Perestroika in crisis
ON DECEMBER 14, 1989, at the Second Congress of People's
Deputies, Prime Minister Ryzhkov presented the government's "programme for economic recovery and further
The end of the beginning
IN THE article published alongside, David Seppo describes the economic crisis consuming the
USSR reform" which called for a two-stage transition by 1995 to a
Soviet Union, and the beginnings of a real social debate on
"regulated market economy". The first stage in 1990-92 is *economic options, It is these stabilize the economy, especially the consumer mariet, facts - the economic crisis and reduce the budget deficit, and put in place the legal, the decline in the grip of the regulatory and price mechanisms required for the full
Communist Party over society - transition to the "regulated market" in the second stage, that form the background to the
28th CPSU Congress that opened on July 2, The congress
According to Ryzhkov, the economy had already been is a congress of the bureaucratic nomenklatura. Some 40% of the significantly liberalized, but the mechanisms needed to delegates are party officlals, 17% regulate this autonomous economic activity, which economic officials, and 6% from sometimes took anti-social forms, were not yet in place. The the military and police. The rest reform, therefore, required a certain period of consolidation are defined as Intellectuals
(about 10%), workers (11.6%)
before moving ahead to the market.
and farmers (5.4%).
How can these people save their power and positions? That is the essence of the tierce debate between "liberals" and
"conservatives", According to a leading supporter of Gorbachev,
Leonid Abalkin, "only the market can save the party". But not all the assembled bureaucrats will find a safe niche In a market economy, while massive special
Interests, above all the Soviet military, will lose power and prestige. The representative of these discontented layers s
Yegor Ligachev, who explained that perestroika without the party is a hopeless matter."
The likely outcome of the Congress is stalemate, and with it political paralysis on the part of the CPSU. Political Initiative will then tend to come from elsewhere - whether from newly revived state institutions which
Gorbachev heads as President)
or outside the decaying centres of bureaucratic power.
The perception that the centre of political gravity may be shifting away from the CPSU has led some of the leaders of the socia democratic "Democratic Platform in the CPSU" to consider splitting from the party.
Even if the "conservatives are able to capture the party it remains doubtful whether the party has the strength to plunge the country back into the Stalin-
Ist past. *
A NTICIPATING criticism from the liberals, Ryzhkov explained that to introduce market relations at one go in 1990 or 1991 would inevitably result in galloping inflation, a decline in the role of economic incentives, reduced production, mass unemployment, increased social tensions. "In other words, this path leads to renewal through crisis."1
As expected the programme was attacked from the "left" as Soviet liberals are referred to by the press and even by political leaders: they called it timid, a hopelessly contradictory attempt to combine administrative and market relations. They found it vague on the concrete measures to reach the market. The "right", that is, the trade union bureaucracy - and the self-proclaimed workers' organizations linked to the state-party apparatus, was more accommodating. S. Shelaev, then Chairman of the All-Union Council of Trade Unions, was slightly critical, insisting on a programme guaranteeing full employment and a referendum before adopting a retail price reform, including full compensation for all groups of the population. Nonetheless, in the end he agreed with V. Yarin, a leader of the United Front of Toilers and member of Gorbachev's presidential council: "Of course, we can criticize, add some concrete things, but it is time to get to work and turn the government's programmes into reality. "2
As usual the views of the democratic socialist opposition whose (more-or-less) organized elements today include among others, the New Socialists and the Marx-
1993-95. DAVID SEPPO ist Platform in the CPSU, were not reported in the press.
Three months later, a special Third Congress of People's Deputies elected Gorbachev to a newly created presidency. Gorbachev immediately let it be known that he intended to use his special presidential powers "above all to radicalize the policy of perestroika", to move the Soviet Union at an accelerated pace to a "full-blooded domestic market". Meas ures originally set for 1992-93 would be introduced in 1990 and at the start of 1991. In addition, he stated that the strong presidency was necessary to guarantee "stable social order" noting that there was a growing alarm in society over the threat of destabilization."3 Gorbachev had only partially succeeded in outlawing strikes in the fall. About the same time the Supreme Soviet passed as law "On Resolving Labour Conflicts" making it very difficult to strike legally. But both measures have had little practical effect.
