GORBACHEV'S SOVE
IT UNO
IN
784
c
The Nation.
June 13, 1987
LETTERS.
NOT FOR THE FEEBLE-MINDED
Cambrrdge, Mass.
John L. Hess, in “Malthus Then and Now”
[April 181 does not know what he is writing
about, so he relies on Allan Chase, author of
The Legacy ofMallhus, who does not know
either Hess
wrltes
that lntelllgence tests
“done at Ellis Island purported to find that
83 percent of Jews, 80 percent of Hungarians, 79 percent of Italians and no fewer
than 87 percent of Russians were feeblemmded.” No such concluslon was ever publrshedby any intelhgence tester, nor dld
testers at any tune in the history of testing
believe so outlandish a claim.
The numbers come froman article by
Henry Goddard publlshed in 1917, but they
referred to steerage passengers arriving at
Ellis Island who were not, in Goddard’s
words, “obviously normal.” The second
sentence in Goddard’s article specifically
disclaimed any attempt to estlmate the actual
rates of retardatlon in vanous immigrant
populations. Goddard’s pornt was that intelligence testing was a fairer and better way
to assess the mental capacities of immigrants
than the subjective evaluations of immigration officers. Having no alternatwes, he used
an unstandardized translation of a French
intelligence test, a translation soon thereafter
dropped by testers because of its defects,
which included, among other peculiarities,
an estimate that about 50 percent of nativeborn, Enghsh-speaking American adults
were retarded.
Hess further blames intelligence tests for
the viciously natwst Imrmgration Act of 1924.
Numerous scholars, myself among them,
have searched the thousands ofpagesof
Congressional debate, committee hearings
and the llke for any evidence of a connection
between the act and intelligence tests, wlth
no success. No testers were called to testify,
no test results were cited or placed in the
record, and, inthe debates, the nativist sentiment seemed to need no data-real or fabricated-to sustam it. American xenophobia
was intense in the early 1920s. The idea that it
required the support of the equivocal data
from intelligence testing IS not only false; it
IS absurd
Rrchard J. Herrmlern
HESS REPLIES
New York Crty
Meet a Malthusian scholar In action.
Rrchard J Herrnsteln refers toGoddard’s
disclaimer (he had tested“six small hlghly
selected groups, four of‘average normals’
and two of apparent ‘defectives”’), but not
to his thlrd sentence: “One can hardly escape
the convlctlon that theintelligence of the
average ‘third class’ [steerage] immigrant IS
low, perhaps of moron grade.”
As Chase recounts, Goddard and fellow
“scientists” promptly confirmed his findings
has taken an unequivocal oath of allegiance
to the government and Its laws, one of whlch
makes it a punishable offense to damage that
the
national
which IS fondly defined as
defense I have taken an oath to a hlgher
authority, whlch led me to commrt sabotage
In legal terms, It was sabotage, and I am as
delighted wlth it as Bartlett 1s not That difference aside, both of us acted wlth rdentlcal
consistency within our chosen value systems,
a fact that seems to escape others. Bartlett
received thousands of letters urging him to
accept my moral stance andrelease me, and I
received thousands of letters, often from the
same people, urging me to accept the terms‘
of the court and go home. We were so deluged by appeals that I once suggestedto Bartlett that we send out a joint statement, using
his franking privlleges.
I find myself dismayed by the belief that a
less draconian sentence would have achleved
Justice. That notlonseems alarmingly akin to
the Idea that welts and bruises are a “better”
form of child abuse than broken bones.I am
amazed by the conclusion that the acts of the
court have any bearing on &sarmament whatsoever. Judges Miles Lord and Myron Bnght’s
impressweantmuclearsentiments&d not endanger the death work at Sperry or Whiteman
Air Force Base in the sllghtest, nor did the
hung jury on April 7 in Phlladelphia outlaw
thewar preparations ofWillow Grove Air
Force Base. Those who wishto see both the
Plowshares achons and the courts as prophetic
symbols are asking for the same trouble the
church got when it applauded Constantine’s
Illicit union of state vlolence and Christ’s
nonviolence We really do have to choose between them, and we really do have to keep m
mind that we are seeking disarmament and not
the quasi-legalization of civil daobedience.
So the words are written, and there appears to be more astonishment that a judge
could send four nice people to prison than
thatthe government could, and wlll, send
the entire world’s population to its fiery
death in nuclear holocaust Never has the
press acknowledged the essential point: the
missiles are there, and disarmament 1s the
personal responsiblllty of the people.
Meanwhile, the two strangely aligned figures remam largely untouchedby all the speculation. Because I have refused the probatlon
and restitution to follow my prison term, I
will be behind bars for seventeen years, preWHY WE CAN’T WAIT
should
cisely as long as Bartlett’s ~udgesh~p,
he retlre at 65. We will be equally dead rn nuShakopee Priron, Mmn.
clear war, equally alive under disarmament,
The more I read press interpretatlons of the and we are equally symbollc of the posslbrlrty
Sllo Prunlng Hooks’ peace wltness [Rlchard of elther occurrence We are, in a peculiar
Pollak, “Witnessing For Peace,” May 21, the sense, bedfellows (the only one the Bureau
more I find myself cunously ahgned withJudge of Prisons allows me. so there the equahty
J. BrookBartlett(goodheavens’).The
US
breaks down), whose lives havetouched each
governmenthaschosentobase
the national other In waysneithercouldhaveimaglned
defense on Its nuclear arsenal, and whde the That may make an lnterestmg story, bul
wisdom of that decision can be quest~oned, won’t make disarmament That, my frlends,
the fact of the matter cannot Judge Bartlett I5 up I O you
Helen Woodson
in their testing of Army draftees In 1917,
which persuaded a generation of Amerrcans
that half the country, including most blacks
and Eastern European and Medlterranean imrmgrants, were morons In 1922, Walter Llppmann denounced these I Q tests as fraudulent, but his was a small voice against a
chorus of propaganda I n books and leading
magazines
Henry Falrfleld Osborn, president ofthe
American Museum of Natural History, declared rn a speech titled “The Approach to
the Immigration Problem Through Saence, ”
in December 1923: ‘‘I belleve those tests were
worthwhatthe
war cost, even I n human
life.” Cltrng the now proven inferiority of
blacks and of “many races and sub-races In
Europe,” he said: “Intelligence tests were
Just the opening wedge. Then came the Second International Congress in 1921.”
That meeting of eugenicists featured a
racist exhlbit prepared by Harry Laughlln
and remounted by him in the U.S. Capitol,
where he became staff expert on the House
Immigration and Naturalization Committee,
which produced the malignant 1924 act.
Herrnstein says he “searched thethousands of pages” of the record. How, then,
did he miss the chartsin Laughhn’s key 1924
report to the committee, which use the raclst
scores from those Army tests and which are
reproduced photographically in Chase’s
book?
How dld he miss another entry in the record, by Carl Brigham of Princeton University, who crted the same tests to conclude,
”American intelligence is declining, and will
proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial
admixture becomes more and moreextenw e ” ? With satisfaction, Brigham added,
“Our figures would rather tend to disprove
thepopular beIief that the Jewishighly
intelhgent.”
Chase tells us that Goddard recanted his
raclst pseudoscience in 1928 and Brigham in
1930, too late to reopen the gates for hundreds of thousands who might have escaped
the Holocaust. Herrnstem has not recanted,
though he has narrowedthe target Along
wrth William Shockley, for whom hehas
served as an expert witness, and with James
Q . Wilson andother neoconservatrves, he
stlll Insists that poverty and crmie are, in the
main, the fruit of bad seed. That IS Malthusian scholarship today.
John L Hess
The Ntttion since 1865.
June 13, 1987
.
”
CONTENTS.
.
LETTERS
184
EDITORIALS
785 Glasnost and Us
786 Drugs and Contrm
787 The Money
Game
Andrav Kopkind
COLUMNS
789 Sovieticus
790
Devil
theBeat
785
Stephen F.Cohen
Alexander
Cockburn
ARTICLES
792 Power and Policy:
A Reformer
in the Kremlin
Archie
Brown
795 GivePeaceaChance:
“New Thinking” in .
Policy
Foreign
Evangelkta
Matthew
799 Gorbachev’s
Gamble:
.
A New Deal for Eastern Europe A. James M i d a m s
802 Up AgainsttheSystem:
Reforming the Economy
Ed A. Hewett
-
Volume 244, Number 23
”
“
804 The Limits of Change:
Science and Technology
Loren Graham
808 A DelicateBalance:
Ronald GrigorSuny
The Nationality Question
810 Revolutionby Culture:
Andrei Voznesensky
G Poet’s View ofGlasnost
812 Is the Soviet Union Changing?
The IhigrCs Speak Out
Valety Chalidze
Alexander Yanov, Aron Katsenelinboigen
Lev Kopelev, Yuri F. Orlov, Vladimir Maximov
Madirnir Voinovich, Zhores Medvedev
BOOKS & THE ARTS
815 Reforming Soviet Culture/
RetrievingSoviet History
Nancy P. Gondeeand
- VladimirPadunov
Barbara Heldf
Michael R. $enson
-
820 The Burden of Caring
824 Back in the U . S k R .
826 Resources
Cover by Edward SoreVDrawings by Naris Bishofs
Edrtor, Victor Navasky
Publisher, Hamilton Fish 3rd
Executive Editor, Elsa Dixler; Associate Editors, George Black, Andrew
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Copy Editors, Vania Del Borgo, Judith Long; Editorial Assisiant, Robin
Epstein; Interns, Burkhard Bilger, Philip Boroff, Daniel Egger, Leslie,
Florio, David LaWare, Jessica Portner, Michael Tomasky; On leave,
Richard ,Lingeman, Elizabeth Pochoda, Katrina vanden Heuvel.
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GeneralManager, Neil Black; AdvertisingDirector, Chris Calhoun;
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Richardson; Art/Production Manager, Jane Sharpies; Crrcuiairon Direcior, Stephen W. Soule; Director of News Servrces, Phillip Frazer;
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npography, Randall Cherry, Mitchel Cohen, Sandy McCroskey; Naiion
Associates Director,Nancy Bacher; Syndicaiion, Jeff Sorensen.
Departments:Architecture, Jane Holtz Kay; Art, Arthur C. Danto;
Dance, Mindy Aloff; F i l m , Terrence Rafferty; Lmngo, Jim Quinn; Mmrc,
David Hamilton,EdwardW.
Said; Corrqwnden&: Wmhrngtoe D.C.,
Christopher Hitchens, Damd Corn; LatinAmerica, Penny Lernoux;
Europe, Daniel Singer; London, Raymond Williams; Park, Claude
Bourdet; Defense, Michael T. Klare; Coiurnnktsand Regular Contributors:
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unless they are accompanied by self-addressed stamped envelopes.
EDITORIALS.
Glasnost andus
T
he pilot who traversed 400 miles of superpowerfully defended Sovietterritory and alighted peacefully in Red Square was described as a teen-ager
from West Germany, but he might have been a
metaphor sent by God or the dialectic of history-any deity
appropriate to local custom-to dramatize the ironies of
change in that suddenly unpredictable land. Things will come
The Nafion (TSSN 0027-8378) is published weekly (except for the first
week in January,and biweekly inJuly and August) by TheNation
Company, Inc. Directors: Arthur Carter,Hamilton Fish 3rd, Victor
Navasky. 0 1987 in the U.S.A. by The Nation Company, Inc., 72 Fifth
~
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flying throughthewindowsof
ghsrzost that Mikhail Gorbachev and the architects of radical reform in the Soviet
Union neither
foresee
nor completely control. Heads
will roll, jobs will shuffle and forces long repressedwil1 bid
for power. For Gorbachev’s Soviet Union is in a state of
institutional convulsion and cultural transformation that
responds to popular, aspirations as wed as leadershipdemands. Not only what we commonly consider “politics”
but the voluminous material of everyday life and personal
relations are affected. It is a multilayered, richly textured
The Nation.
786
and often contradictory process-a fresh breath of air in the
stagnant revolution-and it is bound to reverberate not only
within its own vast borders but around the world as well.
Not for the first time, the policyestablishment in the
United States hasbeenslowtoanalyze
and understand
momentous-developmentsin the Soviet Union.For a yearor
two, cold war intellectuals and cautious politicians sought
ways to fit Gorbachev’s projects into old categories of bureaucratic practice: the manipulation of a restive society,
A LEXICON OF GLASNOST
Glasnost: Openness, specifically,the government’s use
of public forums to disclose its activities and, consequently, the increased tolerance at the top of criticism
and questioning from below. Now shorthand for describing Gorbachev’sentire reform program.
Perestroika: Restructuring, though more accurately
understood as reorganization within the basic structures of government, the economy, work and the arts.
A related term, perestroika vumukh, refers to the reorientation of thinking.
Novoye myshlenie: New thinking, newwaysof approaching social, economicand political problems, in
which the emphasis is not on having a ready answer
but on asking the right question.
Novaya publitsistika: New publicisticwriting,
the
modern, Soviet analogue to the New Journalism, in
which pressing social issues, for example drug abuse
and alienation, are addressed frankly, in such a way as
to indicate the reasons for various problems and to
point in the direction of solutions.
Demokratizatsia: Democratization, specifically,the
process by which theparty hierarchy is to become answerable to its constituents, involving multicandidate
elections, a nascent system of meritocracy and elections for previously appointive positions.
Samoupravlenie: Self-management, applied most simply to the process by which workers are to become
more involved in the selection of union leaders and
managers and in the determination ofpolicy. More
broadly applied to the system by which economic enterprises are togain a degree ofautonomy and become
more engagedin the projectof social development, while
accepting responsibility for their economic performance
and striving to pay back their state subsidies.
Uskorenie: Acceleration, particularly with regard to
the rate of economic growthbut also usedin reference
to the qualitative expansion of social services.
Iatensifiiatsia: Intensification, the effort to increase
output through better use of existing resources and
workforces,withemphasis
on special training and
greater efficiency.
~~
June 13, 1987
a deformed economy
and a rigid ideology. But now
the reality of reform and the complexity of change have compelled
Americans to seek a deeper understanding of Soviet dynamics.
It is no longer enoughto dismjss every new announcementas a
public relations ploy, characterize each contradiction as a
sign of failure or denounceevery proposal in the international field as a sly deception. Gorbachev commandsthe
world stage as no other actor now on the boards; but he is
not alone in the house, and U.S. leaders, in particular, must
playwith and against him. He improvises, interjects and
rewrites the old terms of East-West relations,
and there is no
proven method by which
to follow the spontaneous and exciting new lines of diplomacy.
Since the Reykjavik summit,the Reagan Administrationand the Democratic opposition-has bounced between unbridledoptimism and undisguisedanxietyas
it searches
for ways to keep up with, much less take advantage of, the
great possibilitiesfor peace. This week’s special issueof The
Nation, which was conceived and coordinated by Katrina
vanden Heuvel,looks outside the cold war context of threat
and retaliation to examine those opportunities in world diplomacy and the fundamental rearrangements of Soviet life
that have produced them.
The Wall Street Journal’s correspondent in Moscow wrote
on June 1 that “unless Mr. Gorbachev can curb the military establishment’sgrowing appetite for money, he will
be unable to redirect investment to the civilian sector and
thus fail in his drive torestructure the faltering economy.”
Something similar might as accurately have been written
about RonaldReagan. As MatthewEvangelistademonstrates, the reforms of glasnost depend in large measureon a
significant reduction in tensions between the United States
and the Soviet Union. Gorbachev himself put it bluntly in
his remarks to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at
their dinner in March: “We need a lasting peaceto concentrate on the development of our society and to tackle the
tasks of improving the life of the Soviet people.” Both
superpowersshare a profound interest in the reordering
of their domestic economic and international political priorities. Will Reagan’s United States answer the challenge
presented by Gorbachev’s Soviet Union?
-
Drugs and Contras
he House and Senate selectcommittees on the
Iran/contra scandalhavebeenunwilling
to explore the question of contru drug running. The
House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and
Control has tried to fii the vacuum, only to be blocked by
Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d and the C.I.A.
Thus far the Iradcontra hearingshave done little to
soil the contras’ image. The Administration (and its sympathizers on the committees) knowsthat proof that its “freedom fighters” were dealingdrugs would bethe kiss of death
for its, secret war policy, not to mention for any official
who might be implicated directly or found to be involved in
T
June 13, 1987
The Nation.
a cover-up. Those on the committee whoare opposed to the
Administration’s Nicaragua policy
and might be expected to
seize on the drug issue seem to be too bogged down in the
daily testimony to pursue this important line of inquiry.
Consider the select-committees’ handling of Lewis Tambs,
former Ambassador to.Costa Rica, who testified
on May 28.
Among the exhibits were cables between
Tambs and his superiors, including a M i c h 27, 1986, message from Tambs
tb Lieut. Col. Oliver North, Assistant Secretaryof State for
Ihter-American Affairs Elliott Abrams and a G.I.A. of:
ficial, to which a typewritten note was appended: “ ‘Popo’
Chamorro is alleged [several words deleted] to be involved
in drug trafficking.” Tambs wasnever asked about that
note, which referred to a key contra leader in the “southern
front,” the border regionbetweenNicaraguaand
Costa
Rica; nor was he asked if he had any knowledge of contra
involvement in drug smuggling.
In an April 1, 1985, memorandum obtained by the committees, Robert Owen, who served as North’s liaisonto the
contras, reported to North that several contra leaders were
running drugs or suspected of dealing. Two
names he provided
werethose of Jose Robelo (“potential involvementwith
drug running and the sales of goods‘providedby” the U.S.
government) and SebastianGonzalez (“now involved in
drug running out of Panama”). But when Owen came before the select committees, he was never askedabout those
comments. Senator Daniel Inouye, chairof the Senate select
committee, did question Owen about a February 10, 1986,
memo to North, in which he wrote:
No doubt you knowthe DC-4 Foley gotwas usedat one time
to rundrugs, and part of the crew had criminal records.Nice
group the Boys choose. The company is also one that Mario
[Calero, contra Ieader Adolfo’s brother] hasbeeninvolved
with using in the past, only they had a quick name change.
Incompetence reins [SIC].
.
Responding to Inouye’s queries, Owen explained that a
plane used to transport supplies to the contras “may have
been used or suspected of being used for running drugs,’’
that the person he named, Foley, had “connections with
a governmentagency”andworks
for SummitAviation
which, in 1984, reportedly equipped three planes destined
for the contras with rocket launchers, and that “the Boys”
meant theC.I.A. But Inouye did not pursue the matter. One
of Owen’s attorneys, Thomas Hylden, declined to.elaborate
on the memo.DorisFlagg,secretary
to the president of
Summit Aviation, said that Summit and Patrick Foley,’ reportedly a former C.I.A. operative, “did not participate in
any contracts withMr. Owen nor did Summit Aviation own
any aircraft which operated for Mr. Owen.”
‘ Although the Iran/contra hearings have‘ prpduced little
on the drug front, the House Select Committee
on Narcotics
Abuse and Control,’chaired by Charles Rangel, has sought
to examinethenumerouspressallegationstyingC.1.A.backed contra supply missions to drug dealing. According
to a Rangel aide, the committee has interviewed“a number
of individuals who supportedthe contras in Texas, Louisiana,
‘California, Florida, Honduras and Costa Ricawhohave
suggestedcocainewassmuggled through thesame infra-
787
structure used for supplying weapons to the contras.” The
aide noted that other sources havetold the committeeabout
one smuggling conspiracy involving veterans of the Bay of
Pigs invasion based in Miami and an unidentified Colombian drug dealer,whoprocessedcocaine
in Costa Rica
and smuggled it into Miami, using airstrips on the Costa
Rican-Nicaraguan border that were controlled byU.S. supporters of the contras.
Last month Rangel requested that the Drug Enforcement
Agency, the C.I.A. and the U.S. CustomsServicebrief
his committee on contra drug links at a closed session. The
C.I.A. and theJustice- Department, whichoverseesthe
D.E.A., refused. In what the Rangel aide maintained was
a coordinated response, both agencies claimed that there is
an agreement under which only theIran/contra select committees can receive information on the contra drug connection. But in a May 27 letter Representative Lee Hamilton,
chair of that House select committ-ee, told Meese that he
had no “jurisdictional problems” with Rangel’s committee
probing the question of contra drug smuggling.
Rangel charged it was Meese who “gagged” the D.E.A:
The Representative’s aide explainedthat Rangel and the Attorney General are “very close” and that any request from
Rangel would have beenbrought directly to Meese’s attention. The C.I.A.’sresponse was ordered by then-acting
director Robert Gates. “We are being,stonewalled,” Rangel
said.
At the May 28closed briefing ofRangel’s committee,
Customs officials saidthat since they had received Rangel’s
request for the meetingonly a week~earlier,they hadnot had
time to evaluate the allegations Rangel outlinedin his letter
to them. “Rangel hit the roof,” his aide said. Many of the
charges Rangel mentioned were reported publicly months
ago. The Customs officials- also revealed that since1975
planes flyinginto the United States on C.I.A. missions have
been expedited through Customs:
Rangel’s committeeis considering holding open hearings
and
on contra drug running inthe coming months. If Justice
C.I.A. officials refuse to cooperate, Rangel said, his committee might subpoena them. That may be the only way to
break the Meese-C.I.A. blockade.
The Monev Game
A,
.~
c/
year from now the last presidential primary will
becompleted in California, the party conventions will be setting up in the steamy South, the
field of candidateswill be radically depletedand
perhaps three-quarters of the estimated $400 million that
Americans art t-oing to- spend on the 1988 election will-be
distributed to television stations, consul!ants, advertisingspace buyers, airlines, printers, telephone companies, district workers and the myriadrecipients of whathasbecome a quadrennial national welfare system. It is doubtful that politics will have become much clearer
than they are
now, in thismurky month of blurredissues,crossed aI-
788
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The Nation.
liances and wishful thinking.A kind of entropy has infected
the rude order of things, as energy is dissipated in pointless
motion and the whole system moves to-randomness. There
are no clear front-ruhiiers, even the pollsters admit their
polls are irrelevant, and no one claims to have an accurate
count of the candidates. Some have announced, others an.nounce they will announce, a few are thinking it over, and
the rest are waiting -for a propitious moment to make up
their minds whetherto announce or not. It is a time for pundits but not for prophets.
The Democrats’are bunchedin the safe andspacious middle of their party’s tradition, except for Jesse Jackson, who
leads a weak and divided left wing, and Senator Sam Nunn,
who wouldbe the tribune of the cold war conservativesif he
decided to make thelrace. Jackson leads the pack, but only
Phil Donahue, whogave himhis best nationalforum to date,
seems to take him seriously among white folks
in the media.
Jesse toldPhil he’d be “honored” to accept a vice-presidential ,placeonthe ticket. Once again, the American dilemma
of race is going to split a progressive movement and frustrate efforts to empower the powerless.
Nunn sits gloomilyon the Senate committee investigating
the Iran/cohtra scandal, offering a question or two, hoping
to appear presidential, or vice-presidential, without actually
taking a stand on the vital questions raised in-the hearings.
Like Senator. Big -Bradley, !ijs fellow unannounced candidate, N u w has wtcd for covtra aid. Bradley is reportedly
ready to abandon the “freedom fighters” so that he can win
some Democratic primaries if he chooses to ,enter. All the
U;S.-policy
rest are opposed, to greater or lesser dejgee,~ to
in Central America. Of those
in Congress, Gephardt and-Biden
voted against thecontras, and the current or former governors
in contention-Dukakis, ‘Babbitt, Clinton and Cuomoseem to be soft, or at leastsquqxnish, on Sandinismo.
Central America may not loom laige on the list of issues
that exercise ordhary North Americans (it is way below
drugs, AIDS and teen-age suicide in most polls), but it is
way up there as a concern of Democratic activists and organizers.Campaigning in Iowa, MassachusettsGovernor
Michael Dukakis found it was the hottest issue in party
circles-the place where the votes, the passion &d the hard
work come from as caucus time approaches. Tfie o$er issues either generate no hard support, because they are uncontested, or no realvoterinterest, because they existmainly in the media. Representative RichardGephardt has eagerly tried to distance himself from the pack with his- protectionist proposals, but he, or they, have hardly ignited ’the
prairie fire that could-get him the nomination.
Trade policy is simply not a litmus test that Democratic
,
NEXT WEEK
Nicholas Von Hoffman on
Peephole Journalism
.
Calvin Trillin on
. Contra Contributions
.
