World .

By FRED WEIR

MOSCOW — Last week the USSR mark-
ed the 72nd anniversary of the October
Revolution with the traditional military
parade in Red Square and all the usual
fanfare. Beneath the flowing red banners
and the martial salutes, however, there was
no concealing the doubt and uncertainty
that pervaded the occasion this year.

The USSR is facing its most difficult
Revolution Day celebration since that des-
perate, icy cold morning in 1941 when the
troops marched grimly past the Lenin
Mausoleum and continued marching
straight out to Moscow’s outskirts to the
trenches against the attacking Nazis.

Then, at least, the enemy and the threat
were clear. Today there is widespread fatal-
ism and near psychological collapse —
particularly among the Soviet intelligentsia
— which seems almost as intense as if they
had actually lost a war. What makes this so
perplexing to a sympathetic outsider is that
there has been no defeat, only an over-
whelmingly healthy process aimed at dis-
mantling an outworn, burdensome political
bureaucracy and sweeping away an oppres-
sive web of historical mythology.

What is happening in the Soviet Union
today can only be likened to a revolution.
An entire power structure, social system
and economic mechanism have reached
their limits of growth and are in deep crisis.
Everywhere one looks today, the shell of the
past is cracking open and new energies —
not always constructive ones — are forcing
their way out.

It is trite but apropos to note, a la Mao,
that a revolution is no tea party: it is a
turbulent, bewildering, _ psychologically
bruising and profoundly disorienting event
for the vast majority of people.

At this time of year Soviets are supposed
<tolook: back ‘on their past. with pride, to
“yecall’the'tminiense Sacrifices and’ towering

achievements of previous generations, and
note with satisfaction that their society is on
the right track.

But today the grandiose Stalinist myths
of Soviet history lie in ruins while people
reel under the impact of ever.more detailed
revelations about the crimes, blunders and
corruption of the past. Soviet historians are
of little help here: most of them are hope-
lessly compromised by their past lies, and
never actually learned to function as histo-
rians in any case.

Instead, the stage has been grabbed by
novelists, playwrights, journalists, memor-
ists and publicists. These are pumping an
enormous amount of emotion-charged
work into the public arena, but they are not
historians and their product is not history.

The raw materials for the long-overdue
re-evaluation of Soviet history are finally on
the table, but it seems as though there is no
one to fashion them into a desperately
needed new synthesis.

The bitterness, emptiness and sense of
being cut adrift only intensifies as Soviets
survey their immediate surroundings: strikes,
various disasters, ethnic conflicts, inflation
and a faltering economy. These are not
actually such huge problems on the order of
things, yet Soviets who have been tranquil-
lized for decades by the bromides of official
mythology have absolutely no experience in
dealing with such problems, and so for
many it really seems like doomsday is crash-
ing in on them.

This lack of historical perspective may be
the most dangerous element of all. It is
almost impossible to tell any young Soviets
today that they stand on the shoulders of
some rather impressive social achievements,
and that the Soviet Union has many worthy
foundations to build on. Just to say so is to
expose yourself to instant ridicule and con-
temptuous dismissal as a Stalinist-Brezhnev-

ite stooge.

One has to understand and be sympa-
thetic with the emotions in play here. And
yet until Soviets as a people transcend this

6 Pacific Tribune, November 13, 1989

Historical perspective needed for reforms

cues

Red Square with Kremlin (r) site of annual parade to mark the anniversary of the October Revolution. This year, doubt an
uncertainty pervaded the festivities.

morass of negativism and recognize that the
road they have traversed was not a totally
wasted one, they are not going to find their
way forward.

It is a disgraceful fact, as we approach the
close of the 20th century, that the tiny hand-
ful of countries occupying the charmed cir-
cle of industrial affluence are pretty much
the same group that were already highly
developed at the end of the 19th century. To
this rule, there is one shattering exception:
the USSR. Whatever its abiding failures, the
Soviet Union has become a modern super-
power and the world’s second-largest econ-
omy. —

In the space of a few decades the USSR
has undergone a massive sociological shift
from countryside to city. It has industrial-
ized and laid in place many components of a
modern infrastructure (though it still lacks
many). In Soviet cities you find the same
range of skills and professions, in roughly
the same proportions as in older, developed
western societies.

One of the great and indisputable
achievements of socialism is an educational
system which has transformed one of the
world’s most backward populations into
one of its most literate and intellectually
active.

The USSR today is part of the rich one-
third of the world, not the poor two-thirds.
The goods and services consumed by a
Soviet worker — housing, food, child care,
medical treatment, education, vacations —
may not make a bed of roses, but it is much
closer to that of a Canadian worker than a
Brazilian or South Korean.

