Coronation in Moscow
USSR.
alia of Byzantine absolutism. Ever since, it seems, Russian despots have sought to match the glory of the Byzantine "throne of god on earth."
The supreme bureaucrats now try to do the same thing, on a vaster scale but with little taste or conviction. All of this is a fitting symbol of everything that came with the rise of the bureaucracy and its destruction of the leadership of the revolution. But it also symbolizes the
The general secretary is dead, long live the general secretary! The third changing of the guard in the Kremlin in as many years highlights still more the absolutism of the rule of the Soviet bureaucracy, and how grotesquely t conflicts with the basic principles of socialism.
'Neither czar, nor god nor hero will bring us salvation", the Russian translation of the "International," the anthem of the world socialist moveshallowness and lack of perspectives of a despotism that claims to rule in the name
The basis for industrialization and the massive growth of the working class that the revolution created stands in fundamental contradiction to such barbaric forms of rule. And by its nature this con-
Gerry FOLEY
But the death of the head of the antee of unity and Soviet bureaucracy is surrounded by the sort of rituals that throughout the centuries have accompanied the attempts of despotic systems to elevate their leaders
The objective of socialists is to replace the rule over people by the administration of things, the rule of persons by objective scientific rules, determined and applied through the broadest democracy in the interest of all by those who live by their
In the last week, the ability of the Soviet state, made possible by the abolition of capitalism, to forces of the peoples of the Soviet Union has been exercised to create the impression that a god emperor has passed. sun has darkened, leaving the good people of the Soviet Union and the entire earth in grief and apprehension, to be dispelled only by the rising of a new sun.
"The world mourns," Pravda said on March 12, following the announcement of Chernenko's death and Gorbachev's
During the eclipse of the sun god, people have to huddle together in the
"Unbreakable unity," was the headline over the article on the second page of Izvestia, under a picture of Chernenko lying in state in a huge, dimly
"The Soviet people are rallying still more closely around the Leninist Communist Party in these days of profound grief through which the country
In his speech on assuming the post of general secretary, after the ritual formulas, Gorbachev began by saying:
"Like the apple of his eye, Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko guarded the unity of the Communist Party, the collective character of the Central Committee and its Politburo.... It was on the unity in thought and action of the Communist Party that he placed his hopes for overcoming the deficiencies."
This theme of reassurance that the "unity of the party" was safe was also in the forefront at the time of Andropov's death. It expresses, among other things, the principle of despotism that the guarplacing of power in the hands of a single individual, who is superhuman by defin-
Since without democracy, power is arbitrary, it cannot be stable unless it is concentrated in the hands of one person. It is for this reason that the ruling group places absolute power in the hands of
In such a system, the moments of succession at the top are indeed perilous ones.
The dangers of succession explain the Kremlin machine's grotesque attempts to disguise the fact that Chernenko was a
At the start of March, the looking as bright as a peppermint Santa Claus and about as lifelike. Less than two weeks later, it was showing his waxen face surrounded by piles of flowers in a high hall, lit by flickering light, rather like a Greek Orthodox cathedral.
The setting of Chernenko's wake was
It was, the chronicles say, Princess Olga's awe at the great nave of Constantinople's Agia Sophia cathedral lit by thousands of candles, that led to the Russian lords adopting Christianity, and with it the principles and paraphen-
Gorbachev (D.R.)
tradiction grows more and more acute.
Already in this succession, Gorbachev was obliged to give a speech at his predecessor's funeral that introduced some incongruous note into the despotic dis-
"We will support, encourage and advance those who show not by words but by deed and practical results their honest and conscientious attitude to accomplishing social obligations.
"We will combat all expressions of pompous display, empty rhetoric, boasting and irresponsibility.
The official statement published in the March 13 Pravda repeated Gorbachev's accession speech almost word for word, adding a few points such as:
"Deepening socialist democracy is inseparably bound up with raising the level of social consciousness, with increasing the openness of the work of the party, state and social organization.
of the CPSU has fully confirmed Lenin's conclusion that the state is as strong as the consciousness of the people. The better informed the people are, the more consciously they statements seem clearly to be promises of liberalization, combined with a crackdown on bureaucratic incompetence and corruption. It is the first time a new general secretary has offered promises for reform on his accession itself.
With the long stagnation of the coun try's economy and that it may fall decisively behind in the new technologies, the pressure for change must be mounting inexorably, problem is how to open the way for the critical thinking and shake up needed to deal with these problems without letting the now rather well educated masses of workers think about the contradiction between despotic rule and building a socialist society and how to eliminate it.
Solving that one will be quite a trick. Despite the intelligence of the new general secretary, which so impresses the capitalist rulers (themselves easy enough to outshine these days), it is not very likely that he can pull it off. But it is probable that he will have to try, and that means that some big developments may be shaping up.
International Viewpoint 25 March 1985