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June 13, 1987
voters apply to their favorites. Nicaragua is. The “peace
issue” could be a test, too, and n o Democrat-not even
Nunn-is willing to take a hawkish position in this year of
glasnost and a possible pre-election summit and disarmament treaty, Without a distinguishable position on test issues, candidates must rely,
as usual, on empty image-making
and desperate appeals to sentiment. Senator Joseph Biden is
trying to corner. the new nationalism that Reagan made
popular; Dukakis wants to rebuild America with compassionate technology; BruceBabbitt invokes PeaceCorps and
civil rights imageryto dress up what is essentiallyhis centrist
institutional vision. And out of the center will emerge . . ?
Whowould be surprised if Mario Cuomo reassesseshis
chances and his responsibilities later this year
and enters the
campaign come Christmas time?
The Republicans are no better off. The polls that,continue
to give Vice President Bushthe lead are as irrelevant inone
party as in the other. Senator Robert Dole, who has been
the
liberals’ favorite conservative since1980, has failed to make
the magic withthe real conservativeshe must win to his side.
His latest gratuitous attacks on the P.L.O. (he wants to
abolish its officesat the United Nations and inWashington)
and his sudden affinity for Renamo, South Africa’s contras
in Mozambique, are apparently not working. He is faring
no better than Bush. Jack Kemp would be the spokesman
for an authentic movement of the right, an ideological
leader of reaction, as JesseJackson is to progressivism. But
he remains stuckat under 5 percent in the popularity stakes,
with no better prospects in sight. Then there’s Alexander
Haig, who carries on the great tradition of Harold Stassen.
There’s one every year. So far, little has been heard from
Pierre du Pont4th or Paul Laxalt, and PatRobertson may
already have drowned in
the televangelism disaster.London
bookmakers put his chance for the Republican nomination
at 250 to one.
The litmustests for modern-day ReaganRepublicanism-abortion, school prayer, anticommunism and the defense of white privilege--will be difficult to apply to the CUTrent crop of candidates. Nothing resembling the great contests
betweenDwightEisenhower and Robert Taft or Nelson
Rockefeller and Richard Nixon (and Ronald Reagan)
is likely to take place next year. Barring
the late entrance of a man
on a white horse, the candidate with the most money to
throw at the voters will win the nomination. Money has yet
to play its assigned part in this campaign. What it will buy,
by-and-by, is national exposure and name-recognition. Biden, for example, will have virtually unlimited funds from
the organized Israel lobby, which he has been courting and
favoring sincehe took a seat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committeeover a decade ago. Dukakis has been
promised the earth by the wealthy Greek-American community, which regards himas a favorite son. Bush has a drawing account with the major institutions of late capitalism in
the West. Du Pont has that plastics company down in Delaware. Gephardt has a lucrative seat on the House Ways and
Means Committee, and the love of organized labor for his
tariffs plan. And when it comes down to the wire, money is
ANDREW
KOPKIND
the bestlitmustest
in the book.
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The Nation.
SOVIETICUS.
vv
hy do so many Americancommentators still
insist-that no significant improvements in
the Soviet systemare possible, despite more
than two years ofevidence that Mikhail
Gorbachev is determined to introduce far-reaching reforms?
A Miami Herald columnistcrudelydismissesthe
Soviet leader with the proverb “Dress a monkey in silk, and
he’ll still be a monkey.” A Washington Post editorial concludes that Gorbachev’s proposed changes in the system will
not “make it less of a police state but a more efficient police
state.” Henry Kissinger assuresTime readers that the Soviet
Union “will be a totalitarian state even after the reforms
are completed.” And a Wall Street Journal columnist flatly
maintains that Sovietideology“makesgenuine reform a
practical impossibility,”
Denying that the Soviet Union can change for the better,
or that it ever has, is a longstanding tradition in the United
States.Suchassertionswere
frequent evenwhen the deStalinizationpoliciesofNikitaKhrushchevwere
under
way. Indeed, the favored clichC of many pundits, including
some alleged experts, holds that “nothing meaningful has
changed’’ since Stalin.
A full explanation of this wrongheaded tradition would
require a large book exploring both Americanpolitical
thinking and the nature of the Soviet system,but five important factors can be briefly identified.
0 Only one isrooted primarily in.the Soviet system.In all
countries political change is generated by struggles between
opposing socialdemands, ideological convictions,group interests and leadership factions.Those dynamics in the Soviet
Union have usually been concealed by official censorship,
which has misled Americansinto believing that they do not
exist, that “all Communists think alike,’’ that the Soviet
establishment is politically uniform and, therefore, that no
leader or faction can emerge to challenge the status quo. In
reality, that establishment, includingthe Communist Party,
has long been deeply divided over
fundamental political and
ideologicalissues, and especiallyover the desirability of
large-scale changein the system inheritedfrom Stalin. How
could it be otherwise in a nation whose history has beenso
traumatic and whose recent transitionfrom a predominately
rural society to an urban one has created so many new
demands and problems?The extent of that conflict remains
out of public view, but much of it now has surged into the
Soviet press because of Gorbachev’s proposed reforms and
the opposition to them.
0 The second factor is indigenously American, a kind of
national conceitproducedby
our ownrelativelybenign
political experience. It is the widespread opinion that nothing short of democratization qualifiesas“meaningful”
change in the Soviet Union. Khrushchev’s aboIition of the
Stalinist mass terror did not lead to democracy, but it liberated millions of people from Gulag labor camps and exile
and reunited them with their families. If successful,
Gorbachev’s economic and social policies will improvethe lives
of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. And yet many
&neri-
789
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.STEPHEN F. COHEN
_.
can commentators dismiss the significance of such changes
because, to cite A.M. Rosenthal of The New York Times,
they are not “even faintly good enough for you and me.”
We may .wish for democracy in the Soviet Union, but to
deny that lesser improvementsare meaningful is a profound
failure of analysis and of compassion.
5 The third factor is the instinctive American practice of
judging Soviet internal developments largely by objectionable Soviet behaviorabroad, which is the main focus of U.S.
media coverage. Most Americans still remember Khrushchev not as a great reformer but as a menacing leader who
put Sovietmissiles in Cuba. Similarly,muchAmerican
commentary today implies that Gorbachev will be a real
reformer only if he ends the Soviet Union’srole as a superpower and capitulates to the United States in world affairs.
A nation’s foreign policy does reveal something about its
political system,but itis not the only criterion.If it were, we
would have to judge the America system solely by its be.havior in Vietnam and Nicaragua.
0 In that- connection, there is also the important role
played by American institutions and groups that for years
have zealously.promotedand thrived on the popular image
of an unchanged and unchangeable SovietUnion. They include the military-industrialcomplex,legions of professional cold-warriorsand self-described national security intellectuals, certain Jewishorganizations and a n array of
other special interests. Any acknowledged improvement in
theSovietsystem threatens their political, economic -and
ideological well-being.In fact, for many suchgroups and individuals, the necessity of eternal cold war againstthe Soviet
Union is theological rather than analytical, and thus can
never be diminished. If one reason is removed-if a Sakharov or a Shcharanslq is released, a weapons “gap” closed,
always
an international problemameliorated-theywill
find others. Ever vigilant against any “illusions” of Soviet
change, they incant ritualistically, as did a New York Post
editorialist last year, “There’s nothing new at all going on
over there.” Collectively,thesecoldwarforcesexercise
enormous influence on American perceptions and politics,
and there are virtually no anti-cold warlobbies strong
enough to offset them.
0 Finally, there is another, more complex, legacy of the
decades-long c d d war. America, it seems, has developed a
deeppsychological.need
for an immutabIyuglySoviet
Union in order to -minimize or obscure its own imperfections. How often do we say, for example, that while we may
practice some social injusticesat home, everything is much
worse in the Soviet Union? Or while we may be behaving
badly-in Nicaragua, the Russians are doing much worse in
Afghanistan? Or that our nuclear plants are not as unsafe as
Soviet ones? If America does need
an evil empirein the East
to feel better about itself, nothing that Gorbachev or any
Soviet reformer may do is likely to matter. Indeed, future
historians, if there are any, may wonder how authoritarian
Soviet behavior came to.be a moral and political standard
for democratic America.
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The Nation.
790
June 13, 1987
BEAT THE DEVIL.
Bandits
1
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Throughout the spring a vigorous contra offensive captured column after column of benign coverage in the U S .
mainstreampress. James LeMoynesent The New York
.Timesrapturous accounts of contra prowess-which he has
since qualified-giving the impression ofa force equivalent
in zeal and moral tone to Cromwell’s New Model Army.In
The WashingtonPost, William Branigindid much the same,
offering the piquant addition of an overheard radio transmission in which a Sandinista officer -admitted the contras
.- were giving his men a pasting. Now, Branigin was fresh
to
the area and just learning Spanish, so it is impressive that
he so ,readily comprehended this Nicaraguan military
transmission, but then, as we shall see, Braniginis singularly beholden to pro-contra sources.
In mid-April, RodNordland and Bill Gentile, respectively
reporter and photographer for Newsweek, began a month’s
patrol with a contra unit, and Nordland’s lengthyfmt-person
report appeared in Newsweek for June 1. It contrasts
markedly with the customary tributes and, indeed, with the
stentorian verbiage about “freedom fighters” that is now
the grist of the Iran/contra hearings in Congress.
Nordland paints a picture of undisciplinedbandits, averse
to combat and preying upon the campesinos in their path.
At first, he says, the contras were impressive. After a hundred miles, disintegration set in. Lost in a cow pasture, the
contras neglected -to post sentries.“Thethreegirlsthey
brought alongbegangigglinguncontrollably,
as one of
them pondered aloud which man she would sleep with that
night. To no avail, the officers pleaded for a blackout and
silence. . . . We were more like rabble on the loose than a
guerrillaarmy in enemy country. . . . Everycampesino
house becamea target. Often other contra units had cleaned
out houses before we got to them, . . . And as the men in
Black Eagle’s column grew hungrier, fewer bothered with
the nicetyy-af payment-especially after they lost wads of
their food money gambling. . . Frightened peasants be‘come instant, if temporary, ‘collaborators’ when scores of
heavily armed, hungrymen drop in for breakfast.” As
Nordland says dryly, “The contras were great at retreating;
attacks, they never quite managed.”
Then Nordland and Gentile joined the Nicaraguan armed
forces and. began criss-crossing their recent routes:
“The
conduct of theSandinistas made a striking contrast with the
contras.” These draftees, who had seen’fifteen months of
steady action, “never even stopped at a peasant’s house,except with permissionfrom anofficer-and then only to wait
outside for drinking water. . . We never saw the Sandinistas jmpress campesinos as guides or make them walk in
front of the troops. Peasants we talked to from both sides
all agreed that only contras do that.” With the contras,
Nordland had seen elderly peasants forced to act as guides
and “point?’ men, leading the patrol and mostlikely to
draw hostile fire.One of these wasa 60-year-old campesino
. with arthritis, forced to hobble along mountain trails as a
guide for the day, while being described to Nordland by the
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contras’ “human rights delegate” as a “volunteer in the
service of liberty and democracy.”
‘
Vicious and Wrong
Just as Nordland was completing his journey, the neophyte Branigin was pushingahead with his public relations
work for the contras. On May 17, The Post published a truly
vile piece of work by Branigin in which, after tranquil discussion of “controversial” contra tactics in attacking “soft
targets,” he suggests that Ben Linder and his companions
had beenarmedwith “assault rifles” and that the Sandinistas and Linder’s father may well have beenlying when
they claimedthat Ben had been shotto death at close range.
On June 1 The Post published a letter from Mary Risacher,
stating that she-a licensed, practicing nurse-had examined Linder’s body within sixteen
hours of his death and had
noted the “round powder burn” on his right temple. Her
account was citedin Congress on May 13 in hearings alluded
to by Branigin, who nonetheless ignored this testimony,
. Then, on May 18, The Post printed a v e r y long story by
Branigin on human rights abuses laid
to the Sandinistas. For
those who have followedthe politics of human rights reporting in Central America overthe past few years, Braniginoffered an anthology of almost every specious tactic.
§ Attribution of unbalanced reporting to unnamed offenders. Contra abuses of human rights have been widely
reported, says Branigin, but “less has emerged about Sandini&a violations.” The precise opposite is the case. Supposed Sandinista violations have beena staple of newspaper
reporting in the United States. Contra atrocities have often
been ignored, excused or discounted as being unearthed by
possibly biaseb sources.
5 Selective credentialing as an instrument of approval or
dkqualification. Most of Branigin’s evidence is taken from
sources familiarto readers of this column,in the form of the
Permanent Commission on Human Rights (C.P.D.H.) in
Nicaragua, the International League for Human Rights and
the Puebla Institute. He does not inform his readersthat the
C.P.D.H. has received moneyfrom Prodemca, the pro-contra
Washington-based organization which has itself got money
from Spitz ChanneU’sNational Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty.Nor does Branigin mention that the
C.P.D.H. does not investigate the accusations it records,
nor that the International League basedits report mostly on
those uninvestigated charges,nor that the Puebla Institute,
decorously described by Branigin as
a “lay Roman Catholic
human rights organization” has alleged ties to the C.I.A.
and has as one of its executive officersa person, Nina Shea,
whowasresponsible for the report of the International
League. That report, says Branigin ludicrously,
was
- _..“one
._ of
thefirstdetailedstudies’’
of humanrights -in Nicaragua.
There have,of course, been many, including ten by Americas
Watch and otherstby bodies including Amnesty International.
But how ddes Branigin, so permissive in the cases cited
above, characterize Americas Watch? the organization,
which saysit opposes U.S. support for the contras, absolves
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The Nation.
June 13, 1987
,
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791
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
the Sandinista government ofthe systematic useof torture. ”
Insinuation:AmericasWatch is not to be trusted. Now,
Americas Watch is actually on record as also opposing U.S:
aid to the Nicaraguan government, but Branigin does not
mention that, any more’than he mentions that a participant
in the International League’s report, Robert Leiken, is a
well-known advocate of contra aid. Conclusion: only procontra sources are objective. Branigin usedthe same tactic a
day earlier, whenhe noted, while challenging their veracity,
that Ben Linder’s parents ‘Lhavebeeninvolved in proSandinista political work in the United States.” Ergo . . .
There is a vicious incompetence and partiality about this
work of Branigin’s that should disturb his editors at The
Post, particularly since they presumably recall the fuss attending a Branigin dispatch from his previous posting, in
Manila, published on’october 18, 1986. On that occasion
Braniginrelated at great length the charge that certain
church groupsin the Philippineshad been infiltrated by the
Filipino Communist Party, which, he said, had also “forged
links abroad with church groups, human rights organizations, labor unions and associations of expatriate
Filipinos.’’ Among those groups, Branigin explicitly mentioned the National Council of Churches.
Much of the article was standard-issue McCarthyism of a
kind The Wmhington Post has been intermittently fond of
down the years, as victims of its Red-biiting of the freeze
movement will recall. At one level, the attacks, as in
Branigin’s case,are sloppy, with the targets given little
or no
chance for comment or rebuttal; at another level, it is taken
as a datum that if a communist “connection”can be exposed,
then the villainy and bad faith of the enterprise or of those
whose Names have been Namedis beyond question. This is
literal McCarthyism, with Branigin, the supposedly impartial reporter, moving in lockstep with the promoters of the
witch hunt. And who were they?
In early 1983, on 60 Minutes, Morley Safer launched a
similarMcCarthyitk assault on the National Council of
Churches. He’d got his material from the right-wing group
known asthe Institute for Religion and Democracy, and itis
pretty clear from the similarity of material that in his story
from Manila, Braniginhad access to the same polluted wellspring.Now, the Institute for Religion and Democracy
shares ideological concerns and personnel .with Prodemca
and the National Endowment for Democracy, and with the
contra propaganda apparat in Washington. Branigin may
be new to Central America, but it strains credibility to conceive that purely unaided ignorance should have led himto
rely solely on the C.P.D.H., the International League and
the Puebla Institute.
At all events, his editors were singularly undemanding.A
theme of his story fFom Manila concerned the funding links
between the National Council of Churches in the United
States and certain church groups in the Philippines. But, as
we have seen, when it came to a different portion of the
political spectrum and the funding ties between Prodemca
and the C.P.D.H. in Nicaragua, Branigin and his e‘ditors
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thought the appropriate journalistic accentwassilence.
They have remained discreet about the Puebla Institute,
and, indeed, The Post ran a chunk of a Puebla report about
Nicaraguan refugees on its editorial page for May 27:
The Post did not feel it necessary to mention that this repprt
was compiled by Nina Shea, wife of.Adam Meyerson, who
edits the Heritage Foundation’s Policy Review (remember
Branigin on Linder’s parents), and by ,Ronald Radosh, a
notorious anti-Sandinista.
What of the Puebla Institute, the innocent-sounding “lay
Catholic organization”? Edgar Chamorro, the former highranking F.D.N. offici& has said, and reiterated to my colleague Michael-Tomaskyon June 3, that he personally witnessed in early 1983 the circumstances under which it was
created in Miami, by C.I.A. officers Alfonso Callejas and
Humberto Belli. Chamorro states that when Belli, whohad
been editorial-page editor of La Preha, came to Miami he
met with C.I.A. case officers who put him touch with Woody
Kepner Associates,.a Mimi-based P.R..firm, to produce a
book. Kepner sayshis firm had done work for the F.D.N.,
but denies working withthe C.1.A.- an&sayshe has no way
of knowing whether Belli was incontact with the C.I.A. AIl
parties agreed thaf the original idea of publishing the book
over the imprint of the F.D.N., was probably not a prudent
strategy, and so they conjured into‘being the “Puebla Institute,” with’Belli as its director. Tkiese events were describedby ,Randy Furst in The MinneapolisStarand
Tribune for June14, 1985. Belli deniedChamorro’s detailed
account, and the institute’s current executive director, Joe
Davis, repeated that denial to Tomasky. (Shea, out of the
country, is now the director of the institute, and Belli the
president.) Davis saysthe institute depends on “private contributions.” If the Puebla Institute had?issueda cordial esti,
mate of human rights in Nicaragua, we would have seen
considerably greater zeal on the part of Branigin and The
Post in investigating itspast.
. - ,
Crude Talk
Why in the world would Ronald Reagan want to place
Kuwaiti oil under the protection, if that’s the appropriate
word, of the American flag? Kuwait nationalized its oil, but
left refining and marketing in the control of Gulf and British
Petroleum. A couple of years ago Gulf was taken over by
Chevron, in a transaction that left the latter billions of dollars in debt. Chevron is the former Standard Oil Company
of California, or Socal, which, with Texaco, Exxon and
Mobil,.once owned all the .original oil production of Saudi
Arabia and managed it through the working. subsidiary,
Aramco. As-D.J. Smith pointed out in a spirited column in
TheKey West Citizenfor May 3: “NOWthese companiesapparently want to lubricate, theirbusiness with, a little
American blood. They havea willing accomplice in the White
House. After all,whogreased our famous Californian’s
campaignswithoily contributions? .-.. .What is on the
line is Chevron’sbottom line and the debt that they hung on
themselves in their greed for Kuwaiti oil.”
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The Nation.
792
ARTICLES.
I
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POWER AND POLICY
A Reformer in
The Kremlin
.
ARCHIE BROWN
T
here are political leaders whose main concerntois
enjoy the status and perquisites ofpower for as
long as possible rather than to change anything.
LeonidBrezhnev,whoheaded
the SovietCommunist Party from 1964 until 1982, was scch a leader.
Mikhail Gorbachev is a very different type of personality.
He is by character and conviction a reformer, and he has
alreadymade it clear that heaims to usehispowers
as
General Secretary of the Communist Party to makebig
changes in the Soviet system and society and in the Soviet
Union’s relations with other states.
That approach carries far more risks than Brezhnev’s
consensus style of rule. No Soviet elite group or institution
had any particular needto get rid of Brezhnev, because the
stronger they were, the more intent he was on conciliating
them. Ultimately, though, this was of little benefit to the
country, as its economic,growthrate declined, its technological laggrew and ii conspicuously failedto niake friends and
influence people in the international arena.
Thus, if Gmbach-i
inreforming the Soviet
economy and political system (how far he wishes to go,
of course, remains a matter for debate), his role could indeed be a historic one.
For Gorbachev and his supprters in the ranks of the
party apparatus and the intelligentsia, the main problem
is that almostall the meanshemustpursue
to achieve
desirable ends conflict -with ;the short-term interests of at
least one major institution or social group in the system.
One of his trickier political tasks is to avoid alienating all
those bodiessimultaneously. Nikita Khrushchev’schief
problem was that he did precisely that, and it produced the
coalition that brought about his downfall, in October 1964.
There are someparallelsbetween the Khrushchev and
Gorbachev eras. If the circumspect and rather conciliatory
foreign policy being pursued
by Gorbachev and his newforeign policy team (Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin, Aleksandr Yakovlev and Vadim Medvedev) does not
succeed in stopping or controlling the development of the
Strategic Defense Initiative, perceived
in the Soviet Unionas
a way for the United States to obtain a new generation of offensiveas well as defensiveweapons,Gorbachev’sstock
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June 13. 1987
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Archie Brown is a fellow of St. An tony’s College, Oxford
University. He has been a visiting professor of political
science at Yale University and Columbia University. Most
recently, he is the editor of Political Culture and Communist Studies (2“. Sharpe).
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with the military will fall dangerously low. The arms reductions he has advocated thusfar, with oneproposal following
swiftly after another, probably arouse almost as much concern in Soviet military circles as in their Western counterparts, thus making the armed forces potential allies of disgruntled high-level party officials.
The participation of party officials would, however, be
essential. The “leadingrole of the party” is not just a
slogan; it is a reality. Although there is stiff resistance to
economic reform from within the ministerial bureaucracy,
and although there must be doubts on the part of some,
though not all, K.G.B. officials about the broadening of the
limits of publicdebate, the policyof glasnost and the
reopening ofthe Stalin issue, those
threats can be fended off
asIongasGorbachevretains
and further strengthens his
support in the highest echelons of the party. However, in
order not only to survive but to get his policies implemented,
he needs to engineer an influx of like-minded peopleat the
middle and lower levels of the party hierarchy. That is particularly difficult becausethe kind of person who setfoot on
the lowest rungs of the party ladder in the later Brezhnev
years is unlikely to combine the abilities and ideals Gorbachev seeks.
Gorbachev also has yetto gain the enthusiastic backingof
the average Soviet working man. His support seems substantially stronger among womenin all social groups. That
is partly because of the stringent antialcohol measures instituted under Gorbachev’s. leadership, though the party’s
second secretary, Egor Ligachev, is even more of a driving
force behind them than Gorbachev. The cutback on the
hours and places a t which liquor can be sold is welcomed
by
a majority ofwomen (alcohol abuse, usuallybythemale
.
partner, is the most commonly cited cause
of divorce inthe
Soviet Union), but it arouses some resentment among millions of male workers.
Workers have other causes for disquiet. Under the new
systemofquality
control in Sovietfactories, ,inspectors
enter a plant and reject substandard products that do not,
then, count toward the factory’s output figures or earn any
bonuses for the work force, thereby reducing the take-home
pay of these workers. There is some concern
also over rising
prices and a legitimate fear that they will increase still further if subsidies on, for example, rents, heating, electricity
and foodstuffs were reduced as part of a-more far-reaching
economic reform. Similarly, the closing of uneconomic factories would, at a minimum, compel workersto retrain for
other jobs and possibly to move to new locations. Untilnow
an extremely high degree of job security has compensated
Soviet workersfor modest earnings andthe limited selection
of consumer goods.
Gorbachev cannot go too far ahead of his .colleagues in
theSovietleadership, but he appears Yo favor a greater
market element, though by no means total market domination, in the Soviet economy.A radical reconstructionof the
economy is, however, enormously difficult to achieve and‘
wiU probably cause more pain
thai pleasure in the
short term.
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June 13, I987
Gorbachev was aware of the needfor political reform before he became General Secretary,
and some of the themes
of
his recent pronouncements were foreshadowedin a spqech
he made in December 1984 (when Konstantin Chernenko
was still party leader), only half of which was published in
Pruvdu. The need for democratization, which he emphasized
then, now occupies a higher place on the political agenda.
No doubt, that is partlybecausethe
party leadership
generally and Gorbachev personally recognize what a difficult and drawn-out process economic reform is likely to
be, and acknowledge the crucialimportance of changing the
political climateand of winningsupport for theperestroika,
or reorganization, of the Soviet system.As many articles even
in the Soviet press testify, there is a wide gap between the
language of changeto be found in leaders’ speechesand the
of most Soviet localities.
business-as-usual still characteristic
It has become ever more clear lately
that when Gorbachev
uses the term “democratization,” he means at least three
things:greateropenness,competitiveelections
and selfmanagement or self-administration.
A developing glasnost, or openness, is the first of these
principles to become a reality.There has beenan increasing
flow of information from above and from below and a substantial widening of the limits within which criticism may
be voiced and sensitive issues aired on television and the
cinema screen,on the stage and in newspapers, journals and
books. It is essential that this process continue,for there have
been thaws in the past that were followed by freezes.
