World

' Airing a few cand

id opinions

# after three years in Moscow

Len cow — Every columnist should be senatd 5 ae to venta few tough opinions once in remal Re ile. In this spirit, here are a couple of as I’ve accumulated during the course of ect , My work here, Pe Former Manchester Guardian Moscow ai T€spondent Martin Walker's surpris- ria et book about Gorbachev’s Soviet “hrist on, the Waking Giant, opens on a be familiar note of self-pity: “This book is writ- : dien? “ti from the ghetto,” he complains. “We ‘nristi icreigners who live in Moscow, the journal- ng (0! us diplomats, businessmen and bankers, ng ah assigned to one of a series of apartment engtit ie that are surrounded by wire fences. still ane gates are guarded by a sentry box, _,._“f€a policeman stands day and night ... of # #, Main duty seems to be to monitor and ntht 5 eck the names of any Russian who seeks q ed © visit us, and to make reports of our ng aif movements whenever we leave by car.” eave €re Is an amazing degree of solidarity P mill wrong Western journalists based in Mos- smpld Sy #round this line, for it conveniently £809 ti Plains and also romanticizes their isola- vet i) 108 from everyday Soviet life. prot! ts abl

Jrlan minis

- humiliating, for most people here to accept hospitality they are materially incapable of reciprocating. On the other hand, there is no shortage of people who think that a rela- tionship with a foreigner is a potential gold mine, or a ticket to paradise. The dipkorpus community understands this from expe- rience and that is the overwhelming reason why they prefer to stick to themselves. The solitary militiaman at the gate has very little to do with any of this. ;

Moreover, one has to qualify the repeti- tious implication that “all” foreigners in Moscow are confined to the ghetto. Perhaps they mean “all those who count.” Actually, by far the majority of us cannot afford to live in a dipkorpus. There are tens of thou- sands of students from around the world at dozens of Soviet educational institutions — 5,000 at Lumumba University alone — as well as people working for Soviet com- panies and organizations, even a few journalists, I might add. Our main distinc- tion is that we receive our salaries in roubles, and that’s what we live on. We live together with Soviets — sometimes our own families

Fred Weir

fore i s imp" relea® ates. f sorb! otim |

Glasnost has not induced them to ana- Chile Efi their own circumstances any more mi! feply. Just last month Washington Post on | Correspondent David Remnick filed a story et mn eh how Profoundly journalistic possibilities 7m cti ave been transformed in the past couple of a) ae but still founda paragraph to lodge bem the old, unreconstructed complaint: “Des- the " one all the recent changes, reporters still live ; Ree. from much of daily life. We are ee | Still required to live in foreigners’ ghettoes, 2 b Protected’ by militiamen with phones and a | Walkie-talkies. We rarely stand in lines to on buy anything.” et t It Teally is time that someone pointed out y ltl, at this is, at best, a partial truth. Perhaps ft Years ago KGB surveillance and the 2 Pe cnoes of Stalinism in Soviet society were ce | © main forces isolating foreigners from ©viets. Perhaps. But today the wall that e ~ “Parates two worlds within this city is made cert wrly of dollars, 0 & Representatives of foreign embassies and arbi a Mpanies in Moscow live in “dipkorpus” _bartments rented to them by the UPDK, a eit | see Organization whose function is to “fh ne ide them with living and office quar- d bY hare €mployees, and other services, all for ‘Tard currency. In addition, there are

bs Mlozkas,” where imported consumer io Bos and food products are available, vit! oo 'n only for dollars. What the foreign 4 Bt from ety can’t find there, they obtain ane ce ™ One of the elaborate mail-order servi- jos ;“S that operate out of Helsinki and Copen- g73. “*8en. Every week, crates loaded with as 0 Trodies come in by the trainload from Fin- fin® “Nd, all destined for dipkorpus addresses. ier W, ' is a scotch-and-soda ghetto, where oj t ‘ll-off foreigners are basically insulated by ntef SIT money from the vicissitudes and eeu of the Soviet consumer economy. ers! ~Vetything they use, from furniture to salad } ©ens, is brought in from outside. They are eto! At and away the most privileged minority : Sef es, they may exist in Moscow, but they Mainly don’t live here. . ltis thts, more than any other factor, that ae and thwarts their relations with ‘rage Soviets. A moment’s reflection on Ussian culture, if nothing else, should € it obvious that it is difficult, even

FROM MOSCOW

— in Soviet buildings, ride the metro, mix freely with whomever we wish, shop in Moscow shops and go without whatever isn’t on the shelves that week. We stand in line for everything.

An enterprising reporter need only visit Moscow’s wedding palace number one ona Tuesday afternoon, see the crowds of for- eigners waiting to tie the knot with Soviet citizens, to discover that there is teeming life beyond the dipkorpus.

The fatal trend — does the Soviet Union have a third world economy? That certainly seems to be the tone of much being said in the west these days, such as the commenta- tor who remarked that the USSR is like “upper Volta with missiles.” Or Patrick Moynihan, who says that on the global market the Soviet Union is “peddling fish eggs and furs, the trading goods ofa hunter- gatherer economy.”

Occasionally an exaggeration is useful to illuminate some underlying truth. These ones only obscure. Whatever the crisis fac- ing Soviet development — and it is pro- found — this is a highly developed, industrialized society, with an extraordinar- ily well educated, sophisticated population and a huge engineering base. The problems

. facing it are not those of the poorer two-

thirds of humanity.

