"organizing anti-social actions" supposof the Russian Socialist Party and edly in collusion with former Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
In an inept response to central attempts and Mikhail Nagaitsev and Tatiana to manipulate non-Georgian minorities in the Republic, in which Georgians make up around 70% of the population, the
Gamsakhurdia government abolished the South Ossetian and Abkhazian autonomous regions, thus ensuring the firm hostility of the non-Georgian peoples of these regions to the fledgling independent state.
The post of president is endowed with formidable powers, including the right to nominate the prime minister, the chairman of the Supreme Court and generals,;
declare war; veto laws passed by parliament; and grant or revoke Georgian citi-
The president is a nationalist of the mystical romantic variety, keen to underline the Christian character of his country on the borders of the House of Islam, which creates additional tensions vis-a- vis the Muslim Abkhazians and the Azerdeputies in the Moscow soviet, Froleva, who are trade union officials in Moscow. DOCUMENT
A NEW political situation has
been created in our country. During the events of August 19 to 21, 1991, the people demonstrated their refusal to live like in the past and their determination to defend the elected authorities. Nonetheless the crisis in our country is not over. It is essential to find a rapid way to lift the economy out of chaos, re-establish normal economic relations between regions and enterprises, and to provide sufficient goods for the consumer market.
The dominant forces in the country, are all united in their belief that the country's problems can only be resolved by very wide privatization, a massive appeal to foreign capital and the systematic defence of private entrepreneurs and the new possessing classes issuing from the old bureaucratic nomenklatura. The desire to create a "radiant capitalist future", expresses itself by the rejection of everything that can, in one way or another, be associated with socialism, including elementary social guarantees such as the right to work, free education and health care. We consider that the unanimity of the victors is dangerous above all in the absence of opposition; without the representation of alternative positions in the organs of power there will not be a real democracy. If the majority of the present ruling majority assume the objective of defending entrepreneurs, we state that our objective is before all else the defence of the wage-earning population.
The decades of the totalitarian Communist regime has brought discredit on socialist values and on the very idea of the emancipation of labour. But these values did not arise from the armchairs of intellectuals, they spring from the need for a political defence of the workers. The defeat of the CPSU at last opens the
September 30, 1991 • #213 International Viewpoint possibility of creating an authentic leftwing movement that can give expression to this need.
Society needs a mass party that can defend:
• The right to work;
• The reform of the system of social guarantees;
• Economic democracy, workers' participation in the enterprises, in the making of decisions about their material situation and their conditions of work;
• The independence and guarantee of the rights of the unions in all the enterprises, whatever the form of property, as
THE conservative putsch in the Soviet Union and its political consequences are an unprecedented trauma for all the Communist Parties. However, the August Days in Moscow were not a stroke of lightning in a clear sky for these parties. The events in Eastern Europe over recent years have already compelled these parties to make well as the ratification by our country of significant revisions. This process needs to be looked at as a the international convention of the International Labour Organization; whole and the recent events seen as a culminating step in the
• The development of collective and disintegration of this political current. municipal forms of property, the transformation of the state sector of the economy into a decentralized social sector that is modern and efficient, capable of leading the country out of crisis;
• An end to the unregulated bureaucratic privatization of the former sector of "the property of the whole people" and a refusal to transform state monopolies into private monopolies;
• For the rights of the consumer and of independent domestic entrepreneurs;
• The democratic regulation of the economy, an indispensable condition for the establishment of civilized forms of the market;
• Integration into the world market in a way that upholds the interests of the national economy and not those of the international corporations;
• Self-management and a strong power based on representatives of the people as a counterweight to the power of the exec-
• For honest government, guaranteeing the separation of the activities of the state from the economy, and with a clear distinction between the social private sectors within the mixed economy;
• For real equality of women and for their possibility to fully participate in the life of society without this being to the detriment of their rights and obligations
• For the rights of national, cultural and religious minorities.
We announce our intention to create a mass Party of Labour, founded on rank-and-file initiative. We reject the notion of the vanguard party. The Party of Labour must be the party that gives political support to the trade unions and workers movement. Only such a party can become an integral part of the international movement of left forces.
We are calling on all social forces, all union organizations conscious of the necessity of a political defence of the interests of the wage earners, and all citizens aware of the danger represented by a one-party system and who share the ideas expressed here to join this initiative. *
CLAUDE GABRIEL
T HE decision of many of them a
long time ago to present themselves as seeking a "national" road to socialism represented a first attempt to distance themselves from the Soviet model and permit the widest possible range of political alliances. The Eurocommunism of the 1970s was an important step in this evolution in relation to the increasing involvement of some European CPs in the institutions of their countries.
The social interests of a part of their bureaucracy ceased to be dependent on the "socialist camp", becoming increasingly tied to the emoluments of their own state. Almost everything could be found in the market of European CPs. The differences between, for example, the Italian Communist Party and the Portuguese or Greek CPs were great. Thus, when the era of perestroika arrived, the "socialist camp" was already far from monolithic.
The Gorbachev era, however, speeded up the crisis, the realignments and internal debates. And this has proved true whatever the previous positions of the CP in question.
### Re-appraisal of history
Several factors work together here. In the first place, Gorbachevism provoked a reappraisal of history. Most of the leaderfound themselves change their balance-sheet of Stalinism and its consequences for the history of their own party several times. Each time, the changes took place under the pressure of the changes in the Soviet Union and the CPSU, which obliged them to go further in their self-critical reappraisal.
The mass mobilizations in Europe and the fall of the Stalinist regimes smashed the last remaining illusions among the rank-and-file of the CPs about the joys of living in a "socialist"
state. The leaders thus had to come up with a further round of explanations on the "distortions" of really existing socialism".
Finally, and notably for the CPs pursuing a line of reformist adaptation to their own state, the crisis in the USSR and the Kremlin's new international policy removed all hope of a convergence with Moscow around the big ideological and practical issues.
The last demonstration of this was during the Gulf war, when some of the CPs wanted to denounce the imperialist policy at the very moment when the Soviet leadership was voting in support of that policy at the United Nations. There was nothing left of the "international context" which had hitherto permitted them to justify their Muscovite connections on the basis of the fluctuations of peaceful coexistence and references to the existence of a "progressive camp".
Shattering identity crisis
In these stormy years, each CP has tried to survive this shattering identity crisis. Each one has adopted a tone dictated as much by national political factors as internal bureaucratic reasons. Numerous splits have taken place. Many parties have changed their name, some twice, such as the Swedish CP which became the Left Communist Party before turning into the Left Party, or the Dutch CP which is melting into the Green Left.
The conservative coup in the USSR has accelerated this upheaval. All those who had tried to stick the pieces back together again by promoting the image of Gorbachev as a "Communist reformer" have once again found themselves arriving too late. The father of perestroika no longer appears as the master of the situation and ine media has had echo mising out 5 images of the "end of communism".
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