The remaining two features of democratization, as Gorbachev sees it, have still to be implemented, but even their
advocacy represents a remarkable change. Soviet political
writers have long claimed that their elections are the most
democratic in the world, and they bolster that argument by
pointing to the social compositionof the soviets at the local
and central levels. To recognize that the lack of choice in
such elections seriously impairs the degree of democracy is
quite a step forward. As far as electionsofdeputies to
soviets are concerned, a choiceof candidates is likelyat first
to be onlyat the town and district level,
but once the principle
is accepted, it could be extended. Still,all candidates would
require the approval of the Communist Party, and because
deputies to soviets are not nearlyaspowerful. as party
secretaries, the more important competitive electionsto have
been advocated by Gorbachevare those within the party.
If, as Gorbachev proposed in January, there would be
more than one candidate for party secretaryships to be
elected by party committees in secret ballot, this wouldbe a
momentous change. The proposal is still hedged with some
qualifications, and will probably be resisted by many officeholders worriedabout the threat to their tenure,but such an
element of inner-party democratizationwould be significant
for the society as a whole.
Finally, thereisthestress
on samoupravlenie-selfmanagement or self-administration. What that is supposed
to mean in practice
is not yet entirely clear.It appears to embrace, amongother things, Gorbachev’s argumentthat each
body in the politicaland economic systemshould have more
space in which to operate and should accept more respon-
.
~
~
~~
~
~~~~~
793
sibility. It involves, too, the competitive electionof foremen
and team leadersand even the election offactory managers,
though it remains to be seen how general and genuine that
will be. Also entailed is a more active utilizationof legislation that extends the consultative functions of work collectives in.the industrial enterprise, farm or office.
The extent to which such political reform is going to engage the enthusiasm of workers will emerge if and when
these changesare fully implemented.For the moment it appears that Gorbachev has gained most
ground among the intelligentsia, whose numerical weight and impact on policy
have been growing steadily.There is undoubtedly a link between Gorbachev’s power and authority, on the one hand,
and the success ofhis policy initiatives, on the other. Given
that it will take another year or twofor his economic reform
<- -
to be fully elaborated, longer for itto be implemented, and
longer stillfor it to produce tangible material rewards, political reform assumes a growing importance.
Gorbachev’s position couldbe further bolstered by aforeign policy success. That need not be at the expense of the
United States or the West; rather, it could be a mutually
beneficial agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces
and, following the next U.S. presidential election,an agreement to forgo the illusory gains of S.D.I. in exchange for a’
verifiable bilateral commitment to refrain from the space
testing and deployment of a new generation of costly and
destabilizing weapons.
Yet Gorbachev’s position in the Soviet leadership is far
from being entirely dependent on the vagaries of American
polities. He has, quite simply, consolidated his power base
in the party apparatus faster than any other General
Secretary in the whole of Soviet history. That is especially
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true of the staffing of the Central Committee,departments
and of the selection of their overlords, the secretaries of the
Central Committee. Indeed, the change in the top leadership
team (the voting and nonvoting members of the Politburo
and the secretaries of the Central Committee) during Gorbachev’s first two years as General Secretary was extraordinary. At the highest rung, that of the Politburo’s voting
members, Gorbachevis not as strong as he would liketo be
and, in all probability, will be before long. But at the two
rungs immediately below it-the nonvoting,
or candidate,
membership of the Politburo and the Secretariat of the Central Committee-the change has been
both dramatic and
greatly to Gorbachev’sadvantage.
Thirteen of the twenty-five people whoconstitute the top
leadership team have come in during Gorbachev’s general
under Chernenko
secretaryship, and only five who were there
are holding the sameposition sand performing the same
functions as they did then, This is the more remarkable because a Soviet party leader has to sqcure the Politburo’s
agreement for such leadership changes and cannot simply
assume office like a U.S. President or British Prime Minister
and produce his own slate of officeholders.
Among the eleven voting membersof the Politburo, five
have achieved their promotion to that body under Gorbachev’s leadership. A number of the newcomers, like several
of their colleagues of longer-standingPolitburo membership,
must be regarded as conditional allies of Gorbachev. They
will accept some but by no means all of what he wants to
do. A case in point is Ligachev, who goes all the way with
Gorbachev on the need for discipline but only some of the
way on reform.
Gorbachev must tread carefully
to insure that conditional
allies do not become opponents, whileat the same time trying to promote more like-minded people to full Politburo
membership. Amongthe latter is Aleksandr Yakovlev, who
was removed from the Central Corninittee apparatus in the
early 1970s but who now seems on the way to becoming a
seniorsecretary
(that is,someonewhocombinesfull
membership in the Politburo with a secretaryship in the
Central Committee and therebybecomes an overseerof
several Central Committee departments). Of the current
voting members of the Politburo, Gorbachev’s most wholehearted supporter on both foreign and economic policy is
the Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, who demonstrated his personal commitment to innovation while still
party first secretary in Georgia.
Among both the candidate members of thePolitburo and
the secretaries of the Central Committee, there has been a
75 percent turnover since Gorbachev became party leader.
The candidates include Yakovlev, who recentlyadded that
and one man
position to his Central Committee secretarjrship,
who seems to be a more radical reformer than Gorbachev
himself-namely, the Moscow first secretary, Boris El’tsin.
The further elevation of El’tsin and Yakovlev would mark
an important next step in the strengthening of Gorbachev’s
power. So far, his greatest success in promoting supporters
hasbeenin the Secretariat, where his personal de facto
power of appointment tends to be greater than is the case
I
I
~~
.
~
~
~~
-
The Nation.
June 13, 1987
with the Politburo. Nine of the twelve secretaries are new,
and a clear majority are close allies of Gorbachev.
Beyond question there has been a qualitative improveare
ment in the leadership.Overall,thenewcomers
better-educated, more open1minded and younger than those
whose places they havetaken. The element of rejuvenation
is clear.Takingthe
top leadershipteamas
a whole, the
average age has dropped from 67.5 to 62.2.
The personnel change and policy innovation that have
taken place under Gorbachev are equally impressive. For
manyintheWest,andsomein
the Soviet Union, who
assumed that the country was both monolithic and unchanging, this must have come as a shock. Gorbachev is a politicianwith ideas- and evenideals, but heknowshow
to
handle the levers of power. The boldness of some of the innovation has earned him enemies as well as friends in the
a Soviet
Soviet elite, and it is still viewed warily by many
citizen. His position is not totally secure and could not be,
given the extent of’thechanges heis trying to introduce. Yet
the odds are that not only will he stay in office but that he
will go on to consolidate his power further. When that happens, there is a real chance that the Gorbachev era will
becomethemostconstructivetime
of improvement in
Soviet
~
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foreign from internal policy.” Ironically,the link
0 between foreign and domestic affairs has tradi-
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makingSovietsociety more democratic.Speaking at the
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taking place in hiscountry, to the need for a “wide democratization of the entire life of the society.” He,declaredthat
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an understanding of the goals of domestic reform. “More than ever
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on our internal policy.’’
In certain respects Gorbachev doesappear to haveadopted some of the assumptions of his harshest critics. U.S. op~
~
~
Matthew Evangelhta teaches Soviet and world politics at
the University of Michigan. He is the author of Innovation
and the Arms Race, forthcoming’from Cornell University
Press.
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The Nation.
ponents of arms control treaties, for example, frequently
raise the specter of Soviet cheating by asking, How can we
trust a government that doesn’t trust its own people? In
<he wake-of the release of Andrei Sakharov and scores of
6ther political prisoners, Gorbachev has respondedto those
critics on theu own term:. One consequence of the domestic
trust in
reforms hsis been a marked“strengtheningof
our society,’’ he said at the peace forum. “And thishas
strengthened our confidence in the possibility of bringing
the necessaiy trust into the sphere of interstate and international relations as well.” Finally, he stressed
the importance
of having Soviet citizens,not just politicians and diplomats,
take part,in the process of building mutual trust.
Gorbachev’s words have been greeted with mixed reactions in the West. Surely, a certain amount of skepticism is
warranted, especially on the matter of internal changes in
the regime’s attitude toward its people. The government’s
continued suspicionof contact with foreigners and its reluctance to allow unsanctioned political activity barthe kind of
independent “citizen diplomacy” that Gorbachev claims to
endorse. Yet whatever the conjunction of internal causes,
the consequences for Sovietforeignpolicy are exactlyas
Gorbachev describes: an increased confidence,a willingness
to take‘risks in pursuit of accommodation, and a creative
approach to dealingwith international relations that is
unparalleled in recent Soviet history.
Gorbachev’s foreign policy since becoming General Secretary, in March 1985, has been characterized by flexibility,
June 13, -1987
sophistication and a high leveI of energy. He has emphasiked
independent relations with countries in Western
Europe, the
Middle East and the Pacific, while keeping thedoor open to
agreements withthe United States. In the area of arms control he has made substantial concessions and has shown a
remarkable degree of unilateral restraint. Most important,
he has recastthe internal debate on the meaning of security,
by accentuating political, diplomatic
and economic concerns
over strictly military ones.
In implementinghis foreign policy, Gorbachevhas sought
to overcome Leonid Brezhnev’s legacyof conservatism and
inertia.-One particularly revealing symbolof the stagnation
that beset Soviet foreign policy in the waning years of the
Brezhnev regime was the Foreign Ministry itself;
It had been
directed since 1957 by Andrei Gromyko, and its organizational structure reflected the world of three decades earlier.
Responsibility for relations with Canada, Australia and New
Zealand, for example, rested withthe British desk, as if the
sun had not yet set on the empire. Emblematic of .Garbachev’s changes was the “promotion” of Gromyko to the
IargeIy ceremonial position of President and the rearrangement of the ministry under Eduard Shevardnadze. Qrganizationally, Australia and New Zealand became part of a
new Pacific department; Canada wasmoved toNorth
America; and Britain finally joined Europe.
The structural changes are reflected in the substance of
policy as well. Shevardnadze, the first Soviet Foreign Minister to visit Indonesia and Vietnam, has traveledthroughout
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The Nation.
June 13, I987
noncommunist Asia, promoting trade and improved relations. Gorbachevhas made overtures to the Pacific, presenting proposals for a nuclear-free zone that appeal to antinuclear sentiments there, .especially in New Zealand and
Australia. He has also triedto improve relations with China
by making territorial concessions,havingaccepted.the
Chinese position on a disputed border along the Amur and
Ussuririvers. The two. countries continue their talks on
political normalization, and in July 1986, Gorbachev announced a sizable withdrawalof Soviet forcesfrom Mongolia and offered to negotiate mutual troop reductions.
In relation to Europe, Gorbachevhas sought to free Soviet
policy from the almost obsessive emphasis
on the U.S.-Soviet
relationship that characterized the Brezhnev era. He has
developed a personal rapport withBritish Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher; he hasexpressed respectfor France’s
independence in military matters, even though currently that
means a French nuclear buildup; and he has encouraged
contacts between West Germany’sopposition Social Democrats and East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party, aimed at
limiting chemical weapons and establishing a nuclear-free
zone in Central Europe. His proposals for reducing conventional forces inEurope should interest those members of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization that, for financial and
demographic reasons, find it difficult to meetexisting
military commitments.
Gorbachev’s policy toward the Third World marks another distinct break from the Brezhnev ,approach. On the
797
rhetorical level, Sovietsupport for national liberation movements has changed from promises of economic and military
assistance tp expressions of “profound sympathy,’’ in the
words of the new edition of the Communist Party Program,
which sets guidelinesfor futurepolicy. The Gorbachev leadership seems interested in fostering relations more with
Western-oriented Third World regimes, such as Mexico
and
Saudi Arabia, than with those that espouse Marxist-Leninist
philosophies, such asEthiopia and Mozambique. Soviet relations with India serve asa model, and Gorbachev received
a warm reception on his visit there last fall, He will make a
long-awaited tour of the Latin American continent this fall;
the first for a Soviet leader. Gorbachev may use the trip to
highlight those Soviet efforts in the region that are highly pragmatic: forging diplomatic links and expanding trade
relations and development assistance-programs. That emphasis may explain Gorbachev’s reluctance to commit the
Soviet Union to the defense of Nicaragua against thethreat
from the United States, and reflect his apparent”c0ncern
that superpower conflictsin the Third World could~escalate
out of control.
Yet sensitivity to the potential for conflict with the United
States is not the sole, or eventhe primary, reason behind the
change in Soviet policy. The impetus appears to be economic. The Stalinist model of rapid industrialization has not
achieved notable successes in its export version. The case o f
Cuba illustrates thedilemma: its economy is maintained
with the help of Soviet subsidies estimatedat the equivalent
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of several million dollars a day. In trying to account for the
model’s shortcomings, Sovietacademicspecialists on the
Third World have increasinglyreturned to traditional Marxist conceptions of development. Theyargue that poor countrieswith “feudal” systemsof peasant-based agriculture
have to pass through a capitalist phase before they are ready
for socialism. The Soviet Union now advises its allies in the
Third World to remain integrated in the capitalist world
economy rather than jump directly to socialism. Indeed,
the Soviet Union itself has moved in that direction, seeking to join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) and passing laws’intended to encourage foreign
investment.
The change in approach toward the Third World undoubtedly has a political motivation as well. The Reagan
Administration’s rhetoric about the Soviet Union as. the
a nerve
source of all conflict in the worldhastouched
among Sovietleaders,who
prefer to presentthemselves
as a force for peace and stability; The Soviet Union’s offer
to work with the West in combating terrorism should be
seen in that light. Its renewed interest in conveningan international conference on the Middle East may also indicate a
change in attitude about the problems in that region. One
important signof a shift is the movement, albeit erratic,
toward improving relations withIsrael.Meanwhile,
the
establishment of diplomatic ties with Oman and the United
Arab Emirates indicates a desire to break the diplomatic
isolation in the Moslemworld that followed the Soviet
Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
The Afghan war remains a barrier not only to an improved Soviet image abroad but, more crucially, to efforts
aimed at decreasing the military involvementof both superpowers in the developing world. Some prominent Soviet officials nowappear interested in pursuing the idea of mutual
restraints on armed intervention -in the Third World. Lasi
summer Anatoly. Dobrynin, the recently appointed Central
Committee secretary for foreign affairs and former Ambas.
sador to the United States, made a number of constructive
proposals in the influential party journal Komrnunist. He
wrote of the need to establish “norms of behavior” to limit
military actions and to regulate regional conflictsthat could
escalate into world war. He proposed that the superpowers
renounce the use of force in international relations, so as to
create a climate of trust that would permit the resolution of
local conflicts by diplomatic and political, rather than military, means. But the words ring hollow as long
as the Soviet
Army remains in Afghanistan.
Gorbachev gives every indication of wanting to get out of
that war. In his speech to the Twenty-seventh Party Congress, inFebruary 1986, he characterizedthe situation in Afghanistan as. a “bleeding wound” and vowed “to withdraw
the Soviet troops stationed in Afghanistan at the request of
its government.” The prospects for doing so hardly seem
bright, however, despite some progress in recent negotiations sponsored by the United Nations. Soviet attempts at
securing a cease-firehave not metwithsuccess.Clearly,
some new thinking on Afghanistan is in order, although
much of it must be done in Washington. Many U.S: offi-
June 13. I987
cials are content simply to let the wound bleed, obliviousto
the risks of a spreading infection.
The Sovietleadershavetried
to persuade the United
States of their interest in improving relations, despite the
Reagan Administration’s obstructionism, by making concessions on arms control. Their unilateral moratorium on
nuclear testing lastedfor more than a year and a -half, even
as the United States exploded more than twenty-six nuclear
devices. Beyondthat they refrained from testing antisatellite
weapons, and they agreedto unprecedented measures of onsite inspection to verify compliance with arms agreements,
including the presence of U.S. scientists with seismicmonitoring equipment adjacent to Soviet nuclear test ranges.
In return for those concessions ,the Soviet-Union has
sought a commitment from the United States not to violate
the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty by deploying the Star
Wars system. But President Reaganseems to havebecome more intransigent on the issue the more Gorbachev
has offered concessions.Gorbachevaccepted
the “zero
option,’’ agreeing to remove SS-20 missiles targeted at
Europe without first resolving the Star Wars issue. The
to
weapons that those SS-20s wereoriginallyintended
counter-U.S. forward-based nuclear-armed aircraft and
the growing French and British arsenals-would remain. In
response the Administration hardened its stance on the
StrategicDefense Initiative.Rather than put off deployment
for ten years, as the President proposed at Reykjavik, the
Administration now insists on deploying a Star Wars system
starting in 1994, even though no one believes an effective
defense could be implemented that early, if ever.Nevertheless, Gorbachev has refused, as he puts it, to “slam the
door.” He has accepted additional conditions appended by
June 13, 1987
The Nation.
799
the United Statesto the zero option and has expresseda willwewill win.”Gorbachevevidently
attributes the mixed
ingness to discuss allowing Star Wars research to be conreception to his new thinking in foreign policy. to Western
ducted beyond the laboratory phase.
ambivalence about the long-term implications of a more
Gorbachev has evidently come under some criticism
at
moderate,economicallyvigorous
and democraticSoviet
home for his conciliatory approach to the United States. right. Union.
0
be He may
The end of the testing moratorium and the continuing
GORBACHEV~SGAMBLE
Sovietpresence in Afghanistan indicatethelimits ofhis
ability to maneuver. On the whole, though, Gorbachev
seems to be in a relatively strong position to continue
pushing Soviet policyin the direction of moderation. Here,
ironically, his words have assumed even greaterimportance
than his deeds. Perhaps Gorbachev’s main contribution to
the new thinking on Soviet foreign policy has beenthe way
in which he has reframed the debate on national security.
A. JAMES M~ADAMS
He has broadened the definition to downplay the military
ntil recently the conservative leaders of Czechcomponent while stressing the role of politics, diplomacy
and, above all, economic strength. Yet, it is unclear how
oslovakia, East Germany,Rumania and Bulgaria dealt with their critics by throwing them
far he can go without some reciprocation from the Arnerican side.
in jail, confiscating their publications or forcGorbachev has implemented a number of important ining some troublemakers into exile. But now that Mikhaternal changes so that Soviet securitywill no longer be domiil Gorbachev has stepped into the critics’ ranks, that apnated by strictly military concerns.First, he replaced several
proach is no longer so easy. His call for candor in politics,
economic reform and cultural liberalization hasthrown into
senior commanders. Second, he hasattempted to break the
‘military’s monopolyon expertise in the security field by en- disarray those Eastern European
regimes that once depended
couraging civilian academics to become involved in this area. on the Soviet Union to act as a bulwark against change.
Indeed, far from rushing to embrace Gorbachev’s policy
Dobrynin apparently has set up a section ofhis Central
Committee department to act as an alternative source of
of glasnost, some of these governments have subtly mobimilitary advice.In considering how the Soviet
Union should
lized their resources against the Soviet
leader. After Gorrespond to Star Wars without developing a costly systemof
bachev articulated his plan for democratic electoral reform
in a highlypublicizedspeech at the Central Committee
its own, Gorbachev has reliedon civilian expertsin the AcademyofSciences,primarilyYevgenyVelikhov
and Roald
Plenum on January 27 and proposed the introduction of
secret ballots and multiple candidates in Soviet elections,
Sagdeev.
copies of Pravda containing the speechweresuddenly
Like many of his predecessors, Gorbachev fears that the
withdrawn from public distribution in Prague. In East GerUnited States is attempting “to underminetheU.S.S.R.
economically by means of
an arms race,” as he told the
many,whichhas a longstandingpolicyof reprinting the
Czechoslovak newspaper Rude P r a m “We will do everya
speeches of Soviet leaders,the official press published only
thing so as not to allow this malicious plan to come true,”
cursory summation of Gorbachev’s remarks. Clearly,there
he asserted. If the Soviet Union is weak economically,Gorare influential politicians in Eastern Europe, as in the Soviet
bachev argued, “the pressure from the enemies of socialism
Union, who will do everything they can to shield their posiintensifies.” But, if “we become stronger, more solid ecotions and privileges from the new wave of reform.
nomically, andonthe social and politicallevel, the inOnly in the past few months has Gorbachev addressedthe
terest of the capitalist world in normal relations with us
question of changing Moscow’s historicallydictatorial relayill grow.” tionship withEastern Europe. But from his first days in ofIn speeches to both domestic and foreign audiencesGorfice he recognized that his country was dealing with states
bachev has made clear the link between security and ecothat are now more nearly the equals of the Soviet Union
nomic reform.At home he has emphasizedthat political rethan in the past, each possessing a greater sense of its own
form may be a prerequisite to the success of his economic
rights and entitlements. Hence,more than any of his predepolicies. As he told an audience of Sovietwriters in
cessors, Gorbachev has maintained regular communication
July 1986, “Unless we involve the people, nothing will come
with members of the bloc, in order to “learn to prevent a
out of it.” Does Gorbachev really believe that this process
collision of interests of the varioussocialist countries,”
of internal democratization willhave an effect on Soviet
as he put it at the Twenty-seventh Party Congress. He still
foreign policy? His remarksto another group of writers the
adheres, however, to the principle that his allies should ask
previous month-intended to be off the record but leaked
not what the Soviet Union can do for them, but what they
to a Western newspaper by one of the participants-leave
no doubt. “Our enemies have discovered our secret,” he
A. James McAdams, theauthor of East Germany and
said. “Our nuclear capability doesnot frighten them. They
Detente:Building Authority After the Wall (Cambridge
won’t start a war. Onethingcausesthemanxiety:if
UniversityPress),teaches Soviet, Eastern European and
German politics at Princeton University.
democracy developsin the SovietUnion, if we succeed, then
rn
A New Deal for
Eastern Europe
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800
can do for the Soviet Union. Thus, in the same manner as
LeonidBrezhnev,hehasexpresseddispleasurewith
the
Eastern Europeans for failing to ship higher-quality manufactured products to the Soviet Union. At the Eleventh Congressof the East German Socialist Unity Party in April
1986, for example, Gorbachev urged East Berlin and its
neighbors to redouble their efforts to integrate the bloc’s
economies. Predictably, Gorbachev sought out his friends
among those states in the region that areleast likely or able
to stand up to Soviet demands for further sacrifices, notably
Poland. That factor, not age or personal affinity, probably
accounts for Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski’s high-profile relationship with Gorbachev.
Yet while on a three-day visit to Prague last April, Gorbachev took a step in the direction of a policy meant expressly for Eastern Europe. He announced that a“new
stage” had begun in the relations of socialist states, which
required that those “countries’ cooperation be raised to a
qualitatiyely different level.” In language that must have
astonished the listening Czechoslovakparty leaders, he said:
“NO one is entitled to claim a special status in the socialist
worId. The independence of every party, its responsibility
toward its people,theright to the sovereign solution of
problems of the country’s development-these are unconditional principles for us.” Never before had a Soviet leader
so explicitly calledinto question the Soviet Union’s rightto
a special position in the bloc, let alone in a country the
Soviet Armyhad invaded two decades earlier.
True, Gorbachevneitherapologized for the invasion of 1968 nor renounced the so-called Brezhnev doctrine, under which that
action was justified; rather, he insisted that respect for the
common interests of the bloc was “obligatory.” Still, the
Eastern European leaders must have been intrigued by his
reference to their sov’ereign rights.
Why should a reform-minded Soviet General Secretary
want to revamp his country’s relationship with Eastern Europe? Andif an adjustment in thatrelationship has assumed
an important place in Gorbachev’s overall strategy,why did
he wait more than two years to introduce the subject?
The answer to the first question is linked to Eastern
Europe’s evolving role vis-&vis the Soviet Union over the
past four decades. No one can doubt that the region continues to provide a vital security guarantee that Moscow is
unlikely to abandon, but the cost of maintaining socialism
in the bloc has become overwhelming.After World War 11,
GORBACHEV SPEAKS
“Socialism will prove itself not by force of arms but
by example.” (March 14, 1985)
“Obviously, we cannot get by on slogans alone.There have been more than enough
of them.’’ (April 23,1985)
“There are too fewyoungpeople.
Make way for
youth . . . open the path to leadership to young people
and to women.” (May 17, 1985)
I
June 13, 1987
Iosif S@in relied on-sheerforce to guarantee the compliance
of the satellite governments. But every Soviet leader since
then has found that the benefits of empire are often accompaniedbypolitical and economic burdens. Occasionally,
unpopular regimes, such as the hard-line Czechoslovak go\;ernment that replaced Alexander Dubcek’safter the Prague
Spring of 1968, must be backed up by Soviet divisions.And
when the Eastern European economies falter, the “big
brother” in Moscow must provide credits, raw materials,
cheap energy resources and scarce manufactured products.
