Political footwork in a system in
"Achievements" of IN RESPONSE to the independenceminded governments of the republics and the liberal opposition, who opposed celebrating the anniversary of the October revolution, the official Soviet press published many articles defending the legacy
One of the more notable was the frontpage article in Pravda of October 23 by two academics, P. Volobuev and G. Ioffe. They cited the defense of the Bolshevik government by the Czarist gencral Brusilov: "And here is the testimony of a noted, non-socialist general, A. A. Brusilov:
"The revolution was a necessity for many respects were right. They rooted out the decayed Russian aristocracy, and took away the wealth accumulated over many years by the industrialists and landowners at the expense of the Russian people. The Bolsheviks, finally, saved the territorial integrity of Russia." [Our emphasis.]
This idea that the Soviet Union was a restored Russian empire led in fact to a section of the counterrevolution going over to supporting the Soviet State. Together with an irrationalist current in the Bolshevik milieu they became known as "national Bolsheviks." Their influence reached a height during the war with Poland. It is one of the sources of Stalinist social chauvinism. * Byelorussian nationalists WHILE the growth of the Ukrainian national democratic movement has been a preoccupation of Pravda recent months, in the last weeks the Soviet CP daily has started raising an alarm about the Belorussians.
In its November 6 issue, it reported: "According to Zycie Warsazawy [the Polish prestige daily], at the end of October in the Polish city of Biela Wieza in the county of Bialystock, a meeting took place between leaders of the People's Front of Byelorussia and Byelorussian emigres from the USA, England, Poland and other countries.
Plans were discussed for forming an independent state on the territory of Byelorussia.
One of the leaders of the Belorussian nationalists in Poland, Ianovich, pointed out in Zycie Warszawy, 'None of the Soviet republics alone is able to achieve independence. The idea has ripened of forming a Baltic to the Black Sea union involving Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia and Ukraine. The condition crisis for achieving this objective is the break up of the USSR and the democratization
"But the achievement of this goal is being blocked by the West, which fears a sudden shift in the balance of forces in the world that could lead to unforeseeable consequences."
The November 12 issue carried a short story under the headline, "Is this consolidation?" which reported a statement by the Byelorussian CP Bureau on a demonstration held by the People's Front on November 7:
"Noted in particular was the clear anti-government, anti-Communist of the march and meeting held by the People's Front in Minsk. The tensest moment was the incident at the monument of V. I. Lenin. A leader of the ByelPoznyak, demanded that a group of ten persons be allowed to go up to the base of the statue to place objects that he considered characterized the 73-year history of
" When this permission was not given, a few hundred people tried by force to break through the police lines around the
Despite quite sharp resistance, a few succeeded. On the statue of the chief of the revolution founder of the state, national [Byelorus-
"The Bureau of the CP of Byelorussia considers that the government of the republic should make a principled assessment of who facilitated the carrying out of this anti-Soviet action."
The Belorussian CP and government remain among the last bastions of unreconstructed Stalinism. But the People's Front won important victories in Minsk in the last elections and has been growing Private Property A LEGAL EXPERT, Dr. E. Sukhanov, offers a weighty defense of private property in the November 5 issue of Pravda - the private property of the Communist
The introduction to the piece says, "Recently, defense of the right of ownership has became especially timely."
The problem, Sukhanov explained, is the growth of demands for nationalizing the CP's property, and this after the government has taken such important steps toward establishing a "state based on laws" in which the rights of owners would be guaranteed.
"As is well known, the Law on Ownership in the USSR went into force on June
USSR 1 of this year. For the first time in our legislation it provided for clear legal defense of owners from direct interference of government organs in the sphere of their property.