This turn was not a total surprise. Soon after the miners' strike certain liberal intellectuals began speculating in print about the need for an authoritarian regime to carry through an unpopular economic reform. In the fall, after the trade union bureaucracy had organized a series of demonstrations against price rises and profiteering by cooperatives (jointly owned private enterprises) Vice Prime Minister L. Abalkin himself called for special powers for the government: "In . Trud December 14, 199 . Ibid, December 14 and 16, 199 3. Komsomol'skaya pravda, April 11, 1990 and Rabochaya tribuna, March 16 and 27, 1990. July 16, 1990 • #189 International Viewpoint
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USSR conditions of natural calamity it makes no sense to hold meetings and discussions about how best to get to work. The government needs freedom and trust."*
Sixty specialists meeting in the woods
A few days after Gorbachev became president, Interfax, the press agency of Moscow Radio, reported that Abalkin was heading a team of 60 specialists working on a package of laws to be submitted to the Supreme Soviet in April and to take effect by July 1. The work of this team, which was meeting in a government house in the woods outside of Moscow, was being kept secret for the time being "in order to avoid untimely confrontation in the society". But it was revealed that the government was contempiating opening soup kitchens to deal with increased number of poor expected in the initial phase of the reform.
Interfax reported that government officials were looking closely at the Polish reform, which they considered the "most fitting for our country", giving rise to rumours that Polish-style shock therapy was in the works. (The fact that the Polish government had opted for a capitalist restoration was not noted). Economists who had seen some of the documents confirmed that they included freeing of wholesale and retail prices, beginning partly in 1990, "destatization" of up to 70% of the economy, with farms and small enterprises sold into private hands and large enterprises turned into joint stock companies, and the creation of programmes to deal with mass unemployment resulting from layoffs and bankruptciesS
Pravda's economics editor reported that there would be partial indexation of incomes to protect the poorest strata, but warned that the time had passed when it was possible to stabilize the economy without "hard unpopular measures"....Serious social collisions are unavoidable." 6
Gorbachev explained his shift by the necessity to put an end to a situation in which old and new economic forms coexisted antagonistically. The economic results of the first part of 1990 were indeed alarming. For the first time in many decades, the State Statistical Agency reported an absolute decline in national income of 1.7% during the first four months (though this was at least partly the result of the conversion of military industries and strikes, especially in the Transcaucasus after Soviet troop intervention in Azerbaijan), while incomes rose 13.4%. In 1988 and 1989 incomes rose by almost as much as in the entire previous seven years. The budget deficit continued to grow, and the increasing mass of money chasing after limited goods was causing inflation and shortages.
The government was losing control. It International Viewpoint #189 • July 16, 1990 had increased the powers of local governments and enterprises, but while these hurried to exploit their new powers in their own narrow interests, they became increasingly demanding of the centre for resources, often backing up demands by ultimata and the threat of strikes. Ignoring formal restrictions and contract obligations, enterprises, especially in the consumer goods and service sectors, continued to seek profits through unjustified price rises, even while cutting back on production.
The tendency of enterprises to reduce plan quotas had grown to such an extent that the GNP in 1990 is forecast at 12 billion roubles less than originally envisaged by the Supreme Soviet. In heavy industry, an anti-inflationary tax on wage funds introduced in the fall of 1989 was, in fact, being applied only to a fifth of the enterprises originally targeted. As one analyst put it: "although we often say in anger that nothing has changed over the past four years, nevertheless our economy is different. It is capable of beating back directive attacks from the centre and of subordinating any laws to group egoism. "7
But if the centre has lost its ability to direct the economy, it is nevertheless the case that the government itself has consistently encouraged centrifugal, corporatist tendencies in the economy. Although on one level its policy might appear as a series of errors and half-baked measures, on another it is the inevitable result of an attempt to reform the economy without democratizing the central power. This policy is dictated by the interests of the regimes main social base, the reformist wing of the bureaucracy.