Thus, it is not surprising that Gorbachev should encourage
his more conservative allies to experiment with economic
reforms. More vibrant Eastern European economies would
notonlybe a source of valuable imports for the Soviet
Union, but as these countries became more efficient and
self-supporting, they wouldalso enable the Soviet Union to
free resources for its domestic needs.
On the other hand, leeway for Eastern Europe poses great
danger to the Soviet Union, which is probably why Gorbachevdelayed so long in addressing the issue. The last
Soviet leader who dared to suggest fundamental changes in
the Soviet-Eastern European alliance, Nikita Khrushchev,
discovered that even the suggestionthat something mightbe
awry in Moscow’s relationship with the bloc was enough to
unleash uncertainty, confusion and, ultimately, a wave of
political upheavals, culminating in the revolts in Warsaw
and Budapest in 1956. Those events inhibited any subsequent reform ofSoviet relations with the bloc, and the
memory of them presents a dilemmafor Gorbachev today:
if the Soviet Union lets its allies choose what they want, it
may have to live with what they choose.
In this seqse, bringing a new spirit to intrabloc relations
means takinga gamble. IfGorbachev is unable to prove that
increased integration of the bloc’seconomieswillsatisfy
demands for higher standards of living, then politicians in
Budapest, East Berlin and other Eastern European capitals
may ask what they will get
in return for expanded trade with
the Soviet Union.If the name of the game is improving efficiency and production quality, it would seem reasonablefor
Hungary and East Germany, for example, to intensify rather
than cut back on their economicinteraction with the West.
On a larger scaleit may even make sensefor Moscow to
give its d i e s more room to devise their own foreign policies,
suited to their distinctive national needs within the bounds
of their Warsaw Pact commitments. That issue was highlighted in late 1983 and 1984, when East-West tensions rose
as a resultof the North Atlantic TreatyOrganization’s
deployment of cruise and Pershing 2 missiles in Western
almost all the
Europe. In defense of their own interests,
Eastern European states tried to resist Moscow’s insistent
calls that they freeze relations with the West. After a short
but acrimonious debate in the bloc, the Russians were temporariIy able to halt their allies’ individual foreign policy initiatives. But countries as diverse as East Germany, Hungary, Rumania and even the normally compliant Bulgaria
reacted bitterly to the economic and political sacrifices that
came withtemporary estrangement from the West. Onehas
to wonder whether a similar disruption in East-West rela-
802
The Nation.
tions under Gorbachev would lead the Kremlin to demand
unanimous Eastern European hostility towardthe West. Indeed, the. opportunity to evaluate precisely that situation
could arise if current talks between the United States and
the Soviet Union on the elimination of intermediate-range
missiles in Europe were to falter.
Ironically, though, the greatest test of Gorbachev’s new
thinking about relations with the bloc will be his willingness
to put up with alternativepaths to socialist development.To
his credit, he stated in Prague that the Soviet Union was
“far from calling on anyone to copy us,” adding that
“other socialist countries have already solved some problems that arenow priorities in the Soviet Union, or they are
solving them in their own way.” Gorbachev may have had
in mind the reforms in Hungary and East Germany, which
were under way before he arrivedon the scene. Both countries, albeit according to very different forinulas-limited
privatization in Hungary and experiments with highly centralizedenterprises in East Germany-haveeffectively
handled qconomic challengesthat are still beyond the scope
of the Soviet system.
It remains to be seen how tolerant Gorbachev will be of
conservativeEastern European leaders who wish to proceed
more slowly along the path of greater opennessand political
reform. It may be true that in contrast to the Soviet Union,
most of whose citizens have never had extended
contact with
the West, Czechoslovakia and*East Girmany have legitimate concerns about how their populations might interpret
Gorbachev’s ideals.No party leader, leastof 41 Gorbachev,
is interested‘in doing anything that could destabilize Comr
munist governments in Eastern Europe. But here, too, he
seems to be taking a calculated gamble that some-meaningful change can be introduced.
In short, what Gorbachev is offering his allies is. a risky
but tempting bargain. This new deal cpmbines the somewhat unpleasant prospect of having to move down the path
of socialist reform and the much more appealing possibility
that each will‘be allowedgreater freedom in the solution of
its :national problems. ’NO doubt, manyof the region’s
leaders will bevulnerable to the extent that they followGorbachev’s lead. However, hetoo has a great ,dealat stake. If
Eastern European reforms were to get out of control and
threaten either the future of Communism in the region or
the Soviet Union’s securityinterests, Gorbachev’s program
of domestictransformation, itself a controversial enterprise,
would surely be jeopardized.
During Gorbachev’s’visit to Czechoslovakia,Gennady
Gerasimov, the spokesman for,the Soviet Foreign Ministry,
was asked to explain the difference between’ Dubcek and
Gorbachev. “Nineteen years,” he replied.It is unlikely that
Gerasimov meant that Gorbachev -was a new Dubcek, a
heroic but tragicCommunist idealist who came perilously
close to exceeding the limits of one-party rule in Czechoslovakia. But Gorbachev has apparently concluded that after
almost two decades, Czechoslovakiaand the rest of the bloc
are ready for reform. His problem is that some Eastern
European leaders have yet to decide whether theyare ready
for him.
June 13, 1987
UP AGAINST THE SYSTEM
Reforming
The Economv
r/
,ED
.. A. HEWE’IT
he’direction, speed and magnitude of change promoted by Mikhail Gorbachev all suggest
the beginnings of a fundamental transformation of Soviet
society. Such a transformation, however, will depend on the implementation of the radical economic reforms Gorbachev has outlinedin speeches and public statements. The decrees issued so far include some potentially
significant departures from the past, but they also contain
manyambiguities and contradictory elements,providing
ammunition for those already inclined to resist change. In
short, despiteGorbachev’sunmistakabledesire
for farreaching reforms, it is not yet clear how successful he will be
in realizing his vision of economic change.
He is pursuing a two-stage strategy. The first stage, for
the next several years, stresses what he calls
the human factor-more discipline, better personnel-as well
as investment policiesto get the economystarted on the new path. At
the top of Gorbachev’s economic agenda in this stage
is
the strategy of uskorenie, or acceleration.By the early 1990s
he hopes to push the growth rate of the Soviet gross national product from the 2 percent of the 1980s to 5 percent, leading to a ’second stage of sustained growth. The
policy also calls for a technologicalrevolution in which
Soviet’producers simultaneously increase quality and dramaticallyraiseefficiency and productivity.According to
Nikolai Ryzhkov, chair of the Council of Ministers, the executive body responsible for implementing various government plans, only 29 percent of Soviet-rnanufactured goods
met international qualitystandards in the mid-1980s. Gorbachev yould like to have that figure up to 85 or 90percent by
1990. Those are extraordinarily ambitious targets, and they
indicate that Gorbachevhasdecided
that dramatic improvements are necessary.
Gorbachevplans to unleashindividual and enterprise
initiativebyloosening
the government’s control of the
economy. The bureaucracy will shrink, and it will-focus on
planning less and planning better. Gosplan, the central
planning agency, which has traditionally been involved in
running the economy, will devoteits attention primarily
to scientific,technical and macroeconomicissues. Stateowned enterprises and their workers will be freed from the
petty interference of central bureaucrats; at the same time
they will lose their financial safety net.In the past, workers
received.virtually the same wages whether the enterprises at
T
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Ed A. Hewett is a seniorfeilow at the Brookings Institution
in Washington. His most recent book, Reforming the Soviet Economy: Equality vs . Efficiency, will be published by
Brookings this fall.
t
The Nation.
June 13, 1987
which they worked were
operating at a profit .or a loss. Now
enterprises will have to cover wagesand any investments for
renovation from their own receipts. Poorly performing enterprises may have to let workers go and, if thek financial
problemspersist,mayeven
face bankruptcy. That could
mean transitional unemployment, although the state would
provide generous severance pay and assistance in securing
new jobs.
This systemis not Western capitalism: the government
will still ownalmost all the means ofproduction, and central
planners will continue to have enormous influence. Nevertheless, it introduces elements of capitalism. Furthermore,
Gorbachev's willingness to let individuals and cooperatives
provide a broad range of consumer goods and services will
mean that state enterprises will, for the first time, encounter
real competition.And managers trainedto keep government
officials happy will have to turn their attention to customers, a revolutionary development in the Soviet Union.
It will be a much less forgiving system than the one to
which Soviet citizens have become accustomed. Gorbachev
argues that linking jobs and income to performance follows
the principle of socialistjustice, From each accordingto his
abilities, to eachaccording to hiswork. He also asserts
that his plan will result in better goods and services. However, popular consent to the toughest of these measures will
not be wonthrough appeals to justice alone. For thatreason
PGorbachev presented the Central Committee' Plenum last
January with broad proposals for democratization in the
choice of party, government and enterprise leaders, featuring rnulticandidate elections by secretballot. -
'
The odds against the successofGoKbachev'semerging
economic program are enormous. Aleksei Kosygin's 1965
economic reforms werebased on many of the principles
being articulated by Gorbachev, yet they failed because the
reform package was flawed and the implementation halfhearted, The majority of reform efforts in Eastern Europe
havefailed for similarreasons. To assessGorbachev's
chances, therefore, it is necessaryto look at the details of his
program. Not all the decrees are published,sospeeches
by officials and the debates carried on in the Soviet press
have to fill in some of the remaining gaps.
Historically, Soviet leaders have refused to allow private
enterprise, with one exception: peasants may have small
private plots. In1985 those occupied only114 percent of the cultivated land, but they accountedfor almost 60 percent of the
fruit produced in the country, 28 percent of the meat and
23 percent of the milk. Although there have been experimentswith private and cooperativeenterprises,services
such as automobile and appliance repairs have been s u p
pliedeither though an inadequate state network or the
black market. As ofMay l., however,individuals in the
Soviet Union and members of their immediate family may
drive private taxi cabs, operate cafes or offer a broad range
of repairs, to name just a few of the newly legalized activities. Membersof the labor force may work in. this private
sector only during off-hours, but students, housewives and
pensioners maymake it a full-time occupation. Rules issued
I
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The Nation.
804
June 13, I987
in February allow cooperative enterprisesto supply many of
plaints about ministries that don’t understand or follow the
the same services.
spirit of reform.
If these activities are encouraged by the local authorities
As the new policiesare implemented overthe next several
who license themand if the tax rates on them are not set too
years, the results are likely to be mixed. Growth rates may
high, the supply of consumer service+ should be quicklyand
rise and the supply of consumer services may improve,
but it
is unlikelythat, in the short term, the economy will even apdramatically expanded. Those are verybigif’s.Soviet
proach the transformation Gorbachev envisions. A Soviet
newspapers are already answeringquestions and followleaderwhose greatest interest lay in maintaining power
ing up on complaints about the slow response.from local
would declare suchpartial reform a victory rather than risk
bureaucracies.
In international economicrelationsGorbachev’s
apthe turmoil of a second campaign for change. Fortunately,
proach also departs radically from past procedures, and it
Gorbachev seems to be committed to a genuine improvesignals his determination to integrate the Soviet Union more
ment in the performance of the Soviet economy. If that is
the case,hewillbecompelled
to renew the struggle for
fully into the worldeconomy.SovietleaderssinceIosif
Stalin have forbidden direct. foreign investment
in the Soviet
reform in the early 1990s. He will be able to build on much
of what he did in the 1980s. The multicandidate elections,
Union. Gorbachev, though, has dowed investment in the
for example, will make leaders of people who challengethe
form of joint ventures in which foreign concerns may have
up to 49 percent ownership. Soviet officialsare aggressively
entrenched bureaucrats and who owe their positions to a
system that Gorbachev instituted. If glasnost persists and
seekingforeign partners for such ventures. In addition,
even expands, the continuing debate on the economy and
seventy Soviet enterprisesand twenty ministries will be able
societywillhelpconvincepeopleof
the need for more
to engage directly in foreign trade, weakeiing the central
government’s traditional monopoly.
radical changes. Finally, the significant problems associated
These significantdepartures from thepast explain the exwith this first round of reforms will help Gorbachev in his
citement surrounding Gorbachev and his reforms. Yet many
fight against those conservatives whoargue that it is possible
simply to streamline the existing economic structure.
of the other measures he endorses maintain the essence of
The current reforms, therefore, are best viewed as a tranthe old system. Gorbachev has promised enterprises more
sition: a last effort to revitalize the old system, and the first
autonomy, but the approximately fifty government min&
tries that supervise them,remain powerful and continue to
glimmerings of a new one. If Gorbachev can survive the
struggle now under way-and he seems sufficiently skillful
have a strong incentive to interfere in the daily operations of
the economy. Supraministerial bodies ’with vaguely defined to do so-and if he retains his zealfor economic reform, the
1990s could be a decade of dramatic transformation in the
powers have beencreated to oversee tfie operations. of
those
n
Soviet Union.
fifty ministries, adding a new administrative level to an
alreadyoverbureaucratizedsystem.Meanwhile,
Gosplan
. .
THE LIMITS OF CHANGE
still guides the economy.
A draft law, under discussion since February, sets rules
for the operation of state enterprises and would include a
provision for the election of managers. But the same law
would reaffirm the ministries’ tight control over enterprises.
In fact, under Gorbachev the number of obligatory production targets passed down to ministries from the center has
increased, and new targets, energy conservation and the
LOREN GRAHAM
production of consumer goods have been introduced, despite Gorbachev’s statements that such decisions should be
ehind Mikhail Gorbachev’sefforts to reform the
left to the enterprises.
Soviet Union is the realization that his recent
predecessors allowed the country to slip in the
. Gorbachev is,. by all accounts, a tough leader interested
areas of high technology
that are essential to interboth in the bottom line and in the r a d i d reform of *e econnational power and status. The world is in a different techomy as part of the transformation of society. Then why the
nological and managerial phase than it was when the patgap between rhetoric and reality? Part of the answer liesin
tern of Soviet science, technology and industry were formed,
the bureaucratic resistance that has forced Gorbachev, who
and principles of manufacturing that were once novel and
his power as General Secretary, to move
is still consolidating
more slowly than he would like.That resistance may explain exciting are now obsolete. Many of those principles originated in the United States. The Bolsheviks adopted Henry
the delay on price reforms, which are politically sensitive
becausetheywouldincrease
the costof food. But some
Loren Grahamis a professor of history at the Massachusetts
of the reforms contain the means of their own
undoing.
Forexample,Gorbachev
and Ryzhkovhaveset
forth
Institute of Technology and the author of Science, Philosophy and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union (Columbia
two inconsistent principles: ministries
are not to interfere in
University Press). He recentlyreturned from theSoviet
the operational decisions of enterprises, yet ministries
are
Union, where he was a consultant for a forthcoming Nova
responsible for the performance of “theirl’ enterprises.
Thus, there is a somewhat hollowring to Gorbachev’s camprogram on Soviet science and technology.
=
Science and
Technology
B
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June 13, 1987
,
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The Nation.
Ford’s system of mass production and Frederick Winslow
Taylor’s industrial management theories. V.I. Lenin himself
said, “We must introduce the Taylor system and the scientific American system of increasing the productivity
laborof
throughout all of Russia.”
The American systemof manufacture enabled the Soviet
government to achieve many of its goals from the 1930s to
the 1950s. Today the Soviet Union is the world’s largest producer of a number of basic industrial commodities, including steel, oil,lead, cement and machine tools. Other leading
a different era.
industrialized nations, however, have entered
Theyconsider quantity less important than quality, and
basic industrial commodities less significant than sophisticated products. Flexible manufacture-the
production at
the same factory of one product, then another, then still
another-is beginning to supplant the standard assemblyline process.That shift in techniques has required
a change in
the social relations in industrial plants. The Japanese, with
their emphasis on quality-of-work-life circles, independent
workteams, and “just-in-time”inventory controls, are
the pioneers in this new systemof manufacture, which is being emulated by many Westernindustrial nations.
The Soviet Union has had great difficulty meeting the
quality and reliability standards of the new era. Soviet factories can developa new type of computer chip or disc drive
in prototype form, but they fail to produce it in large numAs Seymour Goodman and
bers because of quality problems.
Bill McHenry, two Western experts
on Soviet computers, observed, recently, “AS of late 1986, the Soviets had yet to
master mass production (defined here as at least 100,OOO
systemsperyear)
of respectablegeneral-purposemicrocomputer configurations with small Winchester-type discs,
non-TV monitors, modems and good-quality printers.” By
the time Sovietindustrialists have solveda given production
problem, Western firms have moved on to something else.
The influential Soviet economic sociologistTatiana Zaslavskaia has argued
that the problem hereis not so much the
technology as the managerial methods and social relations.
In a 1983 memorandum for the Siberian division of the
Academy of Sciences, she wrote that the Soviet production
system treats workers like cogs in a machine. Yet, as she
pointed out, “they are more educated,more cultured, better
informed and more competent” than they were in the past.
“They show greater social and legal awareness. . . . Hence
society has a pressing interest in granting working people
greater leeway.”
So what is Gorbachev doing to change the situation? In
the past two years he has introduced a number of important
reforms:
0 By stipulating that more than one candidate can stand
for election as enterprise director and labor union leader,
among other positions, he is trying to increase the workers’
interest and participation in their workplaces.
5 Discouraged by the industrial ministries’ disinclination
to introduce innovative production methods, he has created
Interbranch Scientific-Technical Complexes, conglomerates
combining both research and production facilities, and
known as MNTKs. Most of the MNTKs are mn-by’the
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Meeting Those.Peopleacross the Pole
Only a very tiny percentage of the peoplewho would die in a
nuclear war have ever met anybody from theother side, or even
i m a g ~ s dsuch a meeting. Seemsa little strange..
The good news is that throughthe initiative of individual citizens
been
and private groups, thousands of Americans have recently
going to the SovietUnion as “citizen diplomats.” Increasingly, they
are also able to welcome Soviet citizens here
in the U.S.
The encounters between these
grassroots diplomats have been
challenging. surprising, satisfying, even heart-wanning. Stereotypes are being replacedby direct knowledge, and political enniity
by personal connections.
Through stones, background articles,and practical information,
this publication tells how you can become involved- as a Baveler.
as a participantin your owncommunity, or as a viewer of “spacebridges” or user of other electroniclinks between thetwo societies.
Global Parlners: Citizen Exchange w i f h the Soviet Union
(a 101-pageillustraredguidcinrnagazinef&at)
$5 95 plus $1 00postage
Ark Communications institute, 47 Lalayene Circle, Suite 282A
Lalayette, CA 94549
806
The Nation.
Academy of Sciencesrather than the industrial ministries
because Gorbachev considers scale.
the Academy more enlightened
about modern technology and methods of management. It
is also less bureaucratic and resistant to change. Thus, for
the f i s t time in Soviet historythe Academy has actual control over about a dozen large-scale high-techproduction facilities. One of the mostimpressiveisBiogen, a geneticengineering enterprise headed bythe Shemiakin Institute of
the Academy. Its laboratories are in Moscow, wherethe best
scientists are located, but its factory is near Riga, where
some of the most sophisticated workers inthe Soviet Union
live. The MNTKs, which willbe permitted to keep some of
their profits, work in fields such as chemical catalysis, industrial robots and photoelectronics.
Q By passing the Lawon Individual Labor Activity, which
allows private citizens to engage in profitable small-scale
trade, Gorbachev hopes not only to improve consumer services but also to provide high-tech consulting servicesto local industries. AndreiErshov of the Siberian division of the
that thelaw willbe
Academy of Sciences said last December
extended to authorized computer programmers working on
their own time. It is highly likely, therefore, that in the next
few years the Soviet Union will have independent software
programmers, all of whom will be licensed by the state. '
0 Gorbachev has introduced gmpriemka, a system of government inspection of factories, to guarantee high-quality
output. The inspectors,whowork
not for the factories
themselves but for a separate governmentagency,have
the power to reject products that do not measure up to
I
June 13, 1987
standards. They have already used
that authority on a rather
.1
wide
0 He has introduced educational reforms that emphasize
industrial skills in secondary schools, stronger researchprograms in university departments and application of the latest
management techniques in industry.
# He is forcing directorsof scientific research institutes
to
retire at 70, thus opening the way for younger, more creative
scientists and overcoming the lethargy that prevails in many
such institutes.
4 Seizing on the Chernobyl disaster as the epitome of design failureand lax management practice, Gorbachev has
extended his policyof glasnost to allow discussions with Western specialists about the characteristics and problems of
Soviet atomic power plants. He recently stated that he will
consider outside inspection of some plants by the International Atomic Energy Agency, based
in Vienna. In addition,
both the technical design of the plants and their management are being changed. Gorbachev does, however, plan to
proceed with an expansion of the atomic power industry..
!j Finally,'by allowing Andrei Sakharov to return to Moscow from exile and by loosening controls on cultural life,
Gorbachev is attemptingto foster an intellectual and political
atmosphere that scientisfsand engineers will find much more
congenial thari the one that prevailed in the Brezhnev era.
Will these reforms work? Many of the changesthat Gorbachev is introducing are belated attempts to catch up-with
deveIopments that began ten or fifteen years ago in other
advancedcountries. It is inevitable that the reforms will
A Day at S c h d in MQSCQW
An intimate portrait
of Soviet school children
produced by
the International Children's Project
Harvard Medical school
A twenty-four minute videotape whichgives a compelling
personal portrait of Soviet children in a typical day at school. A
teacher's guide is available to accompanyand
videotape when used in aneducational setting.
Videotape . . . . . . . . $50.00
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Make checks payable to. Center for Psychological Studies, and send to:
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June 13, 1987
The Nation.
807
have beneficial effects, particularly in the short term. Aleconomies and convertiblecurrenciesexposetheir weakready, improvements in technical proficiency, productivity
nesses early enough so that they can take corrective action.
and scientific creativity are visible. More than fifty senior
The Soviet Union, shieldedfrom international competition,
Soviet trade officials visited New York City last December
often does not evenrecognizehow far it hasslipped in
to offer technological innovations for licensing and sale;
crucial areas until the gap is very wide.
they announcedthat they had sold systems
to U.S. companies
Some of Gorbachev’s reforms show that the old bad habfor electromagnetic casting, large-diameter gas-pipe welding its of administrativedirection from above have not yet been
and ion-gun hardening of industrial cutting tools. In addibroken. His system of government quality-inspection,
for intion, several of theMNTKs have sold biological products, in- stance, is retrogressive by
contemporary management standcluding interleukin2, hepatitis B vaccine and single-cell proards, and it has even had some adverse effects. Last Deteins, on international markets. And the quality of Soviet
cember the Soviet newspaperIzvmtia reported that workers
biological and electronic products is improving.
at the giant KamAZ truck factory, located in the city of
so far have been psychologi- Brezhnev, held “stormy protests” against inspections, which
The most significant changes
cal.Who would havedreamed three years ago that Sakharov
caused them to fall short of their production quotas. Rewould callon Soviet intellectualsto support Gorbachev and
ports from other Soviet factories indicatethat in some cases
his reforms? That was a tremendous victoryfor Gorbachev,
workers’ wages havedropped as much as 25 percent because
of penalties imposed by the inspectors. Under capitalism,
even if Sakharov continues to cause difficulties in other
ways.During a recentvisit to theSovietUnion, I found
modern management methods emphasize worker self-interest
among the country’s intellectualsa degree of support for the
and market incentives asthe means of insuring high quality.
leadership that wasgreater than I hadeverwitnessedin
By contrast, Gorbachev’s reform is reminiscentof past Sovimany trips overthe past twenty-six years.By easing political
et administrative measures, enforced
from above. The events
control and creating a vital cultural scene, Gorbachev has
at KamAZ and elsewheresuggest that the reforms that
strengthened his.case among the elite whofavor modernizaappeal to intellectuals and managers may limit Gorbachev’s
tion and on whom he depends for further progress.
popularity among the workers.
The prognosis is gloomier, though, if one remembersthat
Gorbachev faces oppositionto many of his reforms in the
Gorbachev’s goal isnot merely to improve the situation but
area of science and technology. The expanded power ofthe
to make the Soviet Union a world-class competitor in high
Academy of Sciencesand the introduction of the MNTK systechnology. The other great industrial nations have advantem to spur production innovations may result in a few
tages over the Soviet Union in this competition: their open
successful projects, but they have also created resentment
Citizen Exchange Council facilitates
citizen diplomacy and professional diafor
logue between Americans and Soviets
community organizations, professional
associations and educational institutions.
Thenty-five years’ experience gives
CEC unparalleled authorityin the
U.S.S.R. Combined with savvy communications and professional logistics,
that
means unmatched effectiveness.CEC
accepts incomingand reciprocal projects,
as well as group travel abroad.