"It clearly distinguished cases of illegal violation of the rights of owners (including by government bodies) and cases when ownership is limited on legal grounds, in both cases offering owners the appropriate rights to defend their property
"In the first category are cases when the right of ownership is violated as a result of actions contrary to laws of government administrative bodies (from ministries or departments to the administrations or the office of the executive committee of a local soviet) or a local government organ (a local Soviet of People's Deputies and
"Very unfortunately, such illegal acts are now occurring not infrequently, and in this regard the distinction between the authority of government organs and the government and judicial authorities is being totally ignored.
"For example, not long ago Moscow News (see, for example, No. 43, October 28, 1990) reported that the Yaroslav city soviet had adopted a resolution calling for an "inventory' of the party's property. The Kemerovo district soviet [center of the miners' movement] set up a 'Commission to Make An Inventory of the Property of the CPSU.' In Donetsk [another center of the miners' movement), a strike rally 'demanded nationalization' of the party's
"It is clear that all resolutions of the bodies named (leaving aside the resolutions of rallies, which have no legal value)...are subordinate to the law, including the law on property.
"When such government organs adopt normative or individual resolutions conflicting with the law or going beyond their mandate and violating the rights of properowners, for example by declaring *exclusive ownership' by the local soviet of property or natural resources on its territory, or "nationalizing' the property of specific owners, such results will be declared invalid on the complaint of the owner or persons whose rights have been violated (page 34 of the Law on Property).
"Moreover, all losses suffered by owners as a result of the adoption of such resolutions is to be compensated for fully from the means at the disposal of the corresponding government body or administraGorbachev's directive (ukaze) of October 11 Sukhanov explained
International Viewpoint #195 • November 26, 1990
USSR 12 established that property could only be taken away from its owner by court order.
"Considering the unfortunately widespread disrespect for the law in our society, the legal nihilism displayed even by local government bodies, the president's directive also called on the law-enforcing organs, not only to firmly stop any illegal confiscation of property, but to take measures of a preventative character by putting under protection property threatened with illegal confiscation.....
"It is to be hoped that the thoroughgoing implementation of the demands in directive will create firm guarantees of stability of economic and legal property relations, make it possible in fact to consolidate the legal order, and thereby to assure an important precondition for real transition to a civilized market economy and a state based on laws." * How to fight the nomenklatura THE INDEPENDENT Lithuanian Communist Party [which represents the bulk of the old CP in the republic] is energetically trying to shift the onus of bureaucracy and authoritarianism onto Sajudis and the government it controls.
For example, the October 25 issue of its daily, Tiesa, offers a long article by the secretary of the party's Central Committee, Gediminas Kirkilas, subtitled: "Why create a new nomenklatura under the cover of fighting the nomenklatura?"
Kirkilas writes: "It is symptomatic that after the announcement of the decisions of the Sixth Plenum of the LKP Lithuanian CP], the senseless and incorrect stance against the party was reinforced.
"This is strange, because if our opponents have a sound mind and concern for Lithuania, they could easily understand that at our [upcoming] special congress, we will finally remove our "Communist badge," both the ideology and political practice of Marxism-Leninism, accounts with our past and become a real parliamentary party that will no longer represent in Lithuania 'the possi restoring a pro-Communist regime".
The LKP, moreover, no longer had anything do do with the nomenklatura:
"It has to be clarified what the nomenklatura is....The LKP Central Committee cadres ceased functioning in the middle of last year.....I suspect that now the parliamentary majority is trying to form a nomenklatura, because the department heads are being chosen from 'reliable' people because...the criterion of competence is not being given the most weight."
the government not to repeat mistakes of the Bolsheviks, such as driving away intellectuals, of whom there were many in the ranks of the LKP, or turning on their former allies in 12 the fight for reform:
"Let us not repcat the path of the Russian revolution of 1917. While it was necessary to overthrow the czar, the Bolsheviks allied themselves with others. But after that they turned first of all against their closest allies. While Sajudis needed the cover of Communists, they needed Just. Marcinkevicius, B. Genzelis and V. Bubnys and many others. Now they are practically enemies of the people."
