USSR:

Feature

and are no longer under administrative **
control have an opportunity to raise prices
and reduce production,” he says.

Without competition, they can get higher
Profits without increasing their output of
goods.

_ “The result is higher prices — and
inflation — and growing shortages,” he
emphasizes.

Still, there does seem to be some easing
of the crisis of shortages suffered a few
months ago. Several hours of going
through stores in Moscow and Kiev with
Tribune correspondent Fred Weir reveals
that most foods and goods are available,
although at Moscow’s well-known GUM
shopping mall, there are long queues of
people around several shops. The biggest
crush is outside a cosmetics store.

(The Soviets themselves are
undoubtedly getting tired of journalists
focussing endlessly on the lineups. As we
emerge from GUM, a well-dressed
woman in her 50s approaches and begins
lecturing me —gently — in Russian,
pointing to my camera bag. As our
translator catches up with us, she repeats
the message that I have not understood
the first time: don’t just dwell on the
lineups, she says, but look at the other
things in this country and what people are
doing to bring about changes.

(Curiously, in Kiev, I also get a lecture
from a woman who watches me, shaking
her head, as I stand on a street corner
taking photos of the queue outside a food
shop. Even without a translator, there is
little doubt about what she is telling me.)

tos:

COW

The availability and selection of foods
#8’much better at the public markets where
private and co-operative vendors vie with
state stores. At Kiev’s old market on
Kreschatik Street, the stalls are alive with
the luscious reds of peppers and
pomegranates, competing with the orange
of persimmons from Uzbekistan and
mandarins from Azerbaijan. But the
delights come at a price: I pay four
rubles — about half a day’s pay for many
Soviets — for three pears and another
four rubles for a handful of mandarin
oranges. For most people, the market is
for special purchases only, not a venue for
regular shopping.

As many new economic problems
surface, the debate around solutions
inevitably begins in the media and on the
street. But it appears to be moving much
more quickly now up to the top, resulting
in an accelerating pace of legislative
change in the Supreme Soviet.

“There are many draft laws under
consideration, on property, on leases, on
regional cost-accounting,” says
Slobodianik. “There is also a bill on de-
monopolization for which we have taken
some anti-trust legislation in the west into
account.” :

The day we spend in the Supreme
Soviet, Oct. 30, deputies are completing
nearly six weeks of often impassioned
debate around the country’s budget. The
following day, the final draft is passed,
calling for a 60-billion ruble deficit for

KULAK

kwise from inset: Market in Kiev; Popular Front and other
‘spapS on display on Moscow’s Arbat; line-up at cosmetics counter in
UM store; Moscow street scene.

1990, a 10 per cent cut in defence
spending and a 40 per cent increase in
social spending.

An overnight train journey away, in
Kiev, the republic’s Supreme Soviet has
just completed debate on a new language
law which — although it cannot begin to
soothe the ethnic violence that has flared
in Armenia or Azerbaijan — points in the
direction of a co-operative approach to
long-simmering issues of language and
nationality.

The new legislation, drafted in response
to demands for Ukrainian to be made the
official language of the republic, is the
product of nine separate proposals. It
provides for something less than what was
initially demanded but does make
Ukrainian the state language, with
Russian the language of use both for
communication with other parts of the
Soviet Union and for other ethnic groups
inside the Ukraine.

In a republican population which is
one-fifth Russian and includes large
groups of Bulgarians, Hungarians,
Moldavians and Poles, the compromise
also includes provisions for schools and
other services in those native languages.
But the use of Ukrainian is to be given
state support, with steps taken to increase
the use of the language. -

“The same issue was discussed in the
Baltic states and Moldavia,” says Pavel -
Kulas, the deputy head of the ideological
department of the Ukrainian CP. “But we
tried to draft a law which would avoid the
mistakes of those states.

“Each republic has to take into account
all its national groupings,” he adds, noting
that Moldavia in its law made no
provision for Ukrainian schools even
though 500,000 Ukrainians live in that
republic. “There should not be any
offended nationality.”

Fedor Zubanych, an editor of the
Ukrainian journal Vitchyzna and a
leading member of the Writers Union,
which campaigned hard for the
introduction of the language law,
expresses some dissatisfaction with the
new legislation, particularly with the 10-
year phase-in period for Ukrainian to be
given the status of state language.

