
Despite some implicitly very far reaching criticisms by some delegates, no struggles were proposed against any specific opponent or opponents of perestroika. In fact, along with multi-partyism, separate political groupings in the party were also condemned. The area where the speeches seemed to reflect a real struggle was around the press and publishing. A few apparently conservative speakers condemned a supposed ruinous and ruthless fight for positions in the publications.
The vice-chair of the writers' union, Iu. V. Bondarev delivered a veritable tirade. "In our press we are constantly giving our youth not the truth, even the bitterest truth, and not experience that would teach them to improve themselves, but a chain woven of poison, cynicism, disillusion, which chokes the healthy joyfulness of youth." (The metaphor is rather tangled in the original and hardly does honor to a professional
Bondarev made some specific attacks: "In the last congress of film-makers, it was not the best, the outstanding directors and actors that went into the leadership. What operated here? Group passions, general nervousness, jealously of talent, of the successes of others."
He complained that the conservative journals Molodaya Gvardia and Nash Sov•tack. He also expressed outrage at a remennik had come under venomous atInternational Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988 defaming of the Soviet past and of patriotism in general. He compared the official literary figures he said were suffering outrageous attacks with Socrates condemned to drink hemlock and the Russian classical authors rejected by the ultra-left proletkult writers of the 1920s (who actually prepared the way for the "socialist realism, which he and his friends are the
By comparison with the fireworks over the press, the much remarked on exchange between the out-on-a-limb reformer Boris Yeltsin and Yegor Ligachev, the leading conservative figure, was quite restrained, but it came closer to real power. Yeltsin spent most of his time defending himself. As for Ligachev, he said only that he had some disagreements with him and with his style of work. Yeltsin was put down very hard by Gorbachev, not in a Stalinist criminalizing style but nonetheless witheringly. In effect, he accused him of resorting to trouble-making because he could not handle his practical tasks.
In his response to Yeltsin, Ligachev contrasted his own record in practical work in Siberia with Yeltsin's supposed history as a mere bureaucrat. He also hinted that he had been responsible for Gorbachev's victory in 1985 and thereby for saving the country from disaster. That implied a threat, that is, if the start of perestroika depended on him, presumably its continua-
Yeltsin defended and attacked
It was interesting that in the discussion, despite the heavy putdown from Gorbachev, Yeltsin had his defenders, notably former associates from the Sverdlovsk district, who praised the practical results of his work. No less interesting were the attacks on him by representatives of the Moscow region, who accused him of driving veteran party worthies to retirement or even
Perestroika is obviously making the lives of bureaucrats much harder, while not yet producing much, if any, concrete benefit for the masses. On the other hand, the speeches published in Pravda tended to stress the inevitability of the reform. Even Ligachev said that the country was heading for disaster in 1985. Three main reasons were stressed - that in the old conditions, the leadership could not know what the real situation in the economy was. This concealment of the real economic facts also favored corruption that was undermining the party. The party was losing all authority.
The call for removal of leaders implicated in the Brezhnev regime by V. I. Melnikov, first secretary of the Komi district committee, was much commented on in the international press. The political meaning of it was made a bit mysterious by the list he gave of persons who should be retired, when challenged to do so by Gorbachev. It included leading reformers as well as conservatives. His speech in general was rather critical, voicing complaints about the disadvantages of the Komi people, a Finnic nationality concentrated into the Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the north-east of the Russian SSR. In addition to pointing to economic and social problems, he complained about the concentration of "corrective labor camps" on the territory of the Komi ASSR.
The reasons stressed by a large number of the speakers, including Ligachev, for the vital need for perestroika are sufficient to explain the frankness at the conference. This also allowed some certainly longsuppressed questions to be asked. These questions are undoubtedly on the minds of the Soviet public, and it would have been hard for a conference designed to display glasnost to ignore them. For example, it was asked why only dead leaders were criticized. There was a call for explaining why a dying man like Chernenko was elected general secretary, why there was no opposition to Brezhnev, and so on.
National and regional resentments
On one point, there does seem to have been elements of a real debate and a real change, that is, economic decentralization, the transfer of economic decision-making from the central ministries to the local and republic soviets. To a certain extent, this is required by the logic of the economic reform. But it can set off a very complicated and risky process for the bureaucracy, as the experience of Yugoslavia shows.
There is already considerable pressure for "economic home rule" in the Baltic republics (the Komi chairman, Melnikov also seemed to express a similar tendency), and there is every reason to think that this sort of thing can spread. The long years of Stalinist bureaucratic centralization and accompanying manipulation and maneuvers have clearly created a pandora's box of national and regional resentments. The perestroika has not, and will not create, any effective democratic means for resolving the conflicts arising from decentralization.
Democratic decision-making would require the abolition of bureaucratic power, the formation of democratic leading bodies, and the recreation of real political vanguards (the confrontation between the Armenian and Azerbaidzhani SSRs has shown how much these are lacking). None of the measures adopted or announced by the conference pointed in that direction. At most this affair opened the way further for publicly voicing a few plain truths about the country's problems. That is hardly a brilliant exhibition of democracy. But it undoubtedly reflects the depth of the crisis of bureaucratic rule, and that can lead to some genuinely spectacular developments, as the mass mobilizations in Armenia have indi-