It seems to me that the political realm was
also deeply transformed over those decades.
Even a few years ago western critics rou-
tinely sneered at the Soviet Union’s huge
“official” peace movement, youth league,
trade unions and other social organizations.
It was considered a pathetic joke that voter
turnout was feverishly mobilized to take
part in one-candidate elections.

There was always something in that, but I
have a question to ask now. I’ve been
watching the explosion of mass-participa-
tory democracy in Soviet society, and listen-
ing to some incredibly sophisticated public
debate.

As a journalist I’ve covered the emer-
gence of an articulate and aggressive grass-
roots social network. I’ve talked with coal
miners who went out on strike, and within
three days achieved levels of public solidar-
ity and class-wide discipline that western

workers can rarely even dream of. Can we

really say that all of these people have only
just lately begun their struggle for demo-
cracy, from square one?

None of this is to offer a word of apology
for the crimes of Stalinism, or to underesti-
mate the depth of the current crisis. The
legacy of the past will always be painful and
ambivalent, but to find a clear and balanced
reading of it is to begin to grope your way
forward.

Despite all of the current talk — particu-
larly among the Soviet intelligentsia, who
have always tended to swing from one

' panacea to another — about the desirabil-

ity of returning to capitalist forms, this is
probably not a viable alternative. It makes
no sense at all to turn over the huge indus-

' tries that comprise the foundation of the

Soviet economy to private owners.

The hot debate in the Soviet press about
private property is mostly a reverse-dogma
effect; in fact, the question probably arises
about 50 years too late. Consider, for
example, the automobile industry: nowhere
in the modern world does a private com-
pany or family business produce cars. They
are everywhere manufactured by giant
industrial bureaucracies, of the state or cor-
porate variety. The way out, as Soviet
workers are beginning to grasp, is not to
privatize these bureaucracies but to demo-
cratize them.

The Soviet Union is a society where vir-
tually everyone believes that affordable
housing, free medical care, education and a
job are fundamental human rights. Young
Soviets today view the images crowding in
from the west — of bulging supermarkets,
dream homes and video arcades — with
understandable bitterness and envy. Yet
beneath this obviously selective and one-
dimensional self-pity there is little evidence
that, if it came down to it, they would be
willing to trade on their established security.

, The members of the Effie Jones and
the Burnaby Club of the Communist
Party of Canada are sad to announce the
passing of our dedicated comrade and
friend, Vern Brimacombe on October 22,
1989. Vern’s life was a life of class-
conscious commitment toward a socialist
Canada and working class international-
ism throughout the entire planet. He is
survived by his wife Joan, his daughter

. Betty and family, numerous relatives and
a wide circle.of comrades and friends.

A memorial tribute to honour his
memory will be held at the Centre for
Socialist Education, 1726 E. Hastings St.
on Saturday, Nov. 25, 1989 at 11 a.m.

Come and show your final respects to
Vern.

a

Effie Jones Club

Burnaby Club

The neo-conservative elite of the west has
already declared the socialist experiment -
dead and — with one cunning eye on its
own populations — trumpets that the only
solution for the deluded masses of the
socialist world is to be quickly shorn of their
“utopian illusions” through a “painful but
necessary” dose of free-market “‘medicine.”
We are going to watch with deep fascina-
tion over the next couple of years to see how
that goes down with Polish workers. With
Soviets, it doesn’t look like it’s going to get
past the starting gate.

For socialists in the West, this is also a
time of deep hurt and confusion. There is no
doubt, historically, that the Russian Revo-
lution and the existence of a socialist alter-
native forced capitalists to adopt Keynesian
and welfare-state policies and make politi-
cal concessions to popular movements, but
there is also no doubt that much of Soviet
practice tarnished the very name of social-
ism. Those of us who idealized the Soviet
system, and turned it into a kind of meta-
physical formula, are now receiving a —
richly-deserved, cold-reality shower as the
new Soviet revolution unfolds.

This is a moment of awesome historical
decision and, like most such moments, no -
one can really tell you in the thick of it
where’s it’s going to lead. But, amid the
cacophony of conflicting voices, and even
the diversion of a few Chicken-Little types
like Boris Yeltsin charging around and
shouting at the top of their lungs that the
sky is falling, we might take note of one
small but sobering lesson of history: in all of ©
the past 72 years no one ever made so much
as a penny by betting on Soviet collapse ina
crisis.

The Association of United
Ukrainian Canadians is
holding a bazaar.

Saturday, Nov. 25, 1989
Starts 11 a.m.
Ukrainian Cultural Centre
805 East Pender St.

254-3436

- Come and enjoy ethnic food,
bake sale, crafts, white
elephant, children’s games,
cake walk, bingo.

Craft table space is still available. If you
are interested in selling your homemade
crafts at this bazaar please contact Sylvia

Surette at 274-5642 for further
information.