World

ro

One.

ssary of change

OSCOW — For the first
time since Sputnik stunned
the world more than 30

years ago, Russian words
MEME are entering the English

language, bringing with them some of ~

the excitement of the tumultuous pro-
cess of change underway in the USSR.
Mouthfuls like perestroika and
uskoreniye may be heard tripping off
Canadian tongues, while glasnost has
become a household word. There
remains, however, a good deal of con-
fusion about what these expressions
mean, how they apply in Soviet condi-
tions and how best to translate them.
Since the new Soviet revolution will
arguably be the most important news
story of 1988, and since I have never
seen this done anywhere else, let me
take this column to provide Tribune
readers with a brief political glossary to
help pick their way through the coming
upheavals. :
Perestroika: This
is the key word, the
overreaching con-
cept which embra-
ces all sides of the
program for politi-
cal, economic and
social transforma-
tion. Perestroika
derives from the

Russian verb
From “stroit” (to build),
Moscow and means literally
es 2 rebuilding, or
‘ reconstruction.
Fred Weir In everyday
politics in the
USSR, the word

perestroika is used constantly, and
often in contexts that give it the more
superficial connotations of “reorganiza-
tion’, “renewal” or “renovation”. All
of these ideas are appropriate, but it’s
significant that Mikhail Gorbachev and
his translators have chosen the English
word “restructuring” to convey the
intended meaning of a profound, qual-
itative change.

Perestroika,” Gorbachev has said,
“equals revolution”.

Glasnost: Is the most problematic
word, perhaps because both its literal
and its political significance are the
most difficult to translate. It is usually
rendered as “openness”, but as various
scholars and commentators have been
pointing out — a few
maliciously — that is not strictly accu-
rate. Glasnost derives from the old
Russian word “golos” (voice) and liter-
ally means something like “voice-ness”’,
or maybe “having voice”.

Lenin used the word glasnost, and
gave it a particular political spin in his
struggle against bureaucracy during the
early years of the Soviet republic.
“Glasnost,” he once said, “is a sword
that heals the wounds it inflicts.” By
this he meant that all people should
have voice and the power to reveal cor-
ruption, red tape or official abuse.
Whatever short-term damage may be
done to the Communist Party or the
state by such exposure is trivial com-
pared to the strength that is gained
through admitting and overcoming
problems.

Glasnost is now being worked into a
general principle of information-flow in
a socialist society. It means that all
sides of society's life should be open to
scrutiny and criticism from all direc-
tions. “More light,” writes Gorbachev.

pauBath(ca) 1, He

PY

CT

nepectpoiika ic. 1. (3danus) ré:building

[-“bil-],

ré:construction; 2.

(uw0co.102u-

uecKasl) ré:orientation; 3. (peopeanusa-
yus) ré:organization [-nai-]; ~ paOorst
ré:organization of work, reformation of
procedure [...-’si:d3a]; commamucTuueckas
~ cCésIbcKoro XO3HAHCTBa socialist ré:or-
ganization of agriculture; 4. ary3.. pad.

ré-tuning.

nepecrykupal|Hue c. (c m6.; 6 Hior
COMMU" 70 Sake oe

“There must be no dark corners where
mold can reappear ... and start
accumulating”. This applies equally to
party leadership, the media, cultural
figures, and the person in the street.

Uskoreniye: This word means “accel-
eration”, and it is largely an appeal to
the spirit of Soviet workers. Its basic
import is that development has to be
speeded up, existing capacities must. be
used more effectively, the slack taken
up in every area, decades of growth
crammed into a few years. The image it
calls forth is of an aircraft on the run-
way, accumulating speed until it
reaches that magical moment of take-
off.

Just about any extra effort can be
described as uskoreniye, and naturally
there are a million jokes about it. But
Gorbachev put the matter succinctly
recently when he noted that the revolu-
tionary elan of the people was an
important economic category. Essen-
tially, uskoreniye means the Soviet state
is turning to the people to create for
themselves the preconditions for scien-
tific and technological transformation.