To explore the example of Soviet exports, their composition does indeed tell us a great deal about the glaring weaknesses of the

For most Western correspondents in Moscow, the wall separating them from ordinary Soviet people is made entirely of dollars. :

Soviet economy, as well as a couple of its strengths. Soviet exports — very much like Canada’s — are in general far too heavy on raw, unprocessed materials and far to sparse in finished, manufactured goods. No doubt that is a fatal trend, one that the Soviets at least are beginning to get frantic about.

A breakdown of Soviet exports in the last few years has recently been published in the weekly Argumenti I Fakhti. In this context, it’s worth pondering:

@ The Soviet Union ranks seventh in the world in volume of exports, nearly two- thirds of which go to socialist countries, 20 per cent to industrialized capitalist coun- tries, and around 15 per cent to the develop- ing world.

© In recent years fuel and energy resour- ces constituted about half of Soviet exports, machinery and vehicles 15 per cent, ores and metal products eight per cent, chemi- cals and fertilizers four per cent and consu- mer goods just over two per cent.

@ In 1987, the USSR exported 10.6- billion roubles worth of engineering pro- ducts, including 65 airplanes, 147 helicop- ters, 41,500 tractors, 40,600 trucks, and 339,000 cars. Consumer goods exports included 18.6-million watches, nearly a mil- lion cameras, 1.1-million television sets and one million radios.

“The Soviet Union is also the world’s second largest exporter of military hard- ware, after the United States.In the period between 1982 and 1986, the USSR sold 50- billion dollars worth of armaments to other countries,” the journal stated.

I read with mounting astonishment the news that a U.S. State department employee,.Francis. Fukuyama, has declared socialism dead and “the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universaliza- tion of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”

I’m certain that the 27 per cent of eligible American voters who combined to give George Bush his “landslide” victory last November will applaud this line of thinking, but about the death of socialism I’m not so sure.

Indeed, as Moscow correspondent over the past three years it has been my tough lot to chronicle an immense, unfolding crisis in the only form of socialism we have known up till now. But it has also been my privilege to sit in on some of the most searching, far-ranging election meetings I have ever attended, to talk with environmental, politi- cal and other activists who are re-inventing that venerable socialist form — the grass- roots mass-action movement — in the Soviet Union, and watch Soviet coal miners struggle with the question — no, not how to privatize — of how to take control of and run the means of production on a democratic basis.

Socialism, as a set of principles, has always been essentially about how to place human values and real popular control above the utterly undemocratic, amoral and sometimes brutal dynamics of the market- place.

Looking around the world, from the starvation and deprivation that afflicts the bulk of humanity, to a ticking environmen- tal time-bomb to, the poverty of inner-city America, I insist that those principles are more relevant than ever.

Someone recently reminded me of the scholar who suggested that Karl Marx, in his analysis of the 19th century industrial revolution, had “mistaken capitalism’s rise for its decline.” Upon reflection, that is probably so, but there is no doubt that it was a brilliant and fertile error.

These days it often seems that there are a lot of people out there foolishly and hastily mistaking socialism’s rise for its demise.

World News

FMLN wants evacuations

SAN SALVADOR — Nine members of the FMLN are continuing to occupy the Cathedral of San Salvador here demanding that president Alfredo Cris- tiani allow wounded guerrillas to leave the country in order to receive medical treatment.

The occupants say that about 120 members of the Farabundo Marti Liber- ation Front who are wounded or dis- abled, are waiting in different parts of the country to be evacuated and receive med- ical treatment.

The FMLN wants the international Red Cross to supervise the evacuations. It accuses the Cristiani government of violating the Geneva Conventions by denying medical treatment for the wounded. It also accuses the government of carrying out military attacks and bombings on hospitals run by the FMLN, and reports several incidents where captured wounded or medical personnel have been murdered.

ANG urges renewed defiance

LUSAKA — At least half of South Africa’s Black population responded to a call from the African National Con- gress to intensify the campaign of defiance by staying home on election day last week.

The appeal called for “Week of Action,” against the apartheid regime. The statement said, “we must confront the regime on every front: in the facto- ries, schools and universities, villages, farms, churches, mosques, temples and synagogues.”

The ANC also called for an intensifi- cation of the armed struggle.

2,000 Kurds poisoned

(PDW) — A team of British investi- gators has revealed evidence of the mass poisoning of 2,000 Iraqi Kurds at a Tur- kish refugee camp last June.

“Our analysis of samples showed that these people had been poisoned by a very powerful nerve agent,” the team said ata London Press conference in late August. They concluded that the poisoning was caused by chemical weapons.

Following reports of a mass illness at Turkey’s Mardin refugee camp, Dr. John Foran, chair of International Med- ical Relief, went to the camp with jour- nalist Gwynne Roberts, according to the Morningstar newspaper.

Turkish authorities, who have consist- ently denied access to welfare or aid agencies, refused to let the investigators enter.

Instead, they arranged secret meeting with refugees who told them that within 20 hours of one specific meal over 2,000 refugees suffered abdominal pains, vom- iting, breathing difficulties, vision prob- lems and paralysis.

The refugees also provided the investi- gators with samples of food eaten in the camp and blood samples from those who had become ill.

“We are extremely concerned, given that over 2,000 people were affected and we think it is possible that it was a delib- erate poisoning because of the very high level of toxicity,” said Dr. Alastair Hay, a toxicologist at Leeds University.

“We think it is most likely that this was a deliberate attack and, given the history of the Iraqi government in using poison gas against the Kurds, I think you can draw your own conclusions.”

Pacific Tribune, September 18, 1989 « 9