On the one hand, government spokespeople and press decry the "group egoism" of enterprise collectives, which is merely rational behaviour producers in a monopoly-dominated over which government control has significantly weakened. (This is a long-term trend in the Soviet economy, but it has been greatly accelerated by the transfer of enterprises to "cost-accounting" [khozraschet] in 1988 and 1989). On the blamed ministries for all the ills of the economy, condemned "ministerial dictates" and exhorted enterprises to fight for their autonomy, as promised by the new law on state enterprises, and for the retention by the enterprises of the greater part of their "cost-accounting" income.
There is no doubt that this appeals to strongly anti-bureaucratic sentiments in the population. Yet, it is clear that the majority of the population, and the workers first of all, do not want to submit the economy to the spontaneous forces of the market. As liberal economist Kliamkin ruefully noted, they want social justice as well as efficiency, that is economic security, including full employment, price stability, a guaranteed decent minimum for all and strict limits to socio-economic differentiation. This requires a central economic power capable of submitting the market mechanism to the social goals decided collectively by the population.
If Gorbachev has concluded that this is an impossible combination, it is because he has refused to seriously envisage democratization of central power. As long as the centre that plans and regulates in a "planned market economy" remains undemocratic, the directives and regulations issued by it will be perceived as oppressive and exploitative by the producers, and therefore will be resisted. The bureaucratic centre's inability to motivate the economic actors to behave in a way consistent with centrally set goals has always been the basic contradiction of the bureaucratic economy. Gorbachev's reforms have only pushed these centrifu-
Self-management system at all levels
The only basis for overcoming this without abandoning traditional socialist values is to democratize the centre, that is to create a self-management system at all levels. This in itself is of course no magic solution to finding a workable balance between centralization and decentralization, especially when the starting point is the present Soviet reality. But democratization of the economy does at least create a social basis upon which a solution that corresponds to the workers* interests is
1111 possible. This is the
orientation advocated by Soviet socialists, but it has been consistently ruled out by the political leadership. The regime's treatment of the miners' movement is a good example of this policy. During the July 1989 strike, the government, aided by a strong media campaign, went to great efforts to canalize the miners' demands towards enterprise autonomy, a demand that to this day has brought them nothing concrete. Under various pretexts, the government and trade union apparatus also 4. Moskovskie novosti, October 29, 1990. 5. New York Times, March 20 and May 14, 1990. 6. Pravda, April 19, 1990. 7. Rabochaya tribuna, March 16, 1990; Trud, March 31 and May 25, 1990; Komsomol skaya pravda, May 1, 1990. 8. See for example, the Marxist Platform in the CPSU, Pravda, April 16, 1990, extracts from which were published in IV 187.
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managed to postpone a national conference of miners, a demand voiced in various regions of the country during the
When an extraordinary congress of Trade Unions of Workers in the Coal Industry finally convened at the end of March, the representatives of the workers' strike committees walked out of what they called a "congress of apparatchiki and employers". In their declaration, the miners' representatives stated: "We had considered that the congress was to carry out the will of the strikers, in particular to dismiss the old central committee of the trade union. After that, it was to discuss the state of affairs, the situation in the mines, analyze how the goverment has been carrying out its decision on the miners' demands, work out a common course of action interests of the working class majority of the population. The immediate beneficiaries would be the renewed bureaucracy the burgeoning bourgeois/mafia
Apparently the population has sensed this too. The news of the impending reform and the widespread rumours that it would be on the Polish model, significantly raised the level of social tension in a country where a major new strike wave is widely expected. The draft laws being prepared in the Moscow woods were Late in coming. After a joint meeting on April 18 of the Presidential Council and Council of the Federation, largely symbolic advisory bodies, Gorbachev seemed to
USSR over he reassured the workers that social programmes would be put in place to compensate for the effects of price rises and unemployment, and that the government, "will consult the working class on all major elements of the reform." But he also made it clear that there would be no retreat from the reform itself: "Let's think about how, when and what to do, what to prioritize, from what to begin. This is a question of life, work and practice. But as concerns the strategic choice, the direction of our policy, no one has yet proposed anything else serious, fundamental. There is a lot of talk, but noone has yet proposed anything of substance. "13 Gorbachev did not say, however, who decid-
Led what was or was not serious. Certainly it has not been the people. There has never been any public debate, let alone voting, on
TARATHAN DYNAM for proceeding from here and elect a new leadership to carry out that course.