Kirkilas even seemed to oppose the idea of a party press in general. "An ideological press, no matter what it may be — Soviet or Populist [a reference to the pre-war ruling party] - forces people into conformism, adaptation."
The article was directed mainly at calls for removing the old bureaucrats. It cited a reference by A. Maldeikenius in Lietuvos Ryle to the purge carried out by 'S occupation authorities in Japan.
Kirkilas' answer to such demands was the following: "There is only one way to fight the nomenklatura. It is the market, independence in managerial and economic initiative."
In other words, forget about workers democracy. That might lead to a lamentable loss of "qualified" cadres. * Red bourgeoisie TO PROVE its new pluralist convictions, Pravda regularly runs a sheet." The one in the October 31 issue for the first time gave space to currents outside the Communist Party, publicizing
Another first was an article by V. Bakulin, which took up the question of "reconversion" of the nomenklatura:
"Today the question of ownership of the means of production is again coming to the center of attention. If after October this property was taken away from the bourgeoisie and transferred into the hands of the proletarian government, in the 1920s and especially the 1930s the rights of administering it and in part using it were usurped by the nomenklatura. Today, in the conditions of perestroika, the question has actually been raised of turning over government property (to one degree or another and in different forms) into the hands of the workers, a new Soviet bourgeoisie is trying to get hold of it.
"Our new bourgeoisie has a fair bit of political experience, since one of same nomenklatura, oustchairs by perestroika". * Latvian front at a turning point? IN THE PAPER of the launch pad of the national
Zigrids Dzedulis drew a fairly grey picture of the Latvian Popular Front's Third Congress on October 6. His article was published in the October Literatura un Maksla, subtitled "A subjective reflection on the LTF's [Latvias Taucongress." He wrote that the gathering "clearly reflected the exhaustion and apathy of the section of society that three years ago founded the organization singing folksongs and waving banners."
The problem was that nothing fundamental had changed.
"Everyone expected radical measures from the parliament and the government - radical action and quick results. The Latvians are expecting action that will enable them to survive, to protect themselves from Russification and extinction.
"But the government, which does not have its own army, border guards, or reliable security installations, which does not control its territory, harbors, airports, only partially the means of production and what is produced and whose economy 1s subjected to an indirect blockade, is practical-
"In this situation, the government is obliged to take steps that are unpopular with the people. It is said that since the elections, the LTF has lost about 50,000
"In the history books we have read about dual power in Russia. But it seems that there is multiple power today in Latvia — the army, the MVD, the neo-Stalinist wing of the Latvian CP Central Committee, the gencral managers of the industrial enterprises subordinated to the USSk and the Mafioso network of trade officials, who increase political chaos, consciously foster interethnic hatred and deliberately plunder the national economy."
Political debate has been developing in the Latvian front in the face of such difficulties.
It remains to be seen if the options were further clarified at its latest congress. *
ROMANIA posed to become convertible in January must involve a drastic
1991, which decline in its value. An inflation rate of
300 to 400 percent is expected in 1991.
privatizations planned
Roman's declared objective is to privatize 50% of the economy within three years. Starting in January, it will be possi ble to set up private enterprises. Within six months, all state enterprises are sup-
DRASTIC price raises on November 1 represent a decisive turning point for the regime that emerged from the overthrow of Ceaucescu. Freeing of prices and accelerated privatization, together with devaluation of the national currency, were announced by the premier, Petre Roman, in his report to parliament on October 18. It is hardly a coincidence that only a week before this, the minister for economic guidance, Eugen
Dijmarescu, declared that the government intended to remove the managements elected by the workers in the wake of the revolution and to replace them with its own appointees.
GERRY FOLEY
U
NLIKE the other regimes in
East Europe and the USSR, the had
Romanian government promised that it would not carry out socially painful forms of "marketization." For one thing, the Romanian revolution occurred after the effects of the market reforms in Poland had become clear.