World

Many observers are in agreement that
perestroika has arrived at a critical cross-
toads where it must now choose between
new radical departures to keep the momen-
tum going, or a deceleration of the process
with the attendant risk of everything flying
apart in mid-air.

There is a sense in which this accurately
captures the moment, but it is a limited
perception. The past year has been a
blur — as if Father History punched the
fast-forward button — and virtually eve-
tyone’s hopes, fears or expectations have
been overtaken by events. The psychologi-
cal impact of this has been to detach the
process of change, in many people’s minds,
from any realistic plans or programs.

A strange and potentially destructive
situation has arrived, in which opposition-
ists of many different types have begun to
believe that their particular miracle may be
on the verge of actually happening; in which
conservatives of every stripe have con-
cluded that things are getting irrevocably
out of control; and in which the Communist
Party leadership, the Supreme Soviet and
other emerging institutions of stable social
change must act quickly and decisively in at
least: three crucial areas, if coherence and
order are to prevail over the coming year.

1) PLURALISM AND ARTICLE SIX

The political crisis was thrust onto the
agenda last month, in an explicit attempt to
harness the earthquake in Eastern Europe,
by “radical” deputies such as Yuri Afana-
syev and the late Andrei Sakharov. They
insisted that the central problem in society
was the leading role of the CPSU, its
“monopoly on power,” as defined in Article
Six of the 1977 Brezhnev constitution. This,

FROM
MOSCOW

in their view, is the fetter holding back the
emergence of genuine democracy in the
USSR. Most Western observers seem to
agree.

In early December, a group of five of
these deputies, probably at Sakharov’s
insistence, called publicly for a countrywide
two-hour general strike to take place Dec.
I1, the day before the second session of the
Congress of People’s Deputies was to open
in Moscow. The main purpose of the strike
was to pressure the Congress into tossing
out Article Six. This general strike appeal
was a spectacular tactical failure: from one
end of the USSR to the other virtually no
one walked out. The next day, as the Con-
gress opened, a move to put Article Six on
the agenda was also defeated.

So, where’s the crisis? Not, certainly, in
the simplistic notion that the battle of peres-
troika comes down to the CPSU versus the
people. The growing marginalization of the
Boris Yeltsins and Yuri Afanasyevs within
the political process underscores more than
anything else their fundamental incompre-
hension of their own society on this point as
well as their inability so far to make any
genuine connections within the broader
community. There is nothing like holding a
general strike, and having no one show up,
to drive that reality home.

Yet there is a crisis and it lies precisely in
the expanding complexity and diversity of
grassroots Soviet politics, a phenomenon
that seems to leave many radical opposi-
tionists as bewildered as it does Party con-
servatives. Soviet people, in their workplaces
and communities, are thinking and reason-
ing through their own interests with aston-

Perestroika at critical crossroads

ishing sophistication, and are displaying
considerably less regard for leaders of all
types these days. A civil society is springing
into existence, but despite the extraordi-
nary free-wheeling and multi-sided debates
that can be heard at all levels, it is clear that
the transformation of the political structure
is not keeping pace. :

The issue here is not necessarily Article
Six, or even the one-party state. There is no
reason in principle why a single party can-
not become an open consensus-building
instrument that contains within it, and gives
voice and access to policy-making on a wide
spectrum of social interests. Gorbachev
himself has argued lately that all the func-
tions of a multi-party system can already be
seen coming into operation: actual, living
democracy and not this or that precon-
ceived structure should be the main goal, he
said.

Life alone will tell. In the shorter run,
though, a transformed and expanded one-
party framework may indeed be the answer

where people speak openly of the Party

break as the first step to full independence, '

but also in Russia, where a backlash can
already be felt stirring under the surface.

Some of the long-term solutions to this
immensely complex knot of problems are
already in the pipeline: republican eco-
nomic self-management, greater de-cent-
ralization and political sovereignty. In the
long run, even the Soviet Baltic states have
many powerful reasons not to break away
from the USSR, and little independent via-
bility if they do.

However, in the short term, the danger is
palpable. There is an almost mindless,
euphoric momentum building behind sep-
aratism, particularly in the Baltics. What
will Gorbachev do if one republic — the
most likely candidate is Lithuania — should
decide to declare independence unilaterally
this winter? The resulting constitutional cri-
sis could well bring down perestroika.