In addition, CEC offers its own U.S.S.R.
programs for nonspecialists. Judgefor
yourself what glasnost and perestroika
mean in practice. Our “CitizenExchange
Adventure”programs feature:
small size (generally, 15-25 participants)
skilled staff to answer predeparture questions
briefing materials, participants’manual and
reading list
CEC facilitators accompanying every group
orientation and enroute evaluation meetings
free one-year membershipand newsletter
I
CEC’s program design and support
.
services have been selected
by. Billy Joel,
the Chautauqua Institution,the Interna-,
tional Center of Photography, Sister
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W e know whatweke doing in the
‘
I
U.S.S.R.
For more informationcall or write:
Citizen Exchange Council
18 E 41sl St
CEC IS an Independent nonpartrsab not-for-profit carporallon
New York, NY 10017 Tel. (212) 889-7960
The Nation.
808
’
among the government ministries. Furthermore, the MNTK
system doesnot offer a permanent organizational model for
Soviet industry.The Academy has itsown work to do in fundamental research and, eventually, whenthe high-tech facilities are returned to the industrial ministries for management, the oId problems are likely to re-emerge.
DespiteGorbachev’s reforms, the SovietUnion is still
limited in its ability to provide the environment necessary
for rapid technologicaladvances. The relevant question,
therefore, is not Can theSoviet Union catch up? but, rather,
Can the Soviet Union avoid fallingfurther behind?. Thisis a
transitional period. If Gorbachev can keep the technological
gap between the Soviet Union
and the West at a constant number of years, say eightor ten, he wiU be doing well. In relation to the world’s industrial leaders the country will then be
in a state of what the economist Joseph Berliner has called
laggingequilibrium. There are some advantages for the
“lagging” nation, because it can learn from the mistakes
and successes of the leaders. On the other hand, the Soviet
Union may settle fixedly into a state of lagging disequilibrium, as it did under Brezhnev, and continue to fall behind
in high technology.If that happens, Gorbachev may encounter
serious difficultiesin the next few years,as he tries to satisfy
rising expectations at home.
It is too early to predict whether Gorbachevcan move the
Soviet Union from lagging disequilibrium to lagging equilibrium. However, unless he makes even more thorough reforms than any he hasso far discussed, or theWest experiences
seriouseconomicdifficulties
and its rate of technological
innovation declines, the gap between the Soviet Union and
other leading industrial countries will continue to grow.
A DELICATE BALANCE
The Nationalitv
Question
RONALD GRIGOR S U N Y
ikhail Gorbachev recently suggestedto visiting
membersofCongress that the United States
learn from Soviet experience and set up separate states for blacks and other minority
groups. His misunderstanding of America’sracial conflicts
was matched by his conviction that the problem of multinationality is best resolved by the Leninist program of territorial autonomy. Karl Marx had spoken of the czarist empire as the “prisonhouse of nations”; his ideological off-
Ronald Grigor Suny, professor of Armenian and Russian
history at the University of Michigan, is the author of The
Baku Commune, 1917-1918 (Princeton University Press),
Armenia in the Twentieth Century (Scholars Press) and
The
Making of the Georgian Nation (Indiana University Press
and Hoover Institution Press). Heis currently at work on a
biography of the young Stalin.
June 13, 1987
spring in the Kremlin laud the druzhba narodov (“friendship of the peoples”) in the Soviet Union, and predict that a
unified Soviet people is being formed from the more than
one hundred distinct ethnic groups in their vast country.
In stark contrast, Western analysts refer routinely to the
Soviet “nationality problem” and foresee a “crisis,” Whole
careers have been based
on expectations ofa Moslem revolt.
Last December’s riots in Alma Ata, capital of Kazakhstan,
confirmed in many minds that the Gorbachev government
would find itself reaping the whirlwind of a seventy-year
failure to solve this most threatening of Soviet dilemmas.
Although the goal of the druzhba narodov policy is to
remove the continuing prejudices, inequalities and ethnic
stereotyping that plague relations among Soviet nationalities, the typical Western view is that Soviet policy has consistentlybeendirected
toward “Russification.” In that
view, the histories of distinctpeoples are’ merged into a
single undifferentiated tale of oppression under an alien
Marxist regime,the highlights of whichare forced denationalization and the resultant explosion of nationalist resistance
in the period after Iosif Stalin’s death. Only recently have a
not simply as a problemofregime manipulation but as
part of a variegated process of nation-buildingunder quite
not simply as a problem of regimemanipulation but as part
of a variegatedprocess of nation-building under quite
specific and extraordinary historical circumstances.
From their first days in power Soviet leaders were aware
of the potential danger of anti-Russian nationalism. V.I.
Lenin proposeda federal structure for the Soviet Union, the
fmst state in the world to base territorial divisions on ethnicity. Although theoretically permittedto choose freely between joining the new Soviet federation or remaining independent, in practice most of the non-Russian republics lost
their sovereignty and were integrated into the Soviet Union
either through the activities of local Communist parties or
forcibly by the Red Army. Lenin’s policy of korenizatsia
(“rooting,” or nativization) in the 1920s promoted ethnic
culture that was “socialist in content, national in form.” Several.groups that had been on the verge of extinction-most
of Turkish
dramatically the Armenians, who were the victims
genocide in the twilight years ofthe Ottoman Empire-were
granted political, educational and cultural institutions.
In the 1930s, as Stalinism descended on the country, the
process of ethnic nationalization was drastically curtailed.
Despite his Georgian origins, Stalin began to reverse many
of thegains of the non-Russians.At the end of WorldWar I1
he went so far as to order the deportation of several small
nationalities from their historic homelands to the deserts
of Central Asia, ostensibly because they had collaborated
with the Germans.
Only after Stalin’s death, in 1953, did the contradictory
effects of Stalinismfullyrevealthemselves.
Ethnic consolidation had never stopped, and the national republics
were more fully ethnic, both demographically and culturally, than they had ever been. By the late 1950s nativization
had created an Armenia, for example, in which 89 percent
of the population was kmenian; Tbilisi, the capital of
Georgia, had a Georgian majority for the first time in cenL
.
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June 13, 1987
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The Nation.
turies. As contact between peoples had increased, particularly in cities dominated by Russians, the potential for intermarriage, migration to distant cities and assimilation into
Russian culture had also grown. The freer political atmosphere of the Khrushchev years permitted bolder expression
of national feelings, and a dissident nationalism appeared
in severalrepublics-in
Lithuania, where the Catholic
Church served as a focal point; in the Ukraine; and even
among Russians, who developed a radical nationalism with
a neofascist flavor.
In dealing withthe republics, both Nikita Khrushchev and
Leonid Brezhnevapplied a policy that might bestbe characterized as benign neglect. Local leaderships were given relalong as they
tively free reign to run theirrepublicsas
managed to contain nationalist “deviationsyywithin acceptable limits and to perform reasonably well economically.
Those regional leaders had unusually long tenures, and the
political machines they created wereoiledby corruption,
bribery, widespread black-marketeering and ethnic favoritism, particularly in personnel matters. The most flagrant
abuses were in Transcaucasia and Central Asia.
Eventually, Brezhnev took action. In 1969, Geidar AIiev,
a native of Azerbaijan who had made his career in the local
K.G.B., was named first secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party andbegan a vigorous cleanup of the republic’s
political and economic apparatus. Dozens of officials were
removed, and corruption was severely punished. Three years
later, Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian Minister of Internal Affairs, took over in Georgia and for more than ten
years tried to restore order. Although the results of those
campaigns were mixed, the struggle against corruption was
seen as the necessary first step toward reviving economic
productivity. In November, 1982, Brezhnev was succeeded
by the former head of the K.G.B., Yuri Andropov, who
launched a national campaign against corruption and for
greater labor discipline.
In the past five yearsthe policy of benign neglect
has been
replaced by a vigorous attempt to bring the benefits of economic modernization to non-Russian areas. Gorbachev and
his associates argue for democratization in the party, more
self-managementin economic enterprisesand renewed initiative by officials.Simultaneously, they are pushing for an integrated and more efficient Soviet economy. Such
a program
threatens the entrenched elites of the non-Russian republics.
Democracy, claims Gorbachev, is not to be confused with
local license to exploit the system, and he is determined to
eliminate the abuse of power by ethnic political machines.
In late 1985, when Gorbachev replaced the party leaders
of Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Kirghizia with local nationals, there was little protest. But last December, when
Politburo member Dinmukhamed Kunayev, who
had headed
the Communist Party in Kazakhstan since 1964, wasreplaced by a Russian, Gennady Kolbin, Kazakh students
in the capital citysurged into the streets, set cars on
fire, smashed store windows and beat up passers-by. The
Soviet press called them hooligans, but the anger of the
students was genuine and clearly political.
Before Kunayev gained the party leadership, Kazakhstan
~
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809
had often had Russian bosses; Brezhnev
had headed the party
in the mid-1950s. But Kunayev’s long reign had consolidated Kazakh influence in the party apparatus, the educational system and other institutions at a time when the Russian and European populations in the republic’s cities and
northeastern regionsweregrowingrapidly.Slightly
more
than 40 percent of Kazakhstan’s population is Russian; only
a little more than one-third is Kazakh. The percentage of
Kazakhs in the republic has been rising over the past thirty
years, yet the only areas that Kazakhs dominate ethnically
are the rural southern districts. Alma Ata, located in the
south, is overwhelmingly Russian. It is not surprising that
,
:.I
/
A
A
Kazakh students from the south, many of them not fluent in
Russian, were among the. instigators of the riots. As the
Soviet Union lurches forward into economic modernization,
the position of a people still living largelyin ruralareas and
unable to speak Russian easiIy is particularly tenuous, unless
special-efforts are made by the state. Kunayev had tried to
offset the demographic weakness of the Kazakhs in their
own republic with a kind of affirmative action at both political and cultural levels, and perhaps anxiety about the
loss of that privileged status added to the volatile mix that
brought the students into the streets.
The events inAlma Ata starkly highlighted the difficulties
faced by the Moscow-based reformers. Since the early 1960s
the Soviet Union has been primarily an urbansociety, and it
is preciselyin the larger cities that themost serious confrontations between ethnic groups occur. Many Estonians in
Tallinn, a city with an increasing Russian population, are so
alienated from the Russians that .they refuse to speak the
official language. In Baku, relations between Azerbaijanis
and Armenians remain tense. It is inaccurate to speak of the
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810
The Nation.
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June 13, 1987
nationality question in the Soviet Upion in terms of minority
cally made up an important part of educated urban Russia.
politics as it is understood:in the West, for many ethnic
Whether the-consolidated and ethnicallyconsciousnationalities that now make up hdf the Soviet population will
groups form majorities in their home republics. In fact, the
“minority problem” inthe national republics revolves
be allies or opponents of Gorbachev’s perestroika, or rearound-how to deal with the Russian minority. organization, is yet to be determined. The new generation
At this moment Gorbachev may be most politically vulof ethnic leaders, many of whom share his aspirations for
nerable in the ethnic republics. The fear of Russian domieconomic and political reform, no longer havethe option of
nance is strong among non-Russians, even whenthe considsatisfying their ethnic constituents by conspiring to rip off
the system or pandering to, nationalist sentiments. Yet they
erable benefits of Soviet development are acknowledged.
For their own strategic and economic reasons the central auwould ignore at their peril the voices of those whose aspithorities favor bilingualism, but ethnic intellectuals remain
rations have been too long denied. Whether the political
wary.about any,expansion of Russian instruction. When, in
and cultural demands of non-Russians can be met within the
the spring of 1978, Moscow attempted to remove a clause
Soviet system or will require the empire’s breakup, so defrom the Georgian constitution affirming Georgian as the
sired by politiciansand pundits in the West, depends on the
sole official language of the republic, thousands of students
depth and the extent ofthe current Soviet metamorphosis. 0
demonstrated in central Tbilisi until Shevardnadze agreed to
restore the disputed clause. That may be the most dramatic
REVOLUTION BY CULTURE
example ofpopular pressure forcing the state to abandon its
plans for non-Russian peoples.
Gorbachev has yet to articulate any clear nationality policy, but he seems to have developed a greater realism about
the power of separate ethnic cultures. An earlier official enthusiasm for the- “fusion” of nationalities into a single Soviet people has quietly been tempered,
and attention has been
A N D d I VOZNESENSKY
given to those-social scientists, such as Iulian Bromlei, who
have emphasizedthe development of ethnic culture as sepa:%omesee the act of confession,as it is beginning to be
rate from the mocle of production. Gorbachev’s push for
practiced in my country, as a necessary and everyglasnost and democratization aims, potentially, toward
dhy thing. For me glasnost was born in the language
greater -cultural, even political, autonomy for nationalities;
of Leo Tolstoy-the idea of resisting evil withan active conscience. He taught us that no misfortune belongs
Gorbachev’s solution to the contradictions between his
only to someone else. Maybe the word glasnost, like sputeconomic reconstruction and the Soviet Union’s ethnic peculiaritieshasbeen
toappoint reformist cadres in nonnik, requires no translation, for confession can resist evilthe whole world knows that.
Russian areas. But the fiasco in Kazakhstan, as well as his
An important example of glasnost occurred on Februfailure to remove the leader of the Ukrainian party, Vladimir Shcherbitsky, early this year, demonstrated that ethnic
ary 12, 1987,when‘the friends’of Boris Pasternak and of
political elitesstill retain considerable local support and
Russian culture agreed’ that‘ the 1958 resolution expelling
power. Officials are-awarethat they musttake national conPasternak from-the Writers? Union had to be rescinded. vue
sciousness into account before it explodes into separatist namet and voted in-the same ornate conference-mom where,
tionalism, and Gorbachev’s goal-of a “single national eco-thirty years earlier, the ‘great poet ,had been cast out of
the union. The m-eeting-;-also.*resolved that Pasternak’s
nomic complex” may -have
to adjust. to the new, pcblic
.world-famous novel;’@oCt& Zhivago, a victim of the nonopinion of the national republics.
Recently, the government has begun
to deal withthe anomglasnost era, be published,at home and that the dacha where
he lived-and worked
be;&ned into a museum, a site for readalous position of Soviet Jews, a “nationality” that since
the 1930s has not had thesame rights to its language and reings of his work andlfor international literary conferences.
ligious practices.that ethnichies with theirown national terriMany who spoke at the meetinginFebruary revealed that
tory have enjoyed.The dilemma of Soyiet Jews has been
that.
Nikita Khrushchev had not evenreadthe novel: he had been
-they are-in Soviet society but-not of it; they are encouraged
misled by intriguers and others who make petty distinctions
about what is pro- and anti-Soviet in literature, speaking the
to assimilate but, .at the same time, are regarded as outlanguage of repression. How could so many of our writers,
siders. The solution for many has been to leave the country,
among them decent,worthy people, have joined that shameyet the governnient has put innumerable obstacles in their
ful campaign against Pasternak and, as if spellbound, invent
way. (In practice, emigrationis not a right for any citizen of
lies about his nonexistent crimes? It is important to underthe Soviet Union, but ithas been givenas a special privilege
.to those peoples-Jews,Armenians
and VolgaGermansstand how it happened’if the lessons of history are not to be
who havearticulate supporters abroad.) Gorbachev appears
Andrei Voznesensky is one of the Soviet Union’s leading
to be trying to avoid the error of Brezhnev, who let Soviet
poets. His most recent book is An Arrow in the Wall (Henry
‘Jewsbecome pawns in the East-West struggle.As he extends
his‘hand to the Soviet intelligentsia, a powerful ally in reHoft). This article was translatedfrom Russian by Antoniform, he must resolve the dilemma of Jews, who have histori- nu W. Bouis.
=
A PoetbView
Of Glasnost
S
I
June 13, 1987
The Nation.
wasted. Truth awaits its triumph. After our meeting a poet
came up to me and made a confession that I later heard
from many other writers: "I'm sorry that I wasn't at that
discussion; my soulnowseeksrepentance.
The guiltis
on us all."
All our people must have the
right to read everything
and then to decide for themselves wheretruth resides. After
Pasternak every other blank in our culture must be filled.
Not a single violated life must remainhidden.
.
But do not think that all isgoingsmoothly.
You must
understand the dramatic content of our lives today, the difficult revolution that is under way. We are in a spiritual
revolution, a fight to the death between the "new thinking"
and the still very powerful reactionary system that defines
our society. Yuri Bondarev, a well-known writer, recently
described Russianliterature as being besieged by destructive
criticism, comparingit to the Red Armyunder attack by the
Nazis in1941. He called for a new Stalingrad to preserve national values. This is how reactionaries perceiveglasnost, as
an invading Nazi army! Things
are not yet where they should
be, but the process has begun,and it appears to be headedin
the right direction.
The renaissanceis not only in publishing,with
the
appearance of our first editions of Vladimir Nabokov,
Vladislav Khodasevich and Nikolai Gumilev, all long forbidden, as well as books by Anatoly Rybakov and other.
contemporary authors, whose manusciipts languished for
decades in desk drawers. It is also taking place among the
media, which have leveledharsh and direct criticism against
bureaucratic red'tap'e and corruption. It is a struggle for the
democratization ofall. spheres of life-for free elections,
human rights, economic reforms and so on. The goal is the
rejection of dogmatic formulas and the rehabilitation of
personalresponsibility. The recentlyreleasedSovietfilm
Repentance is more than a graphic retelling of the crimesof
the Stalin era; it is a film about thepsychology of despotism
and inhuman cruelty.
We are undergoing not a cultural revolution but a revolution by culture. Recently I went'to Vitebsk, where Maic
Chagall's house will be preserved, The hope is to create a
museum there, to return the forbidden art of a master to
the country in which he was born and from which he was
a yeas
banned for decades. This would have been impossible
and a half ago; it's not easy even now. I look forward toan
exhibition of Chagall's paintingsat the Pushkin Museum of
Fine Art in Moscow in July of this year. I hope that everyone who is able will visit Moscow and Vitebsk, and that
those in the West who own Chagall's work
will lendit tothe
Soviet people.Other visual art will follow, new and old"aI1
uncensored.
Having just completed a poetry-reading tour in the
United States, 1 must end on another personal note. I was
struck by the range of reactions to glasnost within the imigrC community, It is a shame that some reactionary 6migrCs
have joined with the forces in the Soviet Union that deny
progress and democratization, that there are Russiansin
the United States who do not hope for improvements. But approprlate
on my last nightin New York City,I read to a packed house
~
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in Brooklyn, where I was introduced by the 6migr6 artist
Mikhail Chemiakin, and where I was bombarded by eager
questions. That night, I was delightedto see that the love of
poetry still
burns
bright
in
so many CmigrCs.
0
IS THE SOVIET UNION CHANGING?
The Emigr6s
Speak Out
*
American publication9rarelyreport
that Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms have thrownthe Soviet t?migr&community
into political disarray. The skeptics, who warn against succumbing to the allure of glasnost, continue to exercise an
enormous influence on American perceptions of the Soviet
Union.
For this special issue, we asked PmigrPs working in different professions and holding diverse political opinionsto
discuss whether the changes in various areas of domestic
p o k y over the past two yearssuggest that a process of
significant change is under way in the Soviet Union. Here
we publish several of their responses-positive and negative-to recent developments.
VALERY CHALIDZE
It is quite possible that we are witnessing events that will
lead to gradual democratization in the Soviet Union. It requires courage on the part of the Soviet leadership to promote suchchanges, and we in the West must be brave
enough to believe in what they are doing.
But if Gorbachev’s reforms are t o succeed, the Soviet
Union must abandon the myth ofa unified society and deal
withthereality
of enormous socialcontradictions. The
leadership must also adopt the principle of separation of
power, both within the government and between the party
and the government.
Valery Chalidze, along with Andrei Sakharov and Andrei
Tverdokhlebov, was one of the founders of the Committee
f o r Human Rights in the Soviet Union. In 1972 he received
permission to travel to the United States and,soon after his
arrival, was stripped of his citizenship. In 1979 he established his own publishing house, Chalidze Publications,
for
Russian language books. In I985 Chalidze received a MacArthur Fellowship.
ALEXANDER YANOV
Andrei Sakharov and Margaret Thatcher see a significant
change in Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union. I couldn’t
agree more. The problem, as I see it, is not whether reform
is -under way in Moscow but whether this latest attempt at
political modernization is asreversibleaspreviousones.
Remember Lenin’sNew Economic Policy(NEP) in the 1920s
and Khrushchev’s thaw in the 1950s. The first turned out to
be a prologue to, if not a provocation of, a brutal counter-
reform; the second, the precursor of Brezhnevian paralysis.
As a historian, I must point out that this has been the outcome of all reformist attempts in Russia since the 1550s.
What is different about the current attempt is that it takes
place in the age of Chernobyl and Star Wars. For the first
time in history the future of humanity may depend on the
fate of reform in Russia. It is, therefore, imperative for the
West to understand the causes of the country’s persistent
failure at reform and to ask how the international community might help insure the irreversibility of the changes now
occurring. Unfortunately, there is no evidence to suggest
that American intellectuals, let alone American politicians,
realizethe importance of politicalchange in the Soviet
Union and its relation to the future of their own country.
Something is definitely wrong with the West’s current approach to the issue of change in the SovietUnion. Perhaps
that is the approach we should be discussing right now.
Alexander Yanov worked as a journalist and politicalcommentator in Moscow for twenty years until he emigrated, in
1974. He teaches Russian history and Soviet politics at the
City University ofNew York. His book, The Russian Challenge and the Year 2000, will be publkhed this yearby Basil
Blackwell.
ARON KATSENELINBOIGEN
I am convinced that the changes proposed by Gorbachev
are not part of a public relations ploy for the benefit of the
West but are attempts to invigorate the Soviet system. Yet
the country’seconomic and political stagnancy, coupled
with the system’s long traditions of chauvinism and expansionism, create a danger that glasnost will benefit Soviet
reactionaries rather than reformers.
In the official press, reactionaries are indulging in unrestrained Great Russian chauvinism and anti-Semitism in
the guise of protecting the environment, safeguarding Russian cultureand preserving historical monuments.
The Russophiles have even used Gorbachev’s antialcoholism campaign
as a vehicle for demagogy, arguing that Russians historically
drank tea, not hard liquor. Glasnost has brought forth
bands of “ideological hoodlums” and “nationalistic Robin
Hoods,” who beat up and rob those whom they suspect of
pro-Western attitudes.
Aron Katsenelinboigen was chiefof the department of complex systems at the Central Mathematical Institute of the
Soviet Academy of Sciences. and aprofessor of economics
at Moscow State University. He emigrated to the United
States in I973 and is now a professor of social systems
sciences ut the University of Pennsylvania.
~
LEV KOPELEV
.
.
..
“
~~
y,!q
In the wake of the Chernobyl diSa”tef,%-be2arnewoi3vious
that Mikhail Gorbachevand his supporters realizedthat basic
and essential changes had to be made in the Soviet system.
Continuing calls for perestroika, glusnostand demokratizatsia
are not simply propaganda; they are also signs of a new
~
The Nation.
June 13, I987
~~~
813
direction in government policyand public life. The liberation
I believe that the K.G.B. will not allow the wide distribuof Andrei Sakharov and of many other political prisoners,
tion of powerful computersand other means of communicathe loosening of censorship and the changes in the Soviet
tion that are now available in the United States. Therefore,
media testify to that. The economic, ideological and social
the pace of development in the newest areas of technology
will remain relatively slow, and the Soviet Union will lag
bases of the system &e openly being called into question.
When Gorbachev says,We need democracy like we need
behind the United States in those fieldsuntil the K.G.B. and
air, he is repeating whatSakharov and others have saidand
the party relinquish theircontrol. I do not anticipate such a
written for many years. Without the broad participation of
surrender of control within the next decade.
However, reform depends on the efforts of ordinary citipeople in the management of the economy and in political
life, withoutglasnost, the economic and social crisisthat has
zens, in the Soviet Union and in the West, in pushing along
been building for years cannot be overcome. It will also be
the process of democratization.
impossible to have dktente.
Reformers in the Soviet Union still meet sustained resist- Yuri F. Qrlov, a founder of the Moscow Helsinki Watch
ance. If the opponents of reform triumph, we could face a
Group, spent more than nine years in a labor camp and in
global disaster. On the other hand, economic, political and
exilefor hk work on behag of human righfs.He was released
moral support for perestroika could lead to world peace.
from exile in Siberia in October 1986 and now lives in the
United States.He is a senior scientistin the physics departLev Kopelev was a Ieading member of the dissident intellec- ment at Cornell University. This statement was translated by
tuat communityin Moscow workingfor a more democratic Cathy Fitzpatrick.