“But the law is passed now and when
the new elections to the Supreme Soviet
are held and a new government elected,
we can change it if necessary,” he says.

Those elections are scheduled to be held
next March in the Ukraine and even
earlier in some other republics across the
Soviet Union. And those votes, perhaps
even more than the elections for-the
Congress of People’s Deputies last March,
will be a lightning rod for the pent-up
demand for democratic structures among
Soviets.

In the Ukraine, says Kulas, “the
election campaigns have already begun.
The Popular Movement of the Ukraine
for Reconstruction (known as Rukh) has
already begun as well. They will be
nominating candidates and will be the
opposition in many cases, commanding a
strong following.”

On Moscow’s busy Arbat, hundreds of
people crowd around as a woman hangs
newspapers out on a string, many of them
published by the Popular Front of the
Russian republic. In Kiev, a billboard is
suddenly thronged with people as a man
nails up a Rukh leaflet.

The popular movements, or “informal
organizations” as they are known, have
sprung up across the Soviet Union,
answering an apparent demand for
structures that are directly responsive to
popular demands. Their agendas are
widely divergent, ranging from genuine
support for perestroika to nationalist and
separatist campaigns.

What seems to be emerging is a
popular culture of democracy that is not
yet fully formed — in which many people
are still largely unfamiliar with the devices
of demagoguery, campaign promises and
political rhetoric that are so much part of
the political stock-in-trade in North

America. But everywhere there seems to
be debate, discussion, argument and
polemic about the country’s future.

That has led inevitably to debate about
the position of the Communist Party in
Soviet society — and the role it should
play in the future.

“Everything is concrete today — and
everything is being questioned,” says

‘Andrei Grachev. He agrees that the
- prestige of the CP has slumped but adds

that it is often difficult to assess the real
status of the party because in the past the

' party and the state were so closely

intertwined that what appeared as prestige
was really only tolerance born of
necessity.

Nor is there any consensus on whether
there should continue to be a one-party
system, with greater diversity of opinion
within the CPSU, or whether the country
should move towards a multi-party
system, he says.

At the Institute of Social Sciences, Bella
Vorontsova, chair of the CPSU History
Department, and Valery Klimov, chair of
the Department of World Politics and
Global Problems, put forward differing
viewpoints.

“We do not support the concept of a
multi-party system,” says Vorontsova.
“But there are movements that put
forward programs and policies of their
own. Party bodies and committees should
conduct dialogue with them and elaborate
common platforms that could result in
unity of action.”

According to Klimov, new parties are
already beginning to form in the
turbulence of political debate — he cites
the emergence of a “social democratic
faction” in the Supreme Soviet — and the
country is “moving towards a multi-party
system.”

There is agreement, however, that the
role of Communist Party must change
fundamentally so that it becomes a
political leader, not the embodiment of
the state apparatus.

“The task for the CPSU is to find a
balance, among itself, the state and society
and public organizations,” says Grachev.
“The party that has been the distributor
of goods, the cultural and moral
authority, must change; it can no longer
assume responsibility for all those things.

“In the past, the CPSU was the final
authority on all things,” he emphasizes.
“The central committee plenum would
launch a national plan and it would
become the state’s plan for the country.

“Now it will be a program, which will
be suggested to the people and the
Soviets —and it will be up to the Supreme
Soviet to take its own concrete action and

it may not necessarily be that of the

CPSU,” Grachev asserts.

“Once your ideas are put to the test of
public opinion and parliament, you will
think twice about your proposals — you
will have to win your right to leadership.”

Grachev is also aware that not only the
Soviets, but also many people around the
world are closely watching the outcome of
perestroika, knowing its impact on the
future of socialism.

“We know that the responsibility for
socialism is heavy on us,” he says. “But
we think that the best way is to find
solutions to our problems. And people
cannot depend on those solutions from
above — they depend first of all on their
Initiatives.”

Around the world, economies are
restructuring, says Grachev, “but the
difference between us and, say, the British
is that we take responsibility for the
consequences of restructuring.

“The British have created more poverty
and inequality and many people there
accept it as part of the landscape. But our
people are accustomed to a difference
landscape ... we will not accept it,” he
emphasizes.

“We think we can build an economy
that fills society’s needs without the
vices — without unemployment, without
inequality.”

Pacific Tribune, December 18, 1989 « 17