They declared their intention to form a real miners' union, without representatives of the administration.
This would create the unity needed for the miners to deal constructively (and not economic by merely strikes) with the government. A national meeting is planned for June. 9
The same basic orientation can be seen in the govgradual ernment's abandonment of enterprise self-management, which was originally an integral part of its reform. At the Second Congress of People's Deputies, Ryzhkov had already called for an end to the election of management in state enterprises; this practice would only be allowed in leased and cooperative enterprises.
from self-management, viewed more and more sceptically by the press and by the leaders, to making workers "real owners"
through leasing, buyouts and joint-stock companies. Of course self-management that is limited to the enterprise (and that was the government's orientation) is in itself no panacea, but as long as the enterprise remains national property, the door is at least open for combining enterprise self-management with self-management on regional and national levels. On the other hand, privatization, even if it initially takes collective forms, completely rules this out.
In March, it seemed that Gorbachev and his colleagues had decided to cut through the contradictions by delivering the economy to the market. Of course, the government declared its intention to regulate this market — even the advanced capitalist countries do that — but one can be certain that this regulation would not be in the signal a retreat: "The shift to the regulated market must be worked out more carefully....We have to seriously think about firm social guarantees that would be understood by the people."
Gorbachev's press secretary explained that the president, warned he was risking "social upheaval of revolutionary proportions" was slowing the pace of the reform while maintaining the strategic course to the "regulated market". The July 1 deadline was pushed back to Jan 1, 1991 with the rest of 1990 to stabilize the economy and create the legal framework for the reform." According to a senior Soviet editor: "they approached the edge, looked over and were horrified by what they saw....The anger and frustration are already there and a few sparks could quickly light the proverbial 'prairie fire' in this revolutionary tinder box")2
A week later, Gorbachev left on a much publicized three-day visit to the Urals industrial region "to verify together with the toilers...the course of the ship of state before the major choice that lies ahead". In a televized speech from Sverdlovsk, Gorbachev told the workers that "your cries of alarm have reached us." There would be no shock therapy. Over and strategic altematives.
"We are the only country in the world with strong anti-market attitudes, except maybe Albania," complains
Otto Latsis 14. What bothers the workers about the market reform, and to what degree are their concerns justified?
The most immediate fear is undoubtedly a severe decline in living standards due to price rises and layoffs. The Soviet press has
East reported widely on
European reforms, where the freeing of prices and
V. Syssolev ending of state subsidies brought hyperhave bankruptcies and a 30-40% inflation, decline in living standards. According to
"the market system means free
Latsis, prices. But all we know how to do, including those who say that they are by all means for the market, is to shout in unison: Don't touch prices! It's as if we've invented a rose without thorns. But a market is a rose with thorns."
Of course, Gorbachev and Ryzhkov promise compensation. But economists are quick to show that the logic of the reform opposes full compensation. It would fuel inflation and weaken labour motivation. Judging by discussions in the press over the past months, a new consensus had formed among reformers to compensate only the least well-off, especially those on fixed incomes. Those with average and high incomes — that is, among others, the majority of industrial workers, would have to fend for themselves.