Democratizatsia: This is another
troublesome word because some West-
ern commentators complain it doesn’t
mean the same thing as its English

rapping /

equivalent, democratization. In fact,
the Soviet concept of democracy is
quite different and may, in the long
run, turn out to be far more compre-
hensive and liberating.

Some aspects of the Soviet democrat-
ization drive have received a tremend-
ous amount of attention in the West,
such as the release of people jailed for
political reasons, the gradual disen-
gagement of the media and cultural
establishment from state and Party
control, the reform of the electoral sys-
tem and the growth of “informal” or
unofficial political groups (Gorbachev
has spoken of “socialist pluralism” as a
goal). It is understandable that these
measures should attract notice in the
West because they seem to bring the
Soviet Union closer to —
ideal — norms of Western democracy.

However, a much more crucial
dimension of the Soviet democratiza-
tion is unfolding in an arena where
democracy is not a usual category in
the West: in the workplace and in eco-
nomic decision- making. In Soviet fac-
tories, farms and other enterprises, the
electoral principle is being applied to
managers, foremen and directors.
Workers in their work collectives are
deciding their own business affairs, by

majority vote, without interference
from above. The idea is a new one, just
beginning to take hold, but one that
has already faced some critical tests
and passed.

If the Soviets succeed in achieving
this vision, of every person being an
equal and influential participant in all
spheres of life, they will have carried
their society far beyond the limits of
Western democracy.

Hozraschot: This will be the key
word for 1988 in Soviet economic
affairs. It is a compound word, derived
from the Russian “‘hoziestveniye
raschot,” and is virtually untranslata-
ble, except as something like “cost
accounting” and “self-management”.

The basic idea of hozraschot is that
enterprises — the fundamental unit of
the Soviet economy — will no longer
be under rigid state control but will
govern their own affairs. They will buy
and sell by contract with the state or
other enterprises, and will pay their
wages and expenses out of their own
profits. In other words, they will sink
or swim by their own efforts. Sixty per-
cent of Soviet industry was placed on
the hozraschot system as of Jan. 1,
1988.

In the Soviet economic context, hoz-
raschot is a radical, even earthshaking
idea, and its most immediate effect is
almost certain to be turmoil. In the
long term, it will likely produce a turn-
around in Soviet economic prospects
which will have far-reaching social con-
sequences.

Novoye muishleniye: This literally
means “new thinking” and it applies in
the first place to the bold Gorbachev
approach to foreign policy. It ought to
be pointed out that the “new thinking”
is not really new. It represents an out-
look long held by scientists, peace acti-
vists and environmentalists, and was
probably first enunciated at the found-
ing meeting of the Pugwash scientists in
1955, in a document remembered as
the Russell-Einstein manifesto. Its
essence is that all peoples share one
fragile world and that our common
home is in critical danger unless we all
learn to develop peaceful, co-operative
strategies for dealing with international
problems and resolving disputes.

What is new, and qualitatively so, is
that this approach has been adopted by
one of the world’s great nuclear powers
and made the foundation of its foreign
policy. Soviet leader Gorbachev has
not only proposed a feasible frame-
work for total nuclear disarmament,
but has gone much farther, laying out
comprehensive system of a vision of a
global security and a cooperative inter-
national attack on disease, hunger,
underdevelopment, pollution, the Third
World debt and all cold war barriers.

The totality of these ideas comes
together in that extraordinary Gorba-
chev manner of focussing a vision. He
said, in his New Year’s address to the
Soviet people: “We do not just want to
preserve a peaceful world. We want it
to become better, we want more justice
and freedom in it. We are for a world
that affirms humanism in practice, and
which honours the worker.

“In struggling for our social aims
and to develop socialism, we see how
closely these efforts are connected with
the need to resolve universal problems.
In this sense, our perestroika is of uni-
versal significance, and this places a
vast historical responsibility upon us.”

Pacific Tribune, March 2. 1988 + 9