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World

CPSU moving to new phase of changé

MOSCOW — The past few weeks have
been an almost bewildering blur of political
activity in this country, and the dust has far
from settled. Yet it is already clear that some
fundamental changes, previously mostly
words, are actually taking shape.

I want to mention two that carry
immense, far-reaching consequences. Each
is emblematic of a different pole of the
Soviet course of democratization, coming
simultaneously from the top and from the
bottom.

From the first angle, we have seen sudden
and major changes in the structure and
composition of the leadership of the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
Also, significant moves were made in the
USSR’s parliament, the Supreme Soviet, of

which the most momentous was the eleva-
tion of Mikhail Gorbachev to the country’s
leading state position.

Now, it is not particularly novel for a
Soviet party leader to become head of state.
There is a sense in which Gorbachev’s elec-
tion as chairman of the presidium of the
Supreme Soviet — a post once also held by
Brezhnev — may be viewed as the last act
of a passing era.

What is qualitatively new is Gorbachev’s
clearly expressed aim. It is not, as in the
past, to anoint the party’s actual power with
a gloss of state positions, but rather to
transfer that very power into what was
hitherto a largely ceremonial arena, the
popular, representative Soviet bodies.

A series of constitutional amendments

will lead, next spring, to the election of a
2,250-member annual assembly called the
Congress of People’s Deputies. It will have
three parts, reflecting the national composi-
tion of the USSR, the distribution of popu-
lation, and the grassroots, mass and public
organizations. The Congress will elect from
among its deputies some 450 who will con-
stitute the Soviet Union’s first permanently
sitting parliament.

A good deal of confusion has been
expressed over this, and many Soviets have
wondered out loud how the CPSU leader
taking over the top state job squares with his
stated goal of separating party and state.

Gorbachev has responded several times,

. and his key points boil down to this: the

CPSU is not planning to abolish itself as the
leading force of Soviet society, but to trans-
form the nature of that role. Party leaders
will henceforth be able to exercise power
only if they pass the “democratic test” of
popular election, and will be required to
carry out their activities under the open
scrutiny and control of the representative
bodies.

Gorbachev has made it clear that all
party leaders, at every level, must make the
move from the board room to the open
political arena. The very focus of power is
set to shift from the bureaucracy to the
Soviets, and party leaders have the choice of
either being the active agents of this shift or

‘falling by the wayside.

From the opposite direction, the signifi-
cant news is of the formation in two, and
soon all three, Soviet Baltic republics of a
mass popular movement to support peres-
troika, the People’s Front.

In Estonia and Latvia the People’s Front
has been born out of pent-up dissatisfac-
tions with previous economic, political and
national policies and profound historical
grievances, as well as a genuine enthusiasm
for the potential offered by perestroika. The
Front encompasses a truly broad spectrum
of the population in both republics, includ-
ing party and non-party members. It pres-

i

GORBACHEV | i i”, digiata/ Ae -&

ADDRESSING
SUPREME
SOVIET ... his
election as
chair, coupled
with constitu-
tional changes,
points to new
powers for
state body.

ents an example of grassroots mobilization
that is sure to be followed in many other
parts of the USSR over the months to come.

The Front in both Baltic republics has
attacked a variety of issues, prominently
environmental problems and questions
about economic disparity. National and his-
torical injustices are probably the major
underlying issues for them at this point.
Both have put forward demands for
national economic and political sovereignty
which, not too long ago, might have been
regarded as seditious in Moscow.

ah

Yet the founding congresses of the Fro!
in both Estonia and Latvia earlier ¥
month have been received well by the Sov”
media, and both were addressed by repub!
can party leaders who welcomed them w
the difficult struggle to reconstruct soclé
and urged them to play a part in finditt
new, democratic solutions for old problem

In his inaugural speech as president of
USSR, Gorbachev too greeted the upsute
in grassroots politics, noting that “the 1
of the Soviets consists in tapping the m
mum possibilities of popular initiative.”

——|

pf

iw

One of the Caribbean’s most accomp-
lished novelists, Guyana’s Jan Carew, has
rapped the celebrations already begun in
the U.S., Canada and elsewhere to mark
the 500th anniversary of Christopher
Columbus’ arrival in the Americas.