Summarizing a roundtable discussion of
9. Izvestiya, April 1, 1990
10. Trud, April 20, 1990.
11. Rabochaya tribuna, April 24, 1990.
12. Gazette (Montreal), April 24, 1990.
13. Trud, April 27, 1990; New York Times, May 14,
190
14. Rabochaya tribuna, March 27, 1990.
July 16; 1990 • #189 International Viewpoint
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USSR economists and officials in March, an article in the weekly of the Council of Ministers concluded: "We now evaluate the system more realistically....Three years ago, the starting point of discussions was that the reform would have to be introduced in such a way that the population's living standard would not suffer. But elementary calculation has shown that it is in no way possible to satisfy that demand. "15
Polls show support for rationing
Nikolai Petrakov, one of Gorbachev's personal advisors complained that, unlike Poles, Soviets prefer empty shelves to high prices; they will accept queues and rationing, but not free prices. Indeed, if at the end of 1988, 40% of the respondents in a national survey were for rationing, by the start of 1990 this had risen to 58%. Commenting on these figures, the weekly of the cooperators' movement, Komersant, concluded that "while you cannot put an equal sign between the supporters of rationing and opponents of a market economy, nevertheless, in the course of a year an additional 50 million people moved further from understanding what means are necessary to change the situation in the country for the better. Opposition to the economic reform is growing, and in this case time is not working in its favour. "16
Whether or not these people understand what is needed — or rather, what is not ATMBHOE needed - to improve the situation is open to debate. But those who favour rationthe reform were freely bandied about in March, in a work force of 125 million. Even with unemployment allocations and public works, many industrial workers would suffer income loss, as they shift to the low-paying service sector or public works. Moreover, many crucial benefits, including housing, seniority and pensions, are linked to one's place of work, a tendency that has been reinforced under the "cost-accounting" reform.
On a more fundamental level, this reform would put an end to job security and, with it, to the basic economic security that was probably the major social gain of Soviet "socialism". Economic security totally contradicts the logic of the reform. As one professor of economics recently
"We are accustomed to seeing unemployment as a tragedy. To a certain degree it really is. But at present we have tens of millions of "unemployed at work" who are on staff and receive wages but only seem to work....Of course the unemployed should be given allocations. But one should understand that the size of the allocation cannot be much higher than the subsistence minimum. If you establish it at the level of the average wage, many will want to receive it rather than work and social parasitism will develop."18
For all the lofty words about making workers "real owners" through "destatization", the liberals, and increasingly the government, in fact, advocate a system based on alienated labour, one in which labour becomes a fullfledged commodity, subordinated to the laws of the not only growing differences of income but also of wealth, that is the concentration of economic power in the hands of a minority increasingly able to determine the social and work conditions of the majority.
The platform of the Union of Worker Collectives of the Kuzbass, adopted in October 1989, specifically rejected exploitation.2° But the liberal-dominated media is conducting a fierce ideological campaign to convince the workers to abandon their egalitarian values and opposition to exploitation. For example, Izvestia's weekly recently published a two page article arguing that the country needs rich people and that the poor are "losers" who simply cannot make the grade.
"The dictatorship of the proletariat won, the resistance of the bourgeoisie was crushed, property was socialized, money lost its value, exploitation of man by man is absent. Only one thing is missing — the benefits do not flow.
"Society is rich only when it has a lot of rich people. Nothing needs to be done Only don't hinder those who want to get rich and who know how to do it."21
Concept of "planned market"
ridiculed
Of course these are not the government's official positions. But the liberals have the underlying logic of the goverment's own reform orientation on their side. Pavel Bunich described as "ridiculous" the term "planned market" which appears in the draft platform of the CPS Central Committee. 2 "The term 'planne market' does not reflect real intentions"
ing in present conditions do SO Про largely from elementary considerations of social DOE justice: high prices may keep the shelves stocked, but most goods will completely cease to be accessible to the average and lower income citizens, as is the case today in Poland and Hungary.