Soviet society. After Andrei Sakharov wasforced into exile,
Kopelev and his wve, Raisa, were given permission
to travel
YLADIMIR"0V
to W a t Germany. Soon qfter, they were deprived of their
For more than seventy years many people in the WestcitizenshipandnowliveinWestGermany.
His memoirs
have
been expecting social, economicand spiritual miracles
havebeenpublishedinthreevolumes:
To Be Preserved
from
the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, had there not been
Forever, The Education of a True Believer (both from
individual
and sporadic successes in each of those areas, the
Harper & Row) and Ease My Sorrows (Random House).
miracles would never have occurred. Nevertheless,
the number
of
optimists
in
the
world
has
not
diminished.
Now
they
YURI F. ORLOV
expect political miracles.The current situation in the Soviet
For the first time in many decades a leaderwhois a
Union has created an almost euphoric hysjeria in the West,
common-sense thinker has emerged in the Soviet Union. Realan epidemic that touches the most diverse and sometimes inimprovements have been made. Nevertheless, radical change compatible social and political'circles, including intellectuwill not occur in the near future. The sixth article of the
als, artists, industrialists and dignitaries of the church. But
Constitution, according to which all state and public organiwhat is really happening in the Soviet Union today?
zations must work under the leadership of the Communist
The totalitarian system is at an ideological and economic
Party, will not be repealed. As before, criticism of nuclear
impasse. It has set a goal of making a senile system more
policies and of the government's military and foreign polimobile and effective without renouncing anyof its strategic
cies will be virtually prohibited.
Without special permission,
goals. We can ask, What does the so-called free world find'
it will be impossible to learn about themilitary budget, the
so reassuring in all this? Today's optimists appear to me as
location of military bases, the number and type of missiles,
tomorrow's hanged men rejoicing in their own demise.
etc. As before, the decisionsto send troops and arms abroad,
If Mikhail Gorbachev wantsto become the father of dedisor to remove them, will be made in secret, without public
mocracy in his own country, he must have apartner for this
cussion. The war in Afghanistan will most likely continue
procreation, and thatpartner, the mother of the new social
until the resistance is completely suppressed.
Contact berelations, can only be the opposition. Without opposition
tween Sovietcitizens and foreignerswiu remain underthe conthe Soviet leadership's gameof democracy will, in the long
trol of the K.G.B. Regrettably, glasnost will not take place
run, prove to be nothing but ideological onanism.
on the large scale that is so necessary for establishing trust.
Of course, you can
refute my position by sayingthat there
Free emigration and travel will probably not be permitted.
is a little more liberty in the Soviet Union today than there
Still, I am sure that the limited but important liberties that
was five or ten years ago. On that subject my friend Eugene
have beengranted recently will be strengthened, especially in Ionesco recently made a comment very much to the point:
the cultural and academic spheres, and that-thecriticism of
"Being a littIe free is like being a little pregnant." That is
middle-level bureaucrats will continue to be tolerated.
why, in order to become if not the father then at least the
Economicchanges will be significant, but, for purely
midwife of democracyin the Soviet Union, Gorbachev must
ideological- reasons,"they ,will not be carried out to their
guarantee that theexistingsterilesystemfinallybecomes
logical conclusion. For example, freedom of initiative for
pregnant. And, again, the only force capable of helping in
production managers requires the creation of a large free
that enterprise is and always will be the opposition.
market and of independent trade unions, but the party will
Will Gorbachev have the strength and courage to act on
not permit either one.
the basis of this elementary truth? That is the question.
~
I
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~~~
~
~
.
~~
.
~.
~
On it depends not only the Soviet Union’s destiny but also
yours and mine.
Vladimir Maximov, a novelist and short-story writer, was
expelled from the Soviet Writers’ Union in1972. He emigrated
to the West in 1974 and now livesin Park. He is the editor in
chief of themagazine Kontinent, whichhe founded with
Andrei Sakharovand Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
I
VLADIMIR VOINOWCH
There is a lot of news in the Soviet Union, and nothing
new. Gorbachev callson the people to make perestroika irreversible, but he hasn’t taken a single irreversiblestep himself. A cease-fire has been announced in Afghanistan, but
the war is still on. The Law on Individual Labor Activity,
which is supposed to allow people to engage in limited private enterprise, contains so many restrictions that it won’t
have any significant effect.
The regulations on travel abroad
are even worse than they were before. Some dissidents have
been released from prison as pardoned criminals, not innocents, and the articles of the criminal codethat put them
in prison for their devotion toglasnost and democratization
are still in use. Propaganda, both internal and external,
looks moreimpressive but isbasicallythesame.Many
previously banned literary works are now published, but a
huge number of books and the names of their authors (includingmyown)remainstrictlysuppressed.Gorbachev
promises to break with the “mistakes of the past,” but only
carefully measuredhints about those mistakes can be found
in official speeches.
The paradox is that even without irreversible moves on
Gorbachev’s part, the movement he has started is irreversible. The calls for candor, openness and democratization are
generating great hope, encouraging social activity and. exciting masses of people, not only in the Soviet Union but
also in Eastern Europe. If the Soviet rulers are able to keep
developments under control and push them forward step by
step, the Sovietsystemwillchangeradicallyin
the near
future. If they becomeafraid that the process is movingtoo
fast and try to put the brakes on, or even to go back, there
will also be significant,maybe even catastrophic, consequences. In either case, profound changes are inevitable.
VladimirVoinovich hasbeencalledthe
SovietUnion’s
1973 he sent thefirst part
greatest contemporary satirist. In
of his novel The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin to the West. In 1974hewasexpelled
from the Writers’ Union but continued to send his books to
the West..’
He was forced to emigrate in 1980, after writing a
satirical letter to Izvestia protesting Andrei Sakharov ’s deportation to G o r e . In 1981, Voinovich was stripped of his
citizenship. He now lives in West Germany.
ZHQRES MEDVEDEV
The developments of the past two years can hardly be
called significant reforms. The policy of glasnost has had
some impact on cultural life, particularly in the emergence
~
~
~-
~~
ofinvestigative journalism, but none of the changesintroduced so far is really new, or even
as radical as thosepromoted by Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 and between 1961 and
1962. Censorship has not been abolished but simply transferred from the K.G.B. to the Central Committee’s agitprop department. Similar actions weretaken in 1953, when
Khrushchev dismantled the Stalinist security system.
Under Gorbachev, the K.G.B.’s power has not been reduced; it hasincreased. The so-called rehabilitation of
writers such as Boris Pasternak and Vladimir Nabokov is
not a novelty. Moreover,it is relatedto the poverty of contemporarySoviet literature. WhereasKhrushchev’sthaw
brought many new names and new talents into literature, no
new talents have emergedin the past two years.
The changes in the scientific and historical professions
have been minimal so far, and donot include real openness
about the past. Nor has there been any improvement in the
people’s standard of living. Perestroiku, which Gorbachev
expected to be a crash program, will instead be a long-term
program marked by periods of austerity
and resulting in
higherprices for basiccommodities and services.Such
changes will be unpopular with ordinary people.
Finally, everything that has happened so far is reversible.
Although there have been some steps
in the right direction,
there has been no substantial change in the Soviet Union
under Gorbachev.
Zhores Medvedev, scientkt,
a
was one of the earliest victims
of the Soviet government’s
attempt to repress opposition by
detaining dissidentsin mental institutions. In 1973, after an
international campaignon his behalf, Medvedev was exiled
to the West. He isperhaps best knownfor his expost!of the
nuclear accident that occurred in 19SOs,
the Nuclear Disaster
in the Urds (Random House). He has written many books
on Soviet science,politics and society, including several with
his t w h brother, Roy, who lives in Moscow. Medvedev resides in London, where he is a senior research scientistfor
the National Institutefor Medical Research,
GORBACHEW SPEAKS
“Damage isoften done by idletalk and an inability to
speak to people in the languageof truth, and at times
it happens that a person hearsone thing and in reality
sees something different.” (April 23, 1985)
“What was all right yesterday is not enough today.
Therefore, we must not concentrate on howthings
were yesterday, but on what must be done today, and
especially tomorrow.” (April 17; 1986)
“Weneeddemocracy
not to showoff and riot-to”
playdemocracy. Weneeddemocracy
to rearrange
many things in our life, to give greater scope to the
creativity of people, to new ideas and initiatives.”
(February 25, 1987)
The Natioh.
June 13, 1987
815
-BOOKS&THEARTS.
Reyor-mingSoviet Cultnre/RetrievingSoviet History
NANCY P. CONDEE AND
VLADIMIR PADUNOV
ly couple-are not eligible for imminent noteworthy in tworespects: first, it is
literary parole,or reparole in Ivan’s an artistic text that chronicles a crucial
case. As polemics on both sides become moment in Rybakov’s own experience
increasingly irate one senses that the (“Sasha is me,” he has stated unequivhe rapid cultural changesoccurring in the Soviet Union to- participants are describing the same old ocally); second, it is a pretext enabling
day create a confusing picture waterglass, for some half-empty, for the regimeto declare that it will not consideritself a perpetuator ofStalinist
for the Western reader: maver- others half-full.
In fact, several important themes are policy. That tacit declaration has cleared
ick f i h director Elem Klimov, whose
1975 film, Agony, was shelvedfor a dec- now cautiously sanctionedas a result of the way for the long-delayed release of
ade because of its sympathetic portray- recent culidral changes. Two have attract-other artistic treatments of the Stalinist
al of Czar Nicholas 11, iselected first ed considerable attentionfrom the West- past, such as YuriTrifonov’s novel The
secretary of the Union of Ciematogia- ern press corps: Stalinism in the broad Disappearance (in Druzhba Narodov,
phers in May 1986; ballet dancer Mikhail sense-that is, its history and its legacyJanuary 1987), about daily life during
Baryshnikov, who defected in 1974, is and the fate of the SovietCmigrC.
the height of the purgs; Tengiz Abuladinvited in January 1987 to dance at the
Anatoly Rybakov’s novelChiZdren of ze’s film Repentance (completed in 1984,
Bolshoi Theater; Boris
Psternak is post- the Arbat is undoubtedly the most mo- released in 1986), a surrealistic/symbolic
hum6usly reinstatedto the Soviet Writers”mentous brt8“through in this newly per- recasting of life in a terror-ridden sociUnion in February 1987. mitted literary treatment of Stalin as ety;VladimirDudintsev’snovel White
As those who have strayed from the a cultural object. The novel, tracing the Robes (inNeva, January-February 1987),
fold, both geographically and politi- life of its hero,. Sasha Pankratov, from about the abuses of Soviet science
under
cally, are invited to return to it, daily student to prisoner under Iosif Stalin’s the biogeneticist Trofim Lysenko; and
events in Sovietcultural politics acquire terror, had been slated to appear twice Anna Akhmatova’s anti-§talinist poem
an almost biblical significance: outcast before, first in 1967, then in 1979. Both “Requiem,” written from 1935 to 1940
writers are published; groups of CmigrCs times publication wasprevented. Last and finally published in the March 1987
are welcomed home; formerly untouch- March the novel was finally excerptedin issue of the journal Oktiabr.
able themes are openly discussed. The the magazine Ogonyok, and the first inA second dominant theme marking a
effusive support given Mikhail Gorba- stallment of the full-length version ap- change in contemporary Soviet culture
chev and his reforms by some members peared in the journal
Druzhba Narodov is the depiction of emigration. Over the
of the Moscow intelligentsiais perhaps in April.
past twoyearsSovietaudienceshave
best characterized by the poet Andrei
The fact lhat Rybakov’snovel had been inundated with verbal, filmic and
Voznesensky: “This may be the mo- been circulatingin manuscript form for television images, both artistic and extrament I’ve been waitingfor all my life.
the past two decades demonstrates that histic, that share one common element:
What is significant in the recent cul- in the world of Soviet cultural politics they have been generated by
a change
turd changes?AlthoughGorbachev’s
“recent” rarely means “just finished.” ofpolicy
toward the Cmigre experireforms have been met with
qualified Another case in point is Aleksei Ger- ence. The current trendis to validate and
support from dissident figures such as
man’s film Trial on the Road, depicting inco@orate that experience,providedAndrei Sakharov and RoyMedvedev, a Soviet prisoner of war who engineers and here we see one of the limits of gImthey havealso evoked skepticismor out- his own recapture bypartisan compatriots. nost-its representation coincides with
right repudiation from leadingfigures so that he can resume fighting the Nazi the new political agenda, according to
in the refusenik community, such as
Iosif occupation forces. German’sfilm, com- which the krnigrk, sadder but wiser,
Begun,inside the Soviet Union, and pleted in 1971 under the title Operation acknowledges the perils of Cmigrt life.
from CmigrC writers, such as Vasily Ak- ‘‘H~ppyNew Year,’’ ran afoul of the This recuperation of the CmigrC experisyonov, outside its borders. Gorbachev’s official view of P . 0 . w . ’as
~ traitors to ence has necessitated some cosmetic alterdetractors point out that while Klimov the motherland,and the film was shelved ations.Excerpts from VladimirNabomay have gained control of the Union until last year. A third example of “rekov’s Other Shores, for example, which
of Cinematographers, Kira Muratova’s cent” Soviet art is the 1984 film Scare- appeared in the August 1986 issue of the
films still await full release; that while crow, about schoolchildren’s ostracism chess journal 6 4 , restricted the unin-’
Baryshnikov may now choose to return, of one young classmate. Completedand formed reader’s-knowledgeof Nabokov,
others may not; that while Dr. Zhivago releasedinthewaning
months of the
revealing only the melancholic chronmaybewelcomedpublicly
to Moscow,’ Chernenko regime,this
controversial icler of bleak CmigrC life. Lazarev, the
Lolita and Ivan Denisovich-an unlikefilm has generatedprolonged interest escaped P.O.W. hero of German’s Trial
and discussion under Gorbachev be- on the Road, returns from the “other
cause the courage and candor of its di- world,” as behooves a Lazarus, and must
rectory Rolan Bykov, anticipated the be willing to endure the suspicion and
, subsequent glasnost campaign, initiated
hqstility of his fellow soldiers. In Gleb
stitute of Current WoGd Affairs. They at the Twenty-seventh Party Congress, Panfilov’s film The Theme, completed
are working on a book, Cultural Poli- in February 1986.
in 1979 but released only in 1986, a
tics in the Soviet Union, 1980-1986.
’Children of the Arbat, therefore, is maladjusted refusenik, who must take ‘
T
yy
~
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The Nation.
816
.
June 13, I987
up temporary workas a gravedigger
Two additional themes dominate dewhile awaiting his exit visa, provides an velopments in contemporary Soviet culunflattering contrast to those who decide ture. The first of these is the artistic depiction of extreme socialalienation, for
to remain in the Soviet Union.
This depiction ofBmigrC life is not example in the films of Aleksandr Minlimited, however, to artistic texts alone. dadze and Vadim Abdrashitov (The
with Train Stopped, 1982; Pliumbum, 1986),
The works mentioned above coincide
newsevents, such as the guest return whosecinematicconcernsinclude
the
of Vladimir Horowitz in the spring of failures of the Sovietwork ethic and
1986; the overtures made to the theater legalsystem,pervasive juvenile delindirector Yuri Lyubimov and others to quency and the hypocrisyof official
request a return home; the repatriation rhetoric. Examples of the alienation
of Stalin’s daughter (temporary) and of theme better known to Western readers
thesinger Fyodor Shaliapin’s remains
(permanent); and other selected emigre
repatriation.Theartworks also coincidedwith the 1986 broadcast on Soviet television of Israeli filmmaker Ofra
Bikel’s PBS documentary TheRussians
Are Here, which records a frank discussion of the shortcomings of 6migrB life.
The result of this “coincidence’.’ is that
the careless reader may not be certain
whether a given event is art’s imitation
oflife or life’s imitation of art. One
thing is certain: the author is the new
regime.
Conspicuous by their absence, however, are the living CmigrC authorsJoseph Brodsky,
Vasily
Aksyonov,
Vladimir Voinovich, Aleksandr Solzhe. nitsyn. The relevantissue here is not
whether they themselves would be willing to return but rather what is the attitude of the Soviet governmenttoward
the writer. As the scholar Gregory
Freidin hassuggested, the writerhas
traditionally been the only person in the
Soviet Union afforded the luxuryof
’speakingin his or her own name. Until
very recently that luxury, even with all
the attendant censorship, was reserved
for writers as an integral part of their
profession; it was extended neither to
party officials nor to government representatives. It is now tentatively being
extended to cultural figures from the
theater, ballet and music world. Given are Valentin Rasputin’s 1985 novel, The
the nature of their profession, any fur- Fire, about systematic corruption in the
ther extension of this luxury to newly re- countryside;ChingizAitmatov’s1986
turned writers-temporary or perma- novel, The Executioner’s Block, about
drug smuggling; and Voznesensky’s 1986
nent, physical or textual-would result
in the Gorbachev regime playingcultur- poem “The Ditch,” about modern-day
al roulette no longer with one bullet in grave robbers. Thisnovayapublitsistika
the chamber but, rather, with a fully (“new publicistic writing”) of the past
loaded pistol. A clear demonstration of two years is the artistic analogue to the
this fact was contained in a statement by political policy of glasnost.
A final theme of tremendous imporGennady Gerasimov,chief spokesman
for the Foreign Ministry, who recently tance in current cultural politics is the
announced that Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer artistic treatment of the peace issue.The
Ward would not be published because Soviet government’sredefinition of that
the author “is too strong in~politicalop- issue in.a way that incorporates potentially oppositional elements has made
position to us.”
. .
~~
~~
possible the broad release of Konstantin
Lopushansky’s 1986 film,Letters From
a Dead Mah, for which Boris Strugatsky,
the well-known writer of science
fiction,
providedscreenplayassistance; It has
sanctioned Yuli Kim’s 1984 antinuclear
rock musical, Noah and His Sons, in
which both superpowers are condemned.
It has motivated the increasing validation and inclusion of rock groups such
as Autograph, bearing the “love and
peace” message, into the government’s
disarmament policy.
Thus, like Gorbachev’s political “revolution from above,” the Soviet cultural revival is still carefully shaped by the
hands of top officials.Significantly,
however, those hands have begun to
change. Klimov was nominated for the
post of first secretary of the Union of
Cinematographers by Aleksandr Yakovlev, a candidate member of the Politburo and party secretary in charge of
propaganda. Two months later, in July
1986, Vladimir Karpov, a professional
writer,wartime hero and graduate of
Stalin’s gulag, was elected the new first
secretary of the Writers’Union.His
election was immediately preceded bya
June 13, I987
meeting between Gorbachev and those
writers who were also delegates to the
Supreme Soviet, the legislative body of
the Soviet Union. At that meeting Gorbachev stressed the need “for a deeprooted and many-sided reorganization”
of the Writers’ Union.
Repercussions from those transfers of
power followed quickly: Klimov established a disputes commission to ‘review
all films shelved by the state film agency,
Goskino; Karpov sanctionedthe rehabilitation of Pasternak. But just as Gorbachev must contend with resistanceto
his changes from a conservative faction
in the party leadership, the new cultural
leaders must face the internal opposition of entrenched cultural administrators, as well as older members of their
respectiveunions. It is not surprising,
therefore, that rapid changes in personnel extend far beyond the structure of
the unions.
The most spectacularresultof
the
turnover in cultural administration has
occurred in the world of Soviet literary
journals. Much attention has been paid
to the appointment of Sergei Zalygin as
editor of Novy Miry the mostprestigious “thick” journal, which is scheduled
to serialize Doctor Zhivago next year.
Zalyginis a leadingenvironmentalist
and highly acclaimed author, whose novel, After the Storm (Part I published in
1980, Part I1 delayed until 1985), chronicles the yearsof Lenin’s New Economic
Policy.Lessnoticed
at first was the
appointment ofGrigory Baklanov, a
respected writer, as editor of Znamya.
Sincehis appointment, Baklanovhas
changed the entire editorial board at the
journal, replacing literary apparatchiks
with writers and editors. In the past six
months Znamya has rehabilitated the
emigre poet GeorgyIvanov and has
publishedtwonovels
that havelong
been suppressed, Aleksandr Bek’s The
New Appointment, which criticizes the
ethical values of Stalinist officials, and
Anatoly Pristavkin’s A Golden Cloud
Spent the Night, about Stalinist persecution of minority groups.
Apart from changes in editorial personnel, the biggest surprise in the content of Soviet periodicals has occurred
not in the traditional high-culture journals, but in the slick, mass-circulation
weekly Ogonyok, which in earlier years
wasarguablylessread
than repulped
and recycled. Since the appointment of
Vitaly Korotich as editor, last year, the
magazine has served as a sign of things
to come for workers and intellec-
The Nation.
817
tuals~alike. Virtually every issue combines articles exposing social inadequacies with works by rehabilitated poets
(Nikolai Gumilev), emigre poets (Vladislav Khodasevich), persecuted poets (Manna Tsvetaeva), or excerpts from prose
works that have been suppressed (Bek,
Dudintsev, Rybakov).
That the Soviet cultural establishment
is finally permittingthe release of works
d&g with Stalinism, the hi.& heritage, domestic social malaise and the
urgency of peace is laudable in and of
itself. There is, however, a less encouraging pattern in the Soviet cultural kaleidoscope-lessencouraging,
that is,
from the viewpoint of the youngest entrants to the cultural scene. The shifting
of culturalboundariesseparating offcial from unofficial art, the permissible
from the forbidden, has affected already
existing cultural objects and already
tablished artists. Both the artists and
the works now in the process ofappearing have paid their union dues, figuratively or literally. Although neglected or
even repudiated by the cultural administration, they did not themselves reject
the system in its entirety.Meanwhile,
time, the “inevitable” progress of history, according to Marxist teleology, has
blunted the cutting edge of manuscripts
kept in drawers for twentyyears and
films shelved for fifteen.
Despite that customary reference to
unpublished novels “kept in drawers,”
to undistributed f h s “kept on shelves”
and to unreleased
music
“kept on
reels,” many unapproved works of the
Brezhnev era didindeedcirculate, attract followers and receive semiofficial
tolerance. Over the decades, mostof the
worksmentioned in thisarticlehave
been read,’skein or heard by ever-ividening circlesin$e
urban intelligentsia,
party machinery and cultural administration. In effect, they have become an
inseparable part of the consciousness of
urban and educated society preciselyat
a timewhen the party hierarchyhas
passed into the control of a generation
that, as well as being at least a decade
younger than its predecessors, is also university trained and culturally informed.
Time itself hasinsured that these works,
as problematic as they once were, entered
into the cultural consciousness of the
party leadershipbeforetheywereofficially released.
In other words, these works and artists have become politically safe. Why
now? For the most part the current
party leadership is innocent of the politi‘es-
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The Nation.
818
June 13, 1987.
c a l and cultural excessesof the past. ing to a bygone era. Indeed, the charac- back into Soviet history. Such rehabiliThat historical twist has made Stalin as ters Stalin, Bukharin and Trotsky are at tation involves neither the reactivation
u cultural object almost as safe as Nabo- the center ofMikhd.Shatrov’s 1%2play, of the personality cult of the 1930s nor
kov (an external CmigrC) or Pasternak The Brat Peace, published in the April the wholesale debunking of Stalin associated with Khrushchev’s name in the
(an internal CmigrC); it has made Bu- issue of Novy Mir.
kharin as a cultural object almost as
The recuperation of Soviet cultural 1950s and 1960s. Instead, it marks a
safe as Yevgeny Zamiatin, author of the heritage is not an anomaly or evidence third alternative, appropriate for the
antiutopian novel We, or Gumilev, ex- of an independent, progressive trend; political agenda of the 1980s.
ecuted in 1921 for counterrevolutionary rather, it is a policy decision that goes
Just as the publication of Nabokov
activity; it has made Trotsky as a hand in hand with the reconstruction does not signal the Soviet Union’s willcultural object almost as safe as For- of Soviet political history. Conceivably, ingness to assimilate Western views of
malism, Futurism or Modernism, pro- the goal of that process is to begin fill- Nabokov, so the reappearance of Stalin
vided those artistic movements, all of ing in the line of succession from Lenin as referent and image does not signal
whichwereexcoriated
for more than to Gorbachev. That requires, first and the Soviet leadership’s intention to canhalf a century, are identified as belong- foremost, the “rehabilitation” of Stalin onize or excommunicate.The goal is to
reintegrate him into the historical progression andto reclaim all of Soviet
history as part of a national heritage.
