Gorbachev
Socialist Outlook magazine1980sPhil HearseScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
THE struggle over perestroika – restructuring the economy and the state – is hotting up in the Soviet Union. While Gorbachev is showing growing impatience with the speed of the implementing the perestroika reforms in the economy, there is increasing evidence that the 'Moscow Spring' of glasnost may be short-lived.
During Gorbachev's Black Sea summer holiday, his leading critic in the Politburo, Yigor Ligachev, utilised the opportunity to make a detailed speech in the city of Gorky which almost amounted to a counter-manifesto to Gorbachev's programme of reforms.
While backing the general programme of economic perestroika, Ligachev warned of the dangers of too much marketisation, too many concessions to imperialism and too much freedom for non-party, informal, political associations like the Socialist Clubs. It was a declaration which was sure to get a good reception in lower levels of the bureaucracy, which see themselves as threatened by Gorbachev.
Gorbachev's response was swift. Following a melodramatic visit to Siberia, where many people complained about the slowness of the reforms, Gorbachev summoned a special Central Committee plenum which removed Ligachev as politburo number 2, and shunted him into the agriculture ministry.
Three new Gorbachev cronies were brought onto the politburo, and a decision taken to end the function of regional Communist organisations as economic managers – a sort of parallel state apparatus. This latter decision will threaten the role of thousands of lower party officials. Finally, President Gromyko was asked to resign 'for health reasons', to be replaced by Mikhail Gorbachev himself.
Gorbachev's coup against the Ligachevites was carried out in a manner totally at variance with the methods espoused by the official glasnost propaganda. There was no debate on Gorbachev's report, and, apart from Gromyko's pathetic speech asking to be relieved of his duties, there were no other speakers. The whole meeting was over in less than 2 hours.
The CC plenum revealed that progress on perestroika reforms is painfully slow because tens of thousands of lower level bureaucrats nationwide, who are expected to put it into effect, are extremely reluctant to change their old privileged ways.
Second, the CC plenum showed Gorbachev's penchant for accruing personal power in a rather vulgar and open way, which has nothing whatever to do with glasnost! But there are other straws in the wind indicating that glasnost may be under threat.
There were persistent rumours over the summer that the politburo had taken a decision to clamp down on non-party organisations and events. In August a demonstration in Pushkin Square commemorating the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was brutally broken up by an array of security forces, including a new riot squad not seen in public before.
The party leadership has had no choice but to accept the legitimate continued functioning of the 'popular front' in Estonia, which includes the Estonian party leadership. The front has held demonstrations for Estonian self-determination which have mobilised over a million people – a huge percentage of the adult Estonian population.
But an attempt in November to emulate the Estonian example in Byelorussia was crushed by the violent dispersal of demonstrations in Minsk. Unofficial clubs in Byelorussia, including the socialist clubs, reported that they were no longer able to book public halls which had previously been used for meetings.
On the domestic level therefore Gorbachevism seems to be in a period of uneasy equilibrium, with few real advances in the economy working their way through, or new initiatives in freedom or openness being apparent. But it should not be thought that by sidelining Ligachev, Gorbachev has inflicted a final defeat on either the man or the very large forces that he represents.
Internationally however Gorbachev has undoubtedly scored a major new successs with the October visit of Federal German Chancellor Helmut Kohl to Moscow. Kohl took an entourage of 500 with him, many of them top German businessmen, hungrily eyeing the 240 million-strong Soviet market. Dozens of new trade and aid deals were done.
Thatcher, in evident pique at this success, has launched a 'don't pay for perestroika' crusade, probably in cahoots with the United States, aimed at discouraging precisely those economic links being built by Kohl's Moscow visit.
Moscow's policy in Afghanistan has, however, come under renewed pressure as the US and Pakistan have increased their military aid to the Mojahedin guerrillas, taking advantage of the Soviet withdrawal. The Soviets have replied by halting their troop withdrawal and supplying the Afghan government with long-range missiles.
There is no doubt that the USSR is prepared to see the present Afghan government replaced, but wants a political solution which prevents a hard line anti-Soviet group coming to power. Thus the Soviet Union wants desperately to bolster the Afghan government's forces to prevent a complete rout when the military pull-out is complete.
Still, it seems only the most catastrophic turn of events would reverse Gorbachev's determination to complete the Red Army's withdrawal by the end of next February.
Phil Hearse