Besides, rationing, in principle at least, allows for greater control over distribution (but greater central control if the control is authoritarian). As a citizen of Yakutsk explained: "Of course rationing is a disgraceful way to regulate social life. But it is in any case disgraceful when in such a rich country in peacetime we have empty shelves. I think that it is basically the corrupted part of society that does not want rationing."?
Another fear is unemployment. The government's earlier assurances that unemployment is incompatible with socialism have become much less forceful over the past months. Estimates of 40 million unemployed in the initial wave of International Viewpoint #189 • July 16, 1990
РИИ market. "Destatization" does not mean socialization, but the creation of a private sector of small and medium enterprises and the transformation of large state enterprises into joint-stock companies.
Will the latter be cooperatives, where all stockholders are workers in the enterprise and hold equal shares, or will unestockholders be allowed to sell their shares to people not working in the enterprise? Again the logic of the reform calls for full property rights. Many Soviet commentators do not hide the fact that they see these collective forms of property only as a sop to popular attitudes propsychological transition to large-scale private enter-
Of course, this is being sold as the creation of "people's enterprises". But how long would they remain the people's in a "normally functioning" market, where concentration is inevitable? This means commented another economist. "It is half ideological tribute and half camouflage."23 It is no secret that many senior Kremlin officials share this view. Genadii Gerasimov, senior spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry dismissed even the "reg.
as a "selfcontradiction". 24 And even Prime Minister Ryzhkov, while rejecting the liberal's "radical" proposals on political grounds, admitted their logic on purely economic
On May 22, the joint meeting of the Council of the Federation and the President's Council approved a "perfected version of the reform". It provided for 15. Pravitel'stvennyi vestnik, no. 18, 1990, p.6. 16. Cited in Komsomol'skaya pravda, May 1, 1990. 17. Rabochaya tribuna, April 18, 1990. 18. B. Riazberg, *Trudnosti na kotorye nado reshit'sya," Nedelya, no. 20, 1990, p.5. 19. See, for example, S. Shpil'ko, *Eta strashnaya chastnaya sobstvennost", Nedelya, no. 52, 1990 and P. Buich in Trud, December 12, 1990. 20. Photocopy. 21. G. Batygin, "Liudi i den'gi," Nedelya, no. 17, 1990, p.3. 22. P. Bunich, "Shto mozhet pravitel'stvo, shto khochet narod" Ogonek, no. 18, 1990, p.3. 23. Raizberg, Nedelya. 24. New York Times, May 26, 1990 p. A-4. 25. Trud, May 25, 1990
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Cheer up Things will change when we get a FREE market econoury. BEAD LIVE
UHEMPLOYMEUT LIVE
popular consultation on all basic aspects of the reform, and particularly those affecting prices. The idea is that the government — probably including Ryzhkov, but not Gorbachev - should resign if the reform is rejected in a referendum.
The new measures are indeed less "radical" than what was rumoured in March and April (or were the March reports merely trial balloons?), and this new shift reflects direct and anticipated opposition from the workers. Retail prices will rise on average 43%: bread prices will triple on July 1 and from January 1 milk and sugar prices will rise 200%; meat 130% and non-food consumer goods 30-50%. But most retail prices will not be freed: 60% will continue to be fixed and 25% will be allowed to vary only within fixed limits. There will be compensation for all income groups: a 15% rise for the low and moderately paid and a 40 rouble monthly rise for all others.