Clearly, the reintegration and reclamation will occur in ways that serve the
CHERNOBYL~ANDNUCLEAR POWER IN THE USSR
presentregime; equally- clearly,howDavid‘ Maples
ever, those steps will vastly broaden the
“. . . a remarkable account of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident.”
scope of what is permissible in official
-Librmy Journal
political, social and cultural history. The
0-312-00414-1
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cultural tremors occasioned by the pubPaper: 0-3 12-00457-5
$14.95
lication of Rybakov’s novel or the release of Abuladze’s film or the orgaAFGHANISTAN
nizing of a Marc Chagall retrospective
The Soviet War
or the staging of the Horowitz concerts
Edward R. Girardet
should be viewed as part of this larger
Citation for Excellence, Overseas Press Club of America 1985
process.
“A moving, powerful book. . . . an exceptionally poignant account of a
The importance of those events is in
people struggling for survival.”-The Christian Science Monitor
no way diminished because they have.
“Girardet’s is the most comprehensive and perhaps the best, Englishbecome politically and culturally safer
language book so far to explain the Afghan war to general readers.”
in the past few years. At the very least
-The Washington Post Book World
such events threaten the interests of oldpp. Cloth: 271
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er cultural officialsand bureaucrats every
Paper: 0-3 12-00924-0
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$10.95
bit as much as events in the political
sphere threaten the interests of those in
SOVIET FOREIGN POLICY AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
control of the party machinery. It comes
Determinants and Regional Responses
as no surprise,therefore, that the culLeszek BusZynski
tural rebels of the 1960s (YevgenyYev“This is the best book yet to appear on this subject. ”-Foreign Affairs
tushenko, AndqeiVoznesensky, Mikha0-3 12-74828-0
303 pp.
$35.OO
il Roshchin) as well as of the 1970s
(Klimov, Panfilov) survived in the. SoSOVIET BLITZKRIEG THEORY
vietsystempreciselybecause,
on the
P. H. Vigor
whole, they played by its rules.
With the
“This isan important book, being the first serious Western attempt
to exchange of power they have become the
amine, understand and evaluate Soviet thoughts on the subject.”
dominant voices proclaiming and orga-Military Review
nizing changes in cultural policy in the
“A superbly logical exposition . . . [that]shouldbereadbyboth
1980s. Nor is it surprising that they are
specialists and the general public. ””Perspective
virtually from thesame generation as
2-747550-3 Cloth:
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218
the new politiql leadership: both groups
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have successfuUy completed their respective apprenticeships.
,~
Left out of all this, are ar,tists of the
.younger generations-the sorokaletitiki
and tridtsatiletniki (the “40”- and “30”Press
year-o1ds)”who
have spent more
Scholarly and Reference Books
than
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decade
trying
to break into the
175 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10010
cultural
establishment.
Singularly ab(800)221-7945
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sent from alldiscussions, both in the
United States and,the Soviet Union, is
New Studies on the New Soviet Union
..’.From St. Martin’s Scholarly
St. Martin’s
.
...
“
-
June 13, 1987
consideration ofnew works by new
artists:writers,poets,
directors, musicians, painters, with controversial artistic texts. -Admittedly, the reality of institutionalized support of new artists
always lags behindthe reality of day-today artistic ,production,regardless of the
political system. The situation ofnew
artists intheSoviet Union is further
complicated, though, because many of
themeitherhavechosen
to work in
media that do not yet have a defined
place in the cultural administration,
such as “home” films, video art, happening art and “heavymetal”music;
or have defined themselves as artists in
ways that are problematic for the administrators, for example, as conceptual artists, absurdist poets or erotic writers.
Virtually no steps have been taken to
alter that impasse. The Cultural Fund,
established last year,haspromised
in
principle to assist new artists; plans for
cooperative publishing houses promise
in future to publish new authors. Yet
the guidelines for two such houses, Capital and The Message, stipulate that participants must be “members of Moscow’s
writers’ organizations”-that is, already
established and recognized in the existingsystem.This
state of affairs is
all the morecuriouswhenviewedin
the context of literary editors’ ready
admission that they are swamped by materials mostly from talented, unpublished
would finally be
writers, whose interests
served by such cooperative houses.
The risks in cultural politics not taken, or not yet taken, by the gorbachevtsy, finally center on twogroups: the
living emigre writerand the young controversial artist. In the past year a number of exceptionshavebeenmade:
a
collective letter by Aksyonov, Vladimir ’
Bukovsky andothershasappeared
in
Moscow News; the prose ofYevgeny
Popov, in lunost; the poetry of Tatiana
Shcherbina, in Druzhba Narodov; the
works of conceptual artist Dmitri Prigov, in Teatr. The vast majority of both
groups, however, remains artisticallydisenfranchised. The dismantling ofthe
entrenched system of cultural favoritism
that relegatesthese two groups to the
status of artistic limitchiki (“probationalresidents”)mustbeginwitha
recognition that the misalliance of repressed CmigrCs and unpublished young
artists has been imposed from above. It
is problematic and politicallydangerous, benefiting no one but the oldguard cultural establishment. The publication of MarcelProust and James Joyce
The Nation.
819
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mayrallytheMoscow“privilegentsia”;
the publication of Brodsky and Aksyonovspkaks to the experienceof the
post-Stalinist generations.To paraphrase
MikhailGorbachev,deep-rooted
and
many-sided cultural reform must, in its
long-range goals, be informed by that
experience.
0
BARBARA HELDT
writers to be translated in the Soviet
Union is the British novelist Fay Weldon, who tookpart in a meetingof British and Soviet writers in Moscow in the
fall of 1984. Her novel Female Friends
was published there the following year.
a distinction
ItsSovietprefacedraws
between“women’s prose” whichpresents a humane critique of the bourgeois
system, and “women writers who tookit
upon themselves to propagandize nihilistic moral concepts, ideas of sexual freedom and sexual liberation.” Thesefeministki are denounced as extreme, in
spite of the factthat they are the heroines
of all Weldon’s books.
“Humaneness,” a favorite official
Soviet word, is one of the chief qualities requiredof Soviet writers. Forpublished women writers, it has meant not
blaming mentoo much for their troubles,
and certainly not blaming a system that
has always proclaimed equalityfor wornen. But now it is frequently acknowledged in the press that the system isrun
by flawed men-and even, occasionally, that women have suffered most
from
theirmismanagement.Hereisthebeginning of a change-especially if women’s interests can be made to coincide
rather than conflictwithGorbachev’s
priorities. Still, the crucial question remains unasked: Can women continue to
carry the burden of caring under the
banner of change?
Beginning with the heroines of nineteenth-century novels, redemptive love
has been seenas the specialty of Russian
women, and those not willing to play
that role have been violently excluded
or
castigated both in literature and in life.
That tradition continues in Soviet fiction, withmalewriters either exalting
women for their selflessness or condemning them for a lack of
spirituality. In a
short story by Victor Astaf‘ev, published
last year, the narrator says, “I did not
like the local women [he uses the pejorative word baba]. . . . they were Satanic from birth, fought among themselves,worried the oldmen,allmen,
to death.” Astaf‘evbelongs
to the
school of village prose writers, and has
an apocalyptic, nationalist view of good
recent Soviet television program featured two exhibitions from foreign countries,
one of Japanese cars and the
other of French fashions. With all the
assurance of an American TV host of
twenty years ago, the announcer stated
that the former “will interest men”
while the latter is “for the women.” In
spite of the revolutionary principle of
equal rights, womenin the Soviet Union
havealwaysbeentreated
as a special
category, with a particular set of needs
and interests formulated and ratified by
men. Chief among them is the family,
where a woman’s role is defined as caring for her children and, if she has one,
for her husband. Yet paradoxically,the
cared-for menare often presented in the
writings of both sexes as weak and unworthy creatures. Theyare now the targets of Mikhai3 Gorbachev’s perestroika.
And who shouldbe called on tohelp reform them? Women, of course.
The poet Rimma Kazakova recently
opened a speech to the All-Union Conference ofWomenbyrecitingsome
lines from one of her works, which asks
“TO be woman-what
a
does
this
mean?” and answers with two similes:
c4Womanprescribes herself as a doctor
prescribes medicine,’’ and “like a wire,
she conducts a current, so that above
you a light may
be lit.” To this imageof
woman as a helpmeet Kazakova added
another characteristically Russian claim:
“Theessenceofwomanisherability to love. No woman can be happy
without love.” She then relatedthis noi o n to pt?F.frOikQ:
“Yes, love truly is a
great constructive, creative, constructing,
restructuring force.”
- Traditional Soviet ideasabout women
diverge sharplyfrom Western feminism.
One of theveryfewWesternfeminist
A
Subscribing to our principles
isn’t enough.
June 13, I987
I
BarbaraHeldt’s
TerriblePerfection:
Women and Russian Literature will be
published by Indiana Universiiy Press
in thefall. She is a professor of Russian
literature at theUniversity of British
Columbia.
~~
~
. .~
Russian men are to blame for thedegradation of what he calls “the Russian nation.” Other respected writers like Vasily Belov and Valentin Rasputin (as well
as the exiled Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn)
worship thesuffering but good old woman in the midst of rural pollution and^
family disintegration.
The longing for a return to traditional
Russian values that marks so much of
recent men’s writing seems unlikely to
be embraced by womenwriters: they
have their own past to reclaim. So far,
the few who have tried to do so-Yevgenia Ginzburg, in her magnificent memoirs Journey Into the Whirlwind and
Within the Whirlwind,and Ruf Zernova,
in her Women’s Tules-have not had
these works published in the Soviet
Union. Nadezhda Mandelstam’s books
have been closed to Soviet readers, but
“Requiem,” the great poemby her friend
Anna Akhmatova, has recently been
published bya Soviet press. These works deal
with the Stalinist past in a less self-pitying, more direct way than Dr. Zhivago,
Boris Pasternak’s hyrnn to female glory,
aqd one hopes that moreof them will be
made available to Soviet readers.
For now, the best publishable women’s writing follows lines drawn during
the first thaw by writers such as I.
Grekova and Natalia Baranskaia. Although more women than men live in
rural areas, it is significant that no major
women writers have emerged from the
village. Their focus is the modern urban
environment and the everyday livesof
ordinary women, burdened with childrearing, work and family problems. In
Baranskaia’s “A Week Like Any Other”
(1%9), a classic of thisgenre,
every
minute of every day is accounted for:
when a sociologist enquires how women
spend their leisure time, the women find
they have none. What may be different
inthe work of newer writers is that
women’s “problems” are beginning to
be linked to men’s failures as husbands
and fathers.Here is Kazakova again,
speaking at the conference of women:
“When restructuring society, I think we
also have to restructure the contemporary male.”
In recent months, at least three
women prose writers have published
works of particular interest for their
outlook and narrative style: Viktoria
Tokareva, Liudmila Petrushevskaia and
Tatiana Tolstaia. Tokareva is the most
conventional of the three. The title story
of her 1983 collection, Nofhing Special,
The &st Ml and fair account
of byGorbachev’s
Russia
The Manchester Guardian’s prizewinning Moscow correspondent
b
“A balanced close-up view of contemporary Soviet society.
..
The text covers a wide range of topics from the position
of
women and the new openness in the arts and media to the reduced power of t h e KGB and the technology
revolution.”
-Booklist
“Martin Walker does a remarkable
job of describing the changing
mood in the Soviet Union and he does i t in a way that strikes
closeto home.”
“JENNIFER CLAYTON, Cleveland Plain Dealer
”Thought-provoking...Walker has collected in this book information richer and more insightful than
so far publishedon this
topic.”
--ONSTANTIN KOLENDA, Houston Chronidle
“Perceptively traces the parallel ascendanciesof Gorbachev and
an educated middleclass.”
-THOMAS OMESTAD, N. K Times Book Reoiew
.
-Mowat yourbookstore
PANTHEON
822
The Nation.
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times epigrammatic.
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Book Review
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QUILL
William00Mosrow
105 Madlson Ave , ,
New York, N.V 10016
,June 13, 1987
is a hymntowoman’sconstancy,in
which theheroinewaitsendlessly
for
various male initiatives: “She understood
that evenbeforedeathone.thinks
of
iove.” But in a new novella, “A Long
Day,” published in Novy Mir at the
beginning of last year, Tokareva considers other modes of being for her heroine,
a successful. journalist whotypically
takes all the initiativesin her home life.
She is the Soviet equivalentof a yuppie,
with one child, whose care she delegates
to others (though not to her husband)
while she travelson business. In the first
sentenceofthe
story, the heroine’s
3-year-old daughter is diagnosed as having a grave illness. The mother at first
guiltily sees this as her punishment for
being away so much, then takes action
against the maleworld:herdullhusband, her unconcerned boss and especiallythehigh-handedsurgeonresponsible
for the child’streatment.Becausethe
doctor cannot tolerate dealing with the
mothers of sick children, the heroine
pretends to interview him for her paper
in order to speak to-him.He falls in love
with her and then discovers she was only
interested in him for her daughtds
’sake: She has called him
to a false tryst,
reversing a classicdeviceofTurgenev’s novels. Even so, Tokareva’s story
turns on twotruisms ofmuchSoviet
fiction-thatwomen,
in a crisis,will
always put their children first, and that
men are weak and ultimately irrelevant.
Even masculine skills turn out to be superfluous: the child is eventually cured by
cranberry and parsley, women’s remedies.
Liudmila Petrushevskaia has written
stories and plays for more than fifteen
years; but few of them have been published. She is a harsh writer, and Soviet
critics tend to prefer happy endings. They
have further objected to her language,
which is very closeto actual speech, unlike the more blandly literary prose of
most Soviet writers. But Petrushevskaia
is beginning to be known: two of her
plays, Columbine’sApartment and Three
Girls in Blue, have recently been performed in Moscow. The heroine of the
latter is burdenedwith a vituperative
mother, a sick childand distant cousins,
who occupy her rented
room in the suburbs when theirownroofleaks.
,,She
seeks escapefrom all this with
a married
man from-a different class, a scientist
who travelsabroad and who alternately
cajoles and denigrates her, demanding
that she be with him rather than with
her son. Predictably, their romance fails.
When the heroineshows up on the
June 13, 1987
The Nation.
823
I
s d e Crimean beach as the scientist’s century to be reborn. Poetry still follows
Anna A k w a wife and daughter, he hands her a wad classical Pushkinian lines;
of rubles and tells her to leave. She calls tova seems to be an easier literary modhome only to find that her son has been el than Marina Tsvetaeva, whoreturned
left alone, but instead of giving way to to theSoviet Union and hanged herpanic she calmly gives himinstructions, self in 1941. But young poets are readforestalling a double tragedy. Male base- ingTsvetaeva, and one in particular,
,her
nessissimplysupersededby
the de- Elena Shvarts, is striking for
mands of motherhood and the trivia of dynamism and willingness to break
everyday life. The whole play is imbued rules. Shvarts speaksin a variety of
with bitter humor: when there is no time strong voices, from the
neoclassical,
for tragedy, black comedy prevails.
to the intensely subjective;. her work is
Tatiana Tolstaia, a relativelyyoung
sometimes reminiscent of Tsvetaeva’s,
writer, is interesting for her subtly ironic or of Sylvia Plath’s. Her imagery is eleapproach to fiction: she takes on cher- mental, like that of Mandelstam, and
ished
“women’s
themes”
and mocks her tone both mocking and religious in a
particularly foreboding way. Shvarts
them. In a grotesque story called “Poet
in
CmigrC
and Muse, ” published in last December’s has appeared consistently
able to
issue of Novy Miry a Seautiful woman journals, but hasonlybeen
doctor who lacks only happiness (in the publish four poems in the Soviet Union.
form, naturally, of romantic love) finds One, “The Old Age of Princess Dasha young poet to love and literally re- kova,” is a haunting portrait of the
duces him to a skeleton. Tlie only way founder of the Russian Academy un:
hecanescapeher
triumphant posses‘- der Catherine the Great, and theonof an academy
siveness(whichincludescensorship
of ly womanpresident
anywhere,
at any time.
his work) is to will his bones to an even of sciences
loftier entity than Caring Woman, the Through the figure of the princess, now
explores
Academy of Sciences. Tolstaia may be an old woman, the poem
the Enlightenment’stenuous hol-d on
the first writer since Chekhov competent to debunk the myth of the woman Russia:
who loves too much in this tale of “a
Voltaire and Rousseau lie in far
woman, struggling, as we all have been
away tombs.
taught to, for perscxd happiness.” She
Yes, old age is freedom to do what
goes further than Tokareva and Petruyou please.
shevskaia to show how the.failings
of men
Then why are you weeping?
and womencomplementoneanother,
Recently, Shvarts has found a powerful
and to demystify the valuesof “Rus- champion inside the literary establishsianness”: the chokinglyclosefamily
ment. Bella Akhmadulina, the doyenne
relations and thebeliefs that turn to
of the poetry of the first thaw, has twice
self-righteous tyranny over others.
Tolstaia is also braver than many called in print for the publication of
womenwriterswhohave
to make a Shvarts’s poetry, and pointed out that
career in the male-dominated literary her manuscript has been kept without
world. She has dared to criticize Vasily reply by the Leningrad division of the
Belov for blatant misogyny in hisnew Soviet-Writerpublishing house.
novel, Evevthing Lies Ahead; accordMany Soviet writers have waited far
ing to the London Guardian, a recent longer to see their work inprint, and in
Writers’ Union conference spent hours some cases the delayis-beingbrought to
defending Belov and attacking Tolstaia. an end under Gorbachev. Irina BdoevShe is not yet a member of the union; tseva, the last surviving, active poet of
nor has her first book been published, the first emigratiqn, has just returned to
so she is vulnerable. But she has been Leningrad from Paris -in heroldage.
backed by the Moscow News, a paper Accordingly, a smallselectionofher
for foreign readers in which her criticismpoems has appeared in the Soviet press;
first appeared, so there is reason for it will be interesting to see whether her
hope.
two volumes of memoirs,On the Banks
of the Neva and On the Banks of the
The styles of these
three
writers
Odo:
Seine, will also be published there.
would not be considered allthat avant- evtseva is a witness to the early revolugarde in the West, and it remains to be tionary literary scene and the entire
seen whether Gorbachev’sglasnost will history of Russian literature in emigraallow the revolution in style begun in tion. She returm too late to take her
Russia inthe early yearsof the twentieth rightful placeas the link between the gen-
You’ll Find
New Perspectives on.
Soviet Politicsaid
S0cie.Vin
*
-3
-
-~
SOCIALISM
&
DEMOCRACY
-
”,
~
.
#3 (FallNinter 1986)
Stephen F.-Cohen on ”America’s
Xussla: Can the So*& Union
Shange?”and Carolyn Elsenberg
)n. “US. Perceptions of Soviet
Foreign Policy, 1945-85”
,
.
# 4 (Spring/Summer 1987)
J.ohn J. Neumaier on “Problemsn -Western Interpretatlons of
Soviet Thought“
-
h g l e copies ,- $4; subscriptions
3 18 five issues, ~$30ten issues.
.
”
~7
-~
Wnte to:
Socialism and Democracy .
’.O. Box 375 CUNY Grad-..Ce.yter
33 West 42 Street
New York, NY 10036
.
VISIT THE
USSR
IN 1987
’
Mlth
US-USSR
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OCTOBER 11-26.$1775
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“Brrdges” hasdeveloped an extensive
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For more Information, wrrte to address
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The Nation.
824
June 13, 1987
erations of Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva powerful works, so that ordinary Soviet being released Soviet rock culture had
and those of Akhmadulina and Shvarts. women taking up their ordinary burdens suddenly received carte blanche.
This doesn’tmean that the KomStill, I would like to imagine those poets may hear the female voices of those different decades speakingto them today. I3 somol has abandonedits task of molding
meeting, and publishing all their most
young Communists. As onepartyofficial announced from the stage during a
concert in Moscow in December, “The
oppression of rock just stimulates opposition, deflecting Soviet youth from
door hippy art exhibit in the Arbat sec- active participation in the building of
MICHAEL R. BENSON
socialism. We hope that these measures
tion of Moscow.
Conversations with a wide variety of will helpus in creating a Soviet rock
Moscow
t’sDecember1986.
In an apart- young people reveal a generation far less that is better than the capitalist one!”
as the sernanmentnearMOSCOW’S giant Dy- cowed by authority than its predecessors. But treating music-making
production doesn’t
namo soccer stadium, Misha, a “From my point of view it will be the tic equivalent of steel
fixture in‘ the Soviet newwave
only free generation in postrevolution- disguise a substantial shift in the party
scene, looks at his watch. “Time for the ary Russia-maybe the entire history of line. The emergence of rock and roll,
BBC,” he says,pulling out a pocket- Russia,” says a writerwidely read in with its suspect origins inthe West, was
an acid test of the party’s flexibility. Its
s k Sony shortwave receiver. R d k mu- samkdat, the underground press. “They
acceptance reveals an effort to engage
sic filters into the room, crackling with don’t care about politics; they just want
to have theirown life. They don’t want
static. “The Pretenders,” Misha nods.
to elements of society that were previously
have a career, or if they do, they don’t excluded.
“New Pretenders.”
want to serve the power. They wantthe
- “Sasha,” in his early 20s, has been a
In a sense, the party may have hadlitmember of The System, the Soviet hip- power to serve them, their lives. It’s an tle choice but to accept rock music. According to a sociological study donP in
py movement, since 1979. His beaded important distinction.”
necklaceis partially obscured by long
That desire should not be confused 1986 for the Moscow City Komsomol,
black hair. “Hendrix, Free, King Crim- withpoliticaldissent,
though it does about 80 percent of Soviet youth make
son, Cream,” he recites. Asked if the have a political dimension.It is a demand use of the illegal tape network that
hippiesconsiderthemselvesrelated
to for aesthetic and ethical freedoms, hoth spreadsrock and roll, both domestic
the American hippies of the 196Os, he in the creation of new forms of art and and foreign, throughout the country.
says,’ “We are the same tribe.”
in the preservation of cultural land- Andas the writer points out,“What
Downtown, a Latvian documentary ti- marks, long considered the prerogative can the Komsomol offer instead? Some
tled Is It Easy To Be Young? plays of government to dispose of. The new ideology? Nothing. If the Romsomol
to a packed house. A gang of Soviet youth movement~has
been called an evan- had the power to stop rock, it would.
rock fans are seen destroying a subur- gelical one, in which cultural life is based But rockis very powerful, and it’s imposban streetcar after a concert. At one on an individual conception of what is sible to imagine something else to bring
point-beforeinterviewswith
shaken aestheticallyvaluable. At its root lies the youth closer to the Komsomol.”
The issue is largeenough to have
young veterans of the war in Afghanis- what some consider a national shift in
on a student. attitude, at least among young people. merited attention at the top. Voznesentan-thecameras‘focus
“We are told that we can fight for peace “Westernobservers think that glasnost sky reports that during a closed meeting
sky,” says thesurnizdat writ- last June between Gorbachevand a group
by performing well in school,” he says. fell from the
a heated
er. “It’s not from the sky. Big changes in of prominentSovietwriters,
“Garbage!”
ideological debate erupted. Its subject
When rock and roll took root in So- mentality happened in the seventiesvietsoil, it brought with it what one ten, even twelve years ago. It was society was not literature but rock and roll.
young writer has succinctly describedas that prepared’thisglasnost, while Western Voznesensky, who actively promotes the
“not a socialist culture.” That counter- observers saw only the little movement of music in the press, defended it at the
culture is not limited to rock music. Late the dissidents. There was internal liberali- meeting,sayingrockwas“impossible
last year, for example,reportsfiltered
zation before the extern$ liberalization.” to forbid.” Several others then attacked
The advent of glasnost has brought rock as “ideological propaganda.” Finalthrough Moscow that a sit-in by young
ly, Voznesensky said, the General Secreactivists had successfully stopped the de- what was already there into the open.
struction of
several
lanwark buildings. Early last year rockand roll, onceviewed tary cameover to his point ofview:
According to the poet Andrei Voznesen- as a dangerous social phenomenon,fiied “Gorbachev said, ‘He’s right: You have
sky,thegovernment
is reconsidering Soviet concpt halls,television studios to make things better, and people will .
the buildings’ fate: “For the first time and radio programs for the first time. come to you. ’ ”
Gorbachev’s goal is evidently to snap
in our life, in our history, a group of The Komsomol, or Young Communist
trans- Soviet youth-and the rest of the counyoung people stood in the wayof the League, Bad changeditsstyle,
forming dreary lectures on Marxist try-out of itscynicism and apathy.
bulldozers.” In another incidentlast
November, a small group demonstrated theory into free-form poetry readings, Musicisonly the latest and strangest
up for the task.
against the police breakup of an out- public exhibitions of previously “unof- tool hehaspicked.
ficial” art and “heavy metal” festivals. Ironically, the doubts still being voiced
Michael R. Benson isafreelancejournalist Concerts by Leningrad’s eclecticPopu- come from both sides: not only from
into older conservativesbut also from many
based in New York City.He is working on larMechanicsOrchestraexploded
guard
slam dancing. The effect was of steam youngRussians.Whiletheold
a book about the Soviet counterculture.