Carew, in Barbados to attend the 10th
annual Conference of the U.S. academic
outfit Caribbean Studies, said a “horrible
chapter” began in the history of the Amer-
icas after the landings in the region of the
Spanish explorers.

“T would actually say that when indi-
genous Indians discovered Columbus and
his men on their beaches back in August,
1492, there began a new era to the detri-
ment of the peoples of the Americas,” the
noted Guyanese writer said in an interview
with the Tribune.

Carew, who emigrated to England from
what was then British Guiana in 1942, to
be followed by most of those who would
later become the Anglophone Caribbean’s
writing community in exile, argued that in
the 40 years after Columbus and his men
stepped ashore in the islands, some 12
million people disappeared.

“As one Cuban scholar observed, it was
one of the most horrendous acts of ethni-
cide in recorded history. Columbus was
directly responsible for setting this in
motion,” he charged.

Carew, who had been invited by col-
league Ivan Van Sertima to address a U.S.
Congressional Committee on the celebra-
tions, added that the killing of the Indians

No joy in Caribbean for Columbus anniversary

Norman Faria

was “‘a terrible loss” to the human race.

“Tt was a destruction of their culture
and techniques of living. Indeed, one may
argue that after Columbus we (here in the
Caribbean) are no better agriculturists
than our Indian forefathers,” he said.

The award-winning author, who lives in
Mexico after retiring from teaching at U.S.
universities for the last 20 years, also
pointed out that there was significant evi-
dence of incursions from other parts of
Europe and Africa long before Columbus
set off with his three wooden craft back in
1492.

He was asked about the view which

holds that because the Central American .

Indian civilizations were exceptional —
that Indian technology was in general
“primitive” — it was beneficial in the
long run for Columbus to introduce a
more advanced technology to the “new”
world.

“That’s nonsense,” he replied. “All that
the Europeans had were better weapons.
Mexico City was in fact the finest city in
the world at the time. It made the cities of

FROM THE CARIBBEAN

Spain look primitive. The Spaniards had
been fighting the Moors for over 500 years
so they had excellent soldiers. They were
good, efficient killers.

“Tt is true we can’t all go back to being
Indians, but I don’t think we have any-
thing to celebrate really about Columbus
coming to the Americas some 500 years
ago,” said Carew, who has just released a
scholarly work on Columbus, entitled
Fulcrums of Change: Columbus and the
Origins of Racism in the Americas.

The 67-year-old author has also written
novels including Black Midas and the
Wild Coast, in addition to a history of
Grenada, The Hour Will Strike Again.

Is he still writing? “Yes, I have several
works in progress. I find I have more time
to write now that I am not teaching,” he
said. Carew lives in the Mexican artistic
community of Tlaquepaque with his
Chicago-born wife Joy, a doctor of lingu-
istics, and their six-year-old daughter,
Shantola. His daughter by another mar-
riage, Lisa de Teran, is one of the most
widely read novelists in England where she

of the People’s Revolutionary Govern

was born and raised.

Carew is also of the view that, although
there is still a significant amount of litera-
ture being turned out by Caribbean wri
ters, there needs to be a centre for them.
“What it lacks now is a sort of cohesivé
centre. In my early days in London wé
gathered around the BBC which had
broadcast some of our stories. It was 4
focal point. We had a cross-fertilization of
ideas from the different islands. What we
lack now is that focal centre. The Univet-
sity of the West Indies is a regional.centré,
but what you have there is more critics
than writers,” he observed.

What about one of his early works,
Moscow Is Not My Mecca, which appeats
to be critical of the socialist countries?
Carew, who considers himself part of the
Caribbean left, says that wasn’t a critique
but was an assimilation of his own expe
riences and those of his cousin. Both stu-
died in Prague and Moscow as youths.

“Now that they have glasnost in thé
Soviet Union, what they are now writing
about their own society makes my writing$
of the time pale in comparison. It is true
that there were some elements in the
Soviet Union which were not too happy
with the book. Now I have very friendly
relations with the Writer’s Union theré
once more. I go there quite often,” he said.

Carew, a supporter from the beginning

ment of the late Maurice Bishop, says that
his book on Grenada has sold well.

8 - Pacific Tribune, October 24, 1988