### Calls to legitimate unemployment rejected
According to the government, this will compensate 70% of the retail price rise. Wages will also be indexed to the cost of living. Ryzhkov explicitly rejected liberal calls to legitimate unemployment and reaffirmed the government's commitment to the constitutional right to a job. It is now estimated that there will be only 10 million unemployed by 1992, not the 40 million under "shock therapy" and that this will not be due to an absolute shortage of jobs, but to restructuring of the labour force. The government is contemplating expanding public works such as road construction and ecological cleanups. At the same time, enterprises will be given more autonomy under this reform, with only 40% of production covered by state orders in 1991.26
The head of the trade union bureaucracy, G. Yanaev, has given his approval to the reforms.27 He can claim that the government was forced to retreat in face of union criticism. The liberal Interregional Group in the Supreme Soviet called for a vote of noconfidence, arguing that these measures merely caused pain without bringing the market any closer; it is a price rise without a freeing of prices and even the rises were to be compensated, largely nullifying the effect of their rise There would be no economic benefit from this reform and as a result the very idea of a market reform would be discredited. The general populabuying, which seems to have died down in a few weeks There was also talk of possible The announcement of the new measures has given a new strong push to centrifugal forces, as towns and regions move to set up trade barriers.28
While the new programme does appear to be a retreat in face of popular opposition, Ryzhkov admitted at various points in his speech to the Supreme Soviet that the liberal positions made sense on purely economic grounds. He had not a single management, but many about entrepreneurship. At the same time he said nothing concrete about the new forms of property, except that they could be of the most varied sort", nor of the nature of labour relations. In practice the labour code, imperfect as it is, is not being applied
Ryzhkov also complained of the unjustified rise in income, of strikes and threats to strike, and of the fact that the law on the resolution of labour conflicts was not being respected. "The economy cannot function and develop in conditions of 'meeting democracy. There was a veiled threat of the application of a "firm
Although the government (or at least its dominant faction) shares the liberals' basic orientation - it often seems that they disagree only on the timetable - for the time being at least, it has rejected proposals on political grounds. The fate of this reform will be decided by the struggle between the inherent logic of this market reform and the accompanying political pressures from the liberal intelligentsia, reform bureaucrats and the new bourgeoisie on the one hand, and the counter-pressures from the working class and their socialist allies (as well as from the conservative forces dreaming of a return to the old system) on the other.
At this point, one can only conjecture
USSR about what Gorbachev really has in mind The idea of a referendum took many by surprise. Perhaps the government is thinking of a variant of the Polish scenario. In Poland, the rejection of the communist government's market reform in 1987 led to negotiations with Solidarnosc leaders who eventually came to power and carried out the market reform with a "radicalism" that would have provoked tremendous social upheaval under the old government. But even if Ryzhkov is sacrificed after a "no" vote, Gorbachev today does not enjoy anything near the legitimacy of Solidarnosc. Or perhaps it is thought that continued deterioration of the economic situation will totally destroy any support for state regulation, and lead the workers to embrace the free market out of desperation.
Yeltsin argues for worker protection
On a basic, "instinctive" level, there is no doubt that the workers oppose the underlying orientation of the government's reform. It is telling that Yeltsin, today a very "radical" liberal, after having been a left socialist, has rejected the government's reform, arguing that the market should be introduced in a manner that doesn't hurt the people. It is also clear that Soviet workers are much more attached to socialist values and to socialist ideas than workers in Eastern Europe.
But from that one must be wary of concluding that this opposition will translate itself into political action for a socialist alternative. While at present the workers are strong enough to block the introduc tion of a coherent market reform on the part of this regime, without a positive alternative programme the effect of this opposition will be the exacerbation of the crisis, which will ultimately play into the hands of the liberal "democratic" savi-
The left and socialist forces are stronger in the Soviet Union than in Eastern Europe and they are finally organizing, but they are nevertheless weak relative to the liberals, who control most of the media and offer a simple programme whose validity is "proven" by merely citing the high living standards in the develunderdeveloped ones are largely ignored — and by the fact that "the whole world embraces the market". The Socialists, without any existing model to point to, can be painted as utopian "experiment-
It may be that the workers will have to experience a "real market reform" before the Socialists are able to become a genuine mass force in Soviet society. The next few months will certainly be crucial in that respect. * 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid, March 23, 1990. 28. Newsweek, June 4, 1990 July 16, 1990 • #189 International Viewpoint
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