Back in the U.S.S.R.
I
.
.
~.
~~
maintain that the music is ideologically
unsound, some young people see the
new party line as an attempt to co-opt
the energies of the rock movement to
the service of the state. “Look-at him,”
said one Moscow musician, when Leningrad rock star Boris Grebenshchikov
appeared on central television for the
first time, “he is candy for our youth.”
But debates about whether the new
permissiveness is a victory for youth
culture (“we forced an expansion of the
ideology”) or a defeat (“Gorbachev incorporated us into the ideology”) are
finally circular, for the two positions
are not mutually exclusive. Gorbachev
seemsto be allied with the rock culture
in opposing a conservativemid-level bureaucracy and largely conservative older
generation. Rock music may never have
been as politically important before.
That point was indirectly confirmed
this spring, as evidence of a conservative backlash mounted in Moscow.
Musicians in the so-called unofficial
bands once again found themselves
barred from TV and radio, though large
concerts were still taking place. On
May 6, SergeiMikhalkov, an influential
figure in the Writers’ Union and the
composer of the words to the new Soviet national anthem, compared rock
music to AIDS: “an infection that unfortunately can’t be cured.” By late May
the Lyubers, young body-building toughs
from working-class neighborhoods at
the edgesof the capital, were marching
in Moscow against change, along with
other elements of an emerging Russian
nationalist organization called Pamyat.
The marches proved that glasnost can
benefit both conservatives and liberals:
extremist elements within Pamyat are
not only virulently anti-Semitic, they
also seek to eradicate anything Western
from Soviet life, by force if necessary.
But Soviet rock musicians remain confident. Sasha Lipninsky, the bass player
for the Moscow band Zvuki Mu, responded to Mikhalkov’s AIDS speech
with a grin. “The old men are frightened,” he said.
One reason rock music is so powerful
in the Soviet Union is that young people are fascinated both by the West and
by Russian cultural history. Soviet rock
taps into both, by adopting a Western
musical form and by self-consciously
seeing itself as heir to native Russian
countercultural traditions. From ancient
to early modern times, pagan guitar bards
(Skomorokhi) wandered the countryside,
“stirring up Russia in teams of a huri-
825
The Nation.
June 13, 1987
I. J.RU.
INTERNATIONAL JEWISH PEACE UNION
‘?#m~f’xl
‘71;1’;1 Plhm
11X1%
After twenty years of “Greatev Israel”
Where is the voice of American Jews?
TWENTY YEARS OF MILITARY RULE OVER 1.5 MILLION DISENFRANCHISED
PALESTINIANS.. .
THE INVASION OF LEBANON, THE “WAR OF CHOICE”. .
THE. MASSACRE AT SABRA AND SHATTILA . .
ISRAELI G(?VERNMENT COLLUSION WITH SOUTH AFRICA’S APARTHEID REGIME
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’
-INCREASING POWER OF THE ULTRA-RIGHT iN ISRAEL ITSELE.. .
Where is the Prophetic Dream of Peaceand Justice?
Isn’t it time to speak out for the honor of the Jewish People?
June of 1987 marks twenty years since the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and the
Golan Heights by Israelj military forces. With the backing of the United States government,
!srael has denied human rights to the Palestinian population in the occupied territories,
while confiscating land, invading Lebanon and bombing refugee camps.
The International
Jewish Peace Union (I.J.P.U.) supports:
l A Just peace in the Middle
East based on the right to self-determination
of Palestinians ’
and Israelis.
l Negotiations
conducted through an international
conference, involving all parties to
the conflict; Israel, the PLO, Arab states bordering Israel, the Soviet Union and the
United States.
l The two-state
solution: the establishment
of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and
Gaza, alongside the state of Israel. ‘bvo nationalities,
two nations: Israel and Palestine!
Founded in 1982, the American chapter of the I.J.P.U. sponsors speakers and forums,
distributes printed information, and works to promote the principles above. We actively
fight anti-Semitism
and anti-Arab stereotyping
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The Middle East is in a critical situation. We need your participation
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PO. Box 5672. Berkeley, CA 94705
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The Nation.
826
June 13, I987
Ark Communications
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instruments,” as
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Lafayette, CA 94549
were as much of a threat to the ortho- Access
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zendiplomacywith the Soviet Union
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DC
20036
and
awareness of international security
Washington,
Vysotsky and Bulat Okhudjava, built
issues. Its most recent publications are
(202) 328-2323
massivenationwidefollowings.Their
power overthe popular imagination can This is a nonprofit clearinghouse of in- Citizen Summitry:KeepingthePeace
best be understood in
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prophet. Soviet rockersof the 1980s in- affairs.
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herited that tradition and married it to
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ners: Citizen Exchange With the Soviet
alistic valuesof rock and roll. Leningrad U.S.-Soviet Relations
William
G.
Miller,
president
Union ($5.95 plus postage).
superstar Boris Grebenshchikov is both
a guitar bard in the Eastern sense and a 109 11th Street, S.E.
Better World Society
Washington, DC 20003
guitar hero in the Western senie.
Thomas Belford, executive director
The glasnost era provides an oppor- (202) 546-1700
1140 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
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where the official purpose of popular publicunderstanding of the complex (202) 331-3770
culture is’fun, rock has become numb- relationship between the United States This group, founded by Ted Turneri
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serious, transformingforce. Bands such mation and expert analysis. It is a mem- distribution of television programs that
astheanarchicZvukiMu
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Big Time Records
continually redefine the limits of what
is permissible on the Soviet stage. This American Friends Service Committee 6777 Hollywood Boulevard
Seventh Floor
is a period when, in the words of Pop- Asia Bennett, executive director
1501
Cherry
Street
Hollywood, CA 90028
ularMechanicsleaderSergeiKuyokPhiladelphia,
PA
19102
(213) 4604033
hin, “to be a true artist, you must also
(215) 241-7188
Red Wave, the only album of “unbe a social activist.”
Soviet youth havebeenhanded
a The A.F.S.C. conducts seminarsto bring official” rockmusic from theSoviet
unique. opportunity to be heard. They together academicsand journalists from Union available in the United States, is
may have the power to affect the way the
the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union. a two-record setand includes selections
by four bands whose music was considSoviet Union imagines itself
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Soviet recording label. (Some of those
their a r t may be granted unprecedented debate.
offibands havesincebeenrecorded
freedom. But with the conservative
cially.) Red Wave was produced by Jo‘forces beginningto rally this spring,the Aquarian Research Foundation
anna Stingray, a 26-year-old L.A.-based
0 Art Rosenblum, director
end ofthediscussionis still open.
5620 Morton Street
prisinger/songwriter, who brought
Philadelphia, PA 19144
vately made tapes back to the United
JoinThe Nation Associates, a group of
(215) 849-3237
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loyal and committed Nation Eaders
This group was founded in 1%9 to build
who provideinvaluable support for
asocietybased on international peace Campaign for Peace and
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tributions of $20 or more. Membership
ly newsletter, “Aquarian Alternatives” Joanne Landy, director
includes a subscription to ”The Nation
($12/twoyears). In conjunction with Box 1640, Cathedral Station
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PeaceNet,
an international computer New York, NY 10025
what‘s going on behind the scenes at
network,
and
McGraw-Hill the founda- (212) 724-1157
The Nation, and invitations to many
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the cold war by supporting movements
al, a program designed to &ow schoolFor further information write or call
children worldwide to communicate by for peace, democracy and social justice
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Center for Defense Information
Adm. Gene LaRocque (ret.), director
David Johnson, director of research
1500 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20005
(202)862-0700
C.D.I. was founded in 1977 by retired
seniormilitaryofficers to provide an
alternativesource of information on
military issues. Its monthly newsletter,
“Defense Monitor,” coversmany aspectsofU.S.-Sovietmilitary
affairs.
The center is preparing a survey of recent Soviet initiatives on arms control
and on the international ramifications
of Gorbachev’s domestic reforms.
The Nation.
827
“Cohen ranks as one of America’s
foremost commentatorson Soviet affairs.
His columns [in this book]...often openup small windows on the Soviet world, let
in lieht. exmse corners before keptin
Center €or Innovative Diplomacy
Michael Shuman, president
17931 Sky Park Circle
Suite F
Irvine, CA 92714
(714) 250-1296
The center encourages direct citizen
participation. in foreign policy. It has published a manual, “Having International
Affairs Your Way” ($6), and recently
sponsored the production of Citizen
Diplomats: Pathfinders in Soviet-American Relations-And How You Can
Join Them,by Gale Warnerand Michael
Shuman ($19.95, Continuum).
NORTON
W W Norton &Company, Inc
7
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Center for U.S.-U.S.S.R. Initiatives
Sharon Tennison, executive director
3220 Sacramento Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
Winner of the
LosAngeles Times
Book Award for History
(415) 346-1875
Thisgrouporganizespeople-to-people
tours of the Soviet Union for the general public.
Center for War, Peace and
The News Media
Robert Manoff, executive director
1021 Main Building
New York University
New York, NY 10011
(212) 598-7804
The center compiles and analyzes press
coverage of U.S.-Soviet relations, with
emphasis on the issues of arms control,
nuclear deterrence and Soviet domestic
policy. It puts out the bimonthly press
critique “Deadline. ”
Citizen Diplomacy Inc.
Steven J. Kalishman, director
‘9421 S.W. 61st Avenue
Gainesville, FL 32608
(W) 376-0341
This is the nonprofit parent corporation
of. the Gainesville/NovorossiskSister
City Program. It providesassistance
New York 10110
~~~~
The First
Socialist Society
AHistory of the Soviet Union
from Within
Geoffrey Hosking
“No-one’reading [this book] can fail
to be impressed by its sound sense, Its
mature weiglung up of the issues arid Its considered judgenienrs;
and i n the endby the humane optimism founded upon
a trust in
the people. 1t.certainlyshould be in t h e hands of everyone wishing to be informed about present-day Russia.”
-7imes Educational Supplenaent.
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The Nation.
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and coordination for other American
communities interested in forming ties
withSovietcities
and alsoorganizes
tours for Americans who wish to meet
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The Citizen Diplomat ($2/issue, $lo/
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Michael Brainerd, president
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The C.E.C.organizesexchange
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June 13, 1987
and Sovietschools and organizesexchanges of children’s art. Most of its activity is confined to Minnesota, but it
seeks hosts throughout the country for
its exhibits of Soviet children’s art.
Educators for Social Responsibility
Susan Alexander, executive director
23 Garden Street
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(617) 492-1764
E.S.R. offers teachers in the United
States creativeways to approachclassroom study of the Soviet Union.It publishes a sample curriculum and an annotated bibliography of teachingresources, and alsosponsors a summer
‘program on teaching about the Soviet
Union.
Esalen Institute
James Garrison, executive director
3105 Washington Street
San Francisco, CA 94115
(415) 563-4731
The institute promotes unconventional
private diplomacy between the United
States and the Soviet Union. Recently it
his ’ sponsored writers’ exchanges, programs for trading public health information and dialogues on economic and social transformation.
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Doug Hostetter, executive director
Box 271
Nyack, NY 10960
(914) 358-4601
Founded in 1914, the fellowship nowhas
branches in thirty countries to promote
peace, justice and human dignity. Under
the aegis ofits US.-U.S.S.R. ReconciliationProjects, it publishesbooks,pamphlets and other materials to increase
American understanding of Soviet life
and US-Soviet relations.
Helsinki Watch
Jeri Laber, director
36 West 44th Street
Suite 911
New York, NY 10036
(212) 840-9460
Founded in 1979, this group promotes
domestic and international compliance
with the 1975 Helsinki accords.
Imported Publications
CONNECT
Paula DeCosse and Susan Hartman, 320 West Ohia Street
Chicago, IL 60610
directors
(312) 787-9017
4835 Penn Avenue, S.
If you’reinterestedinbuyingSoviet
Minneapolis, MN 55409
books, you can write for a free cata(612) 922-4032
logue. Imported Publications is one of
This groupcreates links betweenU.S.
~
~.~
~.
~
~~
. _
The Nation.
June I3, 1987
829
the largest U.S. distributors of Soviet Kamkin Books
books in translation.
12224 Parklawn Drive
Rockville, MD 20852
Institute for East-West Security Studies (301) 881-5973
John Edwin Mroz, president
Kamkin, the largest distributor ofSoviet
A dlscusslon
360 Lexington Avenue
books in the United States, is also the
ECONOMICREFORM IN THE GDRBACHEV ERA
New York, NY 10017
soleU.S.agent for theSovietrecord
Wlth economlsts David Larbman and Shane Mage
(212) 557-2570
Company Melodia.
THURSDAY,JUNE 18, 8 PM
The institute bringstogetherscholars
Admission $4 The NewYork Marxist School
151 West 19vI Street (7thfloor), New York Bty.
from Eastern and Western Europe to National Council of Churches
discuss arms control and economic and Michael Roshak, director,
MARXISM
security issues. It sponsors two annual Europe/U.S.S.R. Area Office
lntenslve course at the New York Manlst School
conferences to foster communication 475 Riverside Drive
JULY 6 TO 17 - Evenmg sesslons..Monday through
.
.
’. .
.
Frlday
between scholars and political leaders. Room 610. - -.
~.
.- -~-SATURDAY-JULYtl-=AI~daysesslon.
New York, NY 10115
Deadllne lor admission. JUNE 9
Institute for Soviet-American Relations (212) 870-2060
For more Informallon. call the School (21 2) 6820
989
Harriet Crosby, president
This group facilitates ecumenical rela1608 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.
tions with churches
in the Soviet Union.
BENEFIT CONMRT FOR CHILE
Washington, DC20009
In conjunction with the N.C.C. Travel
Roy Brown
and
(202) 387-3034
Seminar Program, it sponsors church-toCrowsfeet Dance Collective
ISARworks
to encourage and ease church exchanges with Christiansin the
FRIDAY.JUNE 12,8 W
workingrelationshipsbetweenSoviet
Soviet Union. A series of pilgrimages is
P.S 41 (1 16 West 11th Street, near Sixth Avenue)
New York My
and U.S.citizens. It publishes a journal, scheduled for next year.
Donation $8 (Group rales available) Chilean c r a b and
Surviving Together, three times a year
refreshments
($24, less for teachers and students) as Organization For American-Soviet
Sponsored by Chlle Center for Education and Develop
well as an excellentcatalogue of 232 Exchanges
ment. New Ywk CIRCUS, Episcopal Campus Mlnlslry
organizations involved in Soviet-Ameri-Cynthia Dickstein, president
Far Informahon(21 2) 928-7600
can relations, includingU.S. and Soviet 1302 R Street, N.W.
CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY
government agencies.
Washington, DC 20009
IN CENTRAL AMERICA
(202) 332-1 145
Fourth Annual Conference
International Physicians for the
of the
OASES provides interpreters and inforNatlonal
Central
Amerlca Health flrghts Network
Prevention of Nuclear War
mation for groups or individuals interTeachers College, Columbra Unlverslty
William Manning, executive director
ested in professional, educationaland culNew York C~ty
126 Rogers Street
tural exchanges betweenthe United States FRIDAY,JUNE 12, 307- The Rev Jesse Jackson
Cambridge, MA 02142
SATURDAY.JUNE 13
and the Soviet Union.
9 AM TO 3 PM - Panels and Workshops
(617) 866-5050
9’30 PM - Johnny Colon andBand, and DJ W K WIIThis is the best source for information Peace Links
klns (WBAI-FM), Manhattan Plaza, 66 East 4th Street
For more Informallon. call (21 2) 420-9635
about the health effects of nuclear war. Nina Solarz, executive director
.It has 160,OOO physician-members in 747 8th Street, S.E.
“CATCHIN6 THE WIND”
forty-nine affiliated national organiza- Washington, DC 20003
Approprlate Technology In Nlcaragua
tions. The semiannual “I.P.P.N.W. Re- (202j 544-0805
New Y a r d A lnvltes you to a sllde show
r d e d by Jay Slnpar of the Nlcaragua Windmill
port,” a journal of opinion and com- Peace Links, 30,000 strong, educates
epar project Jay IS a “Iontanera,” or skllled w~ndm~ll
mentary, is sent to all contributors. The women about nuclear war and
arms con-’
repalr person
W~nd. harnessed during the dry months, can rase
organization received the Nobel Peace trol. The organization has developed an
clean water to the surface for irrlgatlon and drinking
Prize in 1985 and was the focus of con- extensive network of activists and profesThe wfndmllls there are badlyIn need of repalr and Jay
w ~ l lbe In the New York area to wln support for this
troversywhen it was learned that the sionals from all fifty states. It publishes
crdlcal prolect
Sovietco-presidentofthe
group, Yev- a quarterly newsletter,“TheConnecMs Slnger‘s shde show IS dedrcated to the memory of
geny Chazov, nowtheSovietMinister
tion,” and a bimonthly newsletter for
Ben Linder
of Health, had in 1973 signed a letter, activists, “The Link,” both of which
THURSDAY,JUNE I1,7 PM
Judson Memonal Church, 55 Washlngton Square Swth
with about two dozen other members are free. A delegation of twenty women
For more mformatlon, call (21 2) 427-0634
of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, that will visit the Soviet Union in October.
was critical of Andrei Sakharov.
BEYOND THE CONTRABATE HEARINBS
Physicians for Social Responsibility
Reagan’s D ~ r t yWar Agalnst Nlcaragua
International Research and
Victor Sidel, president
assassinatlon plots, La Penca bombmg, c w a m
and arms trallrcklng. subversion of the U.S ConsUtu.
Exchanges Board
1601 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
lion, vmlatlons of the Neutrallty Act,BolandAmend- .
ment and U S Arms Export Control Act .
Allen Kassof, executivedirector
Suite 800
Spcrken Danlel Sheehan. Chrrstic Instltute. and John
126 Alexander Street
Washington, DC 20009
Manes, Mlaml publlc defender.
Princeton, NJ 08540
(202) 939-5750
WBAl Contragate Team, Dennls Bernslein. ConnieBlltt,
(609) 683-9500
Robert Knight
With more than 30,000 members, P.S.R.
IREX provides support to U.S. aca- sponsors
FRIDAY.JUNE 12,8 PM
exchanges
of
physicians
beNVU Law School
demics in the humanities and social tween the United States and the Soviet
40 Washlngton Square South
scienceswhoseekworkingrelationships
.Union, and attempts to educate the
Free adrnlsslon. donatlons requested
withtheir counterparts in the Soviet public on the medical consequences of
For Informatlon, call (718) 8752622
Union and Eastern Europe.
nuclearwar. Its quarterly newsletter,
~~
~
”
I
~
~.
~~~
The Nation.
830
“P.S.R. Report,” is free to members; a
bimonthlynewsletter, “P.S.R. Monitor,” is sent free to activists.
June 13, 1987
CLASSIFIED.
Whrle wereserve the right to refuse any udvertBe-
tnetzt that we believe to be fmudulent, illegal or
SANE
offensive, The Nation wishes its readers to know:
David Cortright, executive director
a) we do not have thefacilities to check out the.
1711 G Street, S.E.
promrses made by our advertrsers; and b) we have
Washington, DC 20003
a strong presumption against censorrng any ad-’
vertisement, especially rf we disagree with its
(202) 546-7100
S A N E helps promote the nuclear polrfics.
freeze movement, citizen diplomacy
and
APARTMENTS AVAILABLE .
US.-Soviet understanding. Currently,
the’organization is arranging a trip for ROOM(S) FOR RAMALS. Share large Long Island house
$375 per month. (516)
young American filmmakers to discuss Prrvatebath.Washerldryer:
867-1802.
theirworkwith
artists in theSoviet
Union. On returning to-the United BEAUTIFUL BROOKLYN SUBLET. Share with woman July
August, convenlent to Manhattan. Own bedroom, IIVStates, participants will visit U.S. public and
ingroom, study, huge kltchen. Womanpreferred. $400
schools to discuss their experiences.
negotiable.
Call
Aobln
Epsteln ’ at The
Natlon
NOAM CHOMSKY recent lectures. Right Turn in U.S. Inter-;
national Policy, Vretnamand Afler; Terrorism. Problem
and Remedy. 3 cassettes; $8 each.DawdBarsamlan:
1415 Dellwood, Boulder CO 80302.
COMPUTERS
LONG-TIMENATIONEMPLOYEE, nowcomputer consultant, IS selllng IBM-compatlble computers aJd prgvlding
computer tralning andsupport to Natlonreaders In the
New York Crty area Specral rates for nonproflt organzations and those on low Incomes Call Mark at Present Day
Praducts (718) 934-2861
COUNSELING
(212) 242-8400 or at home (71 8) 857-2950.
U.S.-U.S.S.R. Youth
SUMMER SUBLET. UpperEastSide.Comfortable studlo
Exchange Program
for slngle orcouple. Air-conditioned, doormanbuilding.
.Cynthia Lazaroff, executive director
Near museums. August 1 through Labor Day, $1,000, or
3103 Washington Street
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Call
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APARTMENTS DESIRED
This group arranges wilderness adven:
tures in the.United States and the Soviet
RMTARD: FREE SUBSCRIPTION
Union for 17- to 22-year-olds from both
edrtonal8ssishnlseeks studlo or I-Wrm apartnations, and produces educational ma- , Nabon
merit b
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lw 14th Skeet In Manhatan, to rent now M to
terials about ,the Soviet Union for
sublet September ‘87-June ‘88 Wwld apprec!ab arry
l e a d s . Cal R D Epsteln
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American children.
M at I
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(718) 857-2950
’
Women’s Action for Nuclear
Disarmament
Corinne Ewald, acting director
Box 153
New Town Branch
Boston, MA 02258
(617) 643-6740
WAND is a national nuclear disarma-r
ment organization founded in 1980 by
Dr. Helen Caldicott. Its members, both
women and men, work to raise public
awareness’aboutnuclear issues and also
organize grass-roqts lobbying activities
to influencenuclearweaponspolicy.
WAND publishes a quarterly newsletter, “The Bulletin.”
:
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The Nation.
June 13, I987
833
Crossword Puzzle No. 2154
=FRANK
W. LEWIS
*
Y
Nation T-shirts are
available
in either leclassiqueredor
le
basicblack.Both
T-shirts are.
I00 percentcotton with white
lettering. "The Nation"isprinted
on the front and "Since 1865" on
the back.
~
ACROSS
,
1 When the hvin' 1s easy, one who can add two
and two together gets what is served in some
instltutlons. (10)
6 See 19
10 As a matter of protocol, lager brings out
somethmg for the artist. (7)
11 Beginning to exist in a form that's human, as
centuries show. (7)
12 Not a regular aspirant for political or d i t a r y
power. (8)
13 Root of statesmanship? (Prophet with the
beglmngs of hummty.) (5)
15 Such thlngs might ebb and flow with the
literary Shropshlre type i t brought back. (59
17 Where ships stop and are at odds, perhaps.
(9)
19.6 and 25 down Cry of an early would-be
trader, looking for a ride (2,7,3,1,5)
21 Shearer makes things so. there being some
point to themuslcal instrument . . ( 5 )
23 . . so one swears it's a part of a poem wlth
the point missing! (5)
24 Dick commonly mght be one of them-seemg
what the teeth are In, with certam farm implements. (8)
27 An Amerlcan artist seems to create quite a
racket, yet makes an acknowledgment about
the old measure. (7)
28 13 at last 1s confused, and also troubled internally (Caused by wmd?) (7)
.
29 Where you might find gold belongs to me!
(4)
30 Roughage, in a way, wlth Oscar posslble makmg sense, sort of. (10)
DOWN
1 Old drmk that's Just like fire! (4)
2 Bad for Pierre to put on fat! (Duck the result.)
(7)
3 Compel to furnish something, to be cornpletely accurate. ( 5 )
4 Positive? Walk around it, and you'll find it's
valuable. (99
5 Opera that implies a scoring position? (5)
7 A rather rude "get out of the way!" might imply either heads or ms. (3,4)
8 No guts? And I consider It wrong, which might
prove surprismg! (10)
9 By itself, a fool around It makes a calumnious
remark. (8)
14 The old type used to require hinges, but the
overseas mad shll carried some of its contents
(5.5)
16 Set pines on fire, possibly, but one is not expected to come in first. (4,4)
18 There's change about mother, as some say,
even though of the old school. (4,5)
20 Kmg's head on M e r h m dlsguue, m place of
redheads? (7)
22 In one word, represented by a baker's dozen,
in a sense, though perhaps too old. (4,3)
24 Gout's obviously a bad conditlon-you need
zestths!
for
(5)
25 See 19 across
26 Intimidates animals? (4)
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