Gorbachev’s words to the CPSU plenum
last month were grim: ““We do want to

The three crises of Mikhail Gorbachev

a straight and narrow dash to liberal capital-
ism. ( And now, it seems, it need not even be
liberal: a ferocious debate presently rages
among Moscow’s intelligentsia over the
advisability of reinstituting authoritarian
government in order to ram through what
would unquestionably be highly unpopular
free-market reforms.) Any step in any other
direction is viewed, ipso facto, as a reaction-
ary conservative setback.

But to be fair to them, at least the radicals
have a clear, if brutal, program: a swift,
Polish-style “deflationary shock” for the
Soviet economy, which would fuse it
rapidly with the world market and let the
chips — and human welfare — fall where
they may.

What is still missing on the other side is a
clearly worked-out theoretical conception
of a socialist perestroika for the economy.
There exists a devastating critique of the old
command-administrative system — which
has almost no outspoken advocates
left — and there are also a good many
excellent reforms coming into practice. But
this has so far been a disturbingly piece-
meal, trial-and-error process. The economic
five-year program passed by last month’s

Azerbaijan
Popular
Front dem-
onstration
outside
Communist
Party head-
quarters in
Baku...
nationalism
“the most
deadly
immediate
threat to
perestroika.”” |

for the Soviet Union, a relatively classless
but multi-national society with its own uni-
que historical traditions. But bold theoreti-
cal and practical initiatives, from the CPSU
in the first place, are the only things which

will turn this from a wish into an opera-
tional concept.

2) THE EXPLOSIVE NATIONAL
QUESTION

Gorbachev has also argued, with sharp
eloquence, that whatever the future may
hold it is of critical importance to keep the
CPSU and its authority somehow intact
through this dangerous transition period,
because at this stage it is the only instrument
of unity capable of countering the many
centrifugal forces tearing at the fabric of the
USSR.

This is why he reacted so urgently, and
with such tough rhetoric, to the decision by
Lithuanian communists to split from the
CPSU last month. He called it “ta real blow
to our political platform, our hopes and
plans for renewing socialist society in the
spirit of humanism and democracy.”

Resurgent nationalism is, without doubt,
the most deadly immediate threat to peres-
troika. This is true not only in Lithuania,

create a full-blooded federation in which all
republics can feel that they are truly sover-
eign states,” he said. But “the present Party
and state leadership will not permit the
break-up of the federal state ... The exist-
ence of a single, solid and powerful Soviet
Union is an important mainstay of our
times and of the whole currently-existing
system of international security. No one can
be interested in the disintegration of this
system, for it is fraught with destabilization
for the political situation in Europe and the
world.”

3) THE USSR’S ECONOMIC
CHALLENGE
There are many aspects to the economic
crisis facing the USSR, but the single most
paralyzing factor is politics. From last
month’s session of the Congress of People’s

' Deputies, it is clear that there is no ideologi-

cal consensus on the way ahead and this
lack of conviction communicates itself
down through the network of management
and production.

On the one hand, the “radical” opposi-
tion, here firmly supported by the entire
Western world, have insisted that the only
acceptable definition of perestroika must be

Congress session reflects this, although it is
certainly a far saner approach than the
alternatives that were on the table.

As long as stagnation in the economy
continues, perestroika will continue to be
held hostage to political tensions, and criti-
cal long-term investment and policy deci-
sions will be put off.

Gorbachev acknowledged this in straight-
forward terms in his concluding speech to
the Congress. “Within the shortest time
possible we must end consumer goods shor-
tages, stop the fall in purchasing power of
the ruble, and put a halt to the epidemic of
speculation,” he said. “It is imperative that
everyone soon start to feel that things are
changing for the better.”

Those are the challenges perestroika has
flung down before an embattled Soviet
leadership and a newly politicized Soviet

- public. They are the make-or-break strug-

gles of this winter. If they can find their way
past these immediate, looming crises, the
prospects for the longer haul look much
better.

No country on this earth has set itself a
tougher set of goals, nor adopted a higher or
better set of ideals: democratic, humane
socialism.

Pacific Tribune, January 29, 1990 « 9