Reshuffle on top of the
Lenin mausoleum trail of corruption leading right into the Brezhnev entourage.
The long-term direction of the bureaucratic controlled economy is clear. Over the last decade the growth dropped to a level that is hardly spectacular even when compared with those of the old imperialist countries, which
The world capitalist press's comment on the change of the top bureaucrat in the Kremlin is remarkable mainly for its emptiness.
things, seldom has so much been said about such a nonevent.
The most important fact is obvious to anyone.
is a totally mediocre figure, old and in poor health.
strong in office or likely to hold the top post for long.
Gerry FOLEY
The implications of this are also obvious in a system where the No. 1 bureaucrat becomes the very symbol of the system and the state. The face of the regime is more and more a nonface, that is, in fact it is becoming faceless.
Constantin Chernenko's undistinguished and undistinguishable portrait will now blossom across the 6,000 mile span of Soviet territory and throughout East
Europe as the flag of proletarian power and the hope of humanity.
It is evident that the bureaucracy that usurped political power from the first successful workers revolution and which has lived for many decades as a parasite on the collective property forms that the revolution created, as well as on its prestige, has reached a new stage of decay and decadence.
Appropriately, the decline of the bureaucracy is marked by the apotheosis of mediocrity.
A historic change is underway in the
USSR. The regime has never shown such weakness. For the second time in hardly more than a year, the supreme post has passed to a man with one foot in the
What is more, unlike his predecessor,
Yuri Andropov, hope whatever for new and more effec-
Andropov himself, undoubtedly more intelligent and sophisticated than the preceding bureaucratic dictators, represented even in his strongest aspects, the declining period of the bureaucracy.
What the former head of the KGB brought to the Kremlin was the cunning ruthlessness of a totalitarian police chief.
He offered nothing, in the last analysis, but a scourge of scorpions for the top bureaucrats who are undermining the system by their incompetence and cor-
Among the most interesting reports in the voluminous coverage of the Soviet leadership change relate how Andropov relentlessly stalked well protected top bureaucrats and then pounced on them like a ferret on fat rats.
In the February 11 Le Monde, the well informed Alexander Adler cited three
On the face of Andropov's successor He will not be a cases that made Andropov's reputation as a fighter of corruption. The first was in 1972 in Georgia. (It is interesting in this respect that the strongest odors of cor ruption tend to hang over the republics where the bureaucracy rules over nationalities with a strong historic antagonism to Russian rule, such as Georgia, Azerbaijan,
"This republic had been run for nineteen years by Mjavanadze, the first secretary of the Georgian CP and a candidate member of the Soviet
The local strongman was Lazichvili, a businessman, who by extensive bribery had set up clandestine enter-
"For a long time, the local police chief, Chervarnadze, was unable to fight such a powerful figure. Then, at a ceremony he noticed that Mjavanadze was wearing a diamond that had been reported stolen by Interpol. It had been given to him by Lazichvili."
So, Mjavanadze fell, with Andropov's help, and the tough cop Chevarnadze himself took his place — an inspiring example no doubt for the top Soviet The bloodhound and the hog
Another case was in the city of Sochi. "The mayor collected bribes for the least
The affair seemed insoluble because Medunov, first secretary of the Krasnodar territory, was untouchable. By devious means Andropov attained his ends. In 1980, the mayor of Sochi was arrested, and in June 1972 Medunov was
Western Soviet experts give Andropov credit for improving Soviet economic performance somewhat by clamping down on bureaucratic corruption and in-
Nonetheless, the Kremlin bloodhound's small successes only point up, after all, how extensive such corruption has be come. This is a fatal disease for a totalof centralized control and its mystique. It now seems to have reached quite an advanced stage in the Soviet have a long lead over the USSR.
In Poland, one of the largest East European states, the Kremlin faces the best organized, deepest rooted antibureaucratic movement that has arisen since the consolidation of bureaucratic dicta-
Facing this threat, potentially far greater than that posed by the Hungarian revolution of 1956, the Soviet bureaucracy has been notably unable to come up with any innovative policy, not even on the level of police techniques.
was ironic that Andropov was directly involved in the crushing of the Hungarian revolution and in the adop tion of the reform policy that made it possible for the Kremlin to restabilize the bureaucratic system in that country
He was also innovative in police techniques in the USSR itself
Andropov introduced "grand inquisitor" methods of "debate" with imprisoned dissidents, involving even theological arguments with the religious ones. It was during his stewardship of the KGB, moreover, that the imprisonment of dissidents in so-called mental hospitals and forced exile of dissidents to the West became generalized.
But in Poland the political level of the bureaucracy's response has been hardly higher than that of the barbarous military dictatorships of Latin America, even in the use of the language of the pronunciamento and the military trappings that go with it.
obvious indecisiveness at the top level of Soviet leadership now indicates that the center of the bureaucracy itself is becoming seriously eroded and unstable. This makes it clear that despite the long decades of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union this system is, on the historic scale, nothing more than a transitory product of the delay of the world revolution and the weakness of working-class leadership.
Now, after only one or two human lifetimes, the most powerful monolith in history is starting to look shaky. It was not, after all, a pyramid erected to withstand the ages but a gerrybuilt monstrosity like Warsaw's notorious Palace of Culture.
The Stalinist regime has made the very name of socialism and Marxism repellent to the peoples of the USSR and East Europe. But the Polish experience
International Viewpoint 27 February 1984
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demonstrates that once they get a chance to act and learn for themselves, they will quickly come to understand that the only way they can solve their problems is by reorganizing the collective economy in a democratic way, that is, by resuming the course toward socialism blocked by the bureaucracy.
Inasmuch as it demonstrates the decay of bureaucratic rule, the rise to power of a Constantin Chernenko is indeed a take a new and careful look at the Soviet Union. voluminous comment by the capitalist press and government figures there is not a glimmer of comprehension of the historical changes it could foreshadow. The fact is, for their own reasons, they are quite unwilling to consider them.
Such comment has focused rather on whether the change of leadership in the Kremlin could slow the arms race or bring
Those, however, are precisely two things that cannot be much affected by who holds center stage on top of the Lenin mausoleum. Better chance for peace?
The bureaucratic leadership by its nature has always sought accomodation with imperialism and therefore is always for detente. It is the immediate interests of the imperialists that are the variable. It was Washington that initiated the latest detente in reaction to its defeat in Vietnam. It was also the leadership of world imperialism that reassumed a threatening posture and stepped up the arms race as a response to a new rise in the colonial revolution, in particular in
Jus wit
(*4l3-4,*
LEBANON —
Central America.