TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/050889/05088900.035

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 7.0 KB | 134 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 41

SOVIET UNION

And Now for My Next Trick . . .


By purging 74 "dead souls" from the Central Committee,
Gorbachev once again proves a political magician without peer

By John Kohan/MOSCOW


    More than once, Mikhail Gorbachev has shown himself to be
the most dazzling of political magicians. So when word spread
that the Communist Party Central Committee had been summoned
last week for a special plenum to discuss "organizational
questions," many Soviets wondered just what the General
Secretary had up his sleeve this time. Gorbachev did not
disappoint them. Without resorting to repression, arrest or
personal vilification, he gracefully purged 74 full members of
the 301-member Central Committee. Never before in Soviet history
had such a large housecleaning been executed so painlessly.

    The departing Old Guard, dubbed the "dead souls" in a
reference to Nikolai Gogol's 19th century novel, read like a
Who's Who from the time of Leonid Brezhnev. Included were a
former President, a former Prime Minister, five marshals, six
generals and a portfolio of onetime Politburo members. What's
more, they had "requested" to resign in an extraordinary
statement that expressed "unanimous support for the political
course of our dear party." As Gorbachev explained to the plenum,
"One generation of party members has naturally to replace
another."

    That modest assessment downplayed the significance of a
leadership shuffle that considerably strengthened the Soviet
leader's position in his struggle against the party's
conservative wing. In theory, the Central Committee functions
as the party's most authoritative ruling body in the period
between Communist Party congresses. It has the formal power to
vote out the ruling Politburo, but it can replenish its own
ranks only when a congress is convened. With the next regular
congress scheduled for 1991, the Soviet leader had to be
content, for the moment, with promoting 24 junior members of the
present body from candidate to voting members. Though the
Central Committee was thus downsized by 50 members, to 251,
reinforcements are on the way. Since the last congress, in 1986,
Gorbachev has changed party leaders in six out of 15 republics
and 88 out of 150 regional and territorial party chiefs.

    The plenum was the first major meeting since the March
elections for the new Congress of People's Deputies, which
holds its inaugural session on May 25. The strong showing by
reformist candidates gave Gorbachev the proof he needed to
persuade skeptical party functionaries that the solution to the
country's economic woes lies in accelerating reforms, not
braking them. "The elections unequivocally said yes to
perestroika," Gorbachev told the plenum. Added he: "We should
have enough courage and ability to pursue consistently the line
we have marked out under difficult conditions."

    Speaking with the same bluntness heard at past party
plenums, Gorbachev did not gloss over the country's continuing
shortages in food and consumer goods, but he also contended that
many Soviets had forgotten how to work and "had got used to the
fact that they are often paid just for coming to work." His
harshest words were targeted at bumbling bureaucrats. Gorbachev
told how one ministry had imported almost 30 million medical
syringes without ensuring that there were needles to go with
them.

    Gorbachev asserted that many in the party were "not always
keeping pace with life," adding, "This is also true of the
Central Committee of the party and its Politburo." He compared
some party leaders with commanders who are straggling in the
trenches when their divisions are already on the attack. Said
he: "Some have already gone so far as to say in effect that
democracy and glasnost are very nearly a disaster. The fact that
people . . . no longer want to remain silent and insist on
making demands is viewed as taking perestroika too far. I for
one, comrades, see this as a success of perestroika."

    Gorbachev's feisty tone was matched by a barrage of frank
criticism from the floor, which was later printed in full in
the Soviet press. Yuri Solovyov, the Leningrad regional party
boss who had lost his uncontested election race for the new
legislature, charged that Kremlin initiatives like the
antialcoholism campaign and the program to foster cooperative
businesses had been carried out with "inconsistency, haste and
insufficient thought." Of perestroika, Solovyov said, the
"minuses still significantly exceed the pluses." Moscow Mayor
Valeri Saikin, another election loser, questioned whether
democracy had not come to mean "everything is permitted."

    One of the harshest blasts came from Vladimir Melnikov, the
party boss from the Komi region, in the northeastern part of
the Russian Republic. He charged that today's problems could not
simply be attributed to past leaders. "We are duty bound to
admit that many mistakes and miscalculations have been made in
the years of perestroika too." In fact, he wondered if the real
truth were being kept from Gorbachev by aides who were "clearly
guarding the General Secretary from the severity of the
situation."

    With a final round of elections set for May 14, there was
evidence last week that some local functionaries had not got
the message from the first round of votes. In one district of
the Russian city of Pskov, the local electoral commission chose
the regional party boss again as its uncontested candidate,
despite the fact that he lost his first bid at the ballot box.
The liberals could at least claim a triumph in the second round
of elections at the Soviet Union's Academy of Sciences. After
weeks of debate, academy members finally voted Nobel Peace
laureate Andrei Sakharov one of their 20 seats in the congress.
Independent deputies and supporters of such unofficial groups
as the popular front movements in the Baltic States have already
gathered in Moscow to discuss forming a loose parliamentary bloc
called the March Coalition. The group could attract as many as
10% of the members of the new Congress of People's Deputies,
presenting Gorbachev with something akin to an organized
opposition.

    If the left may challenge the Soviet leader in the future,
the conservatives are doing so right now, and Gorbachev showed
last week that he could hold his own in the debate with them.
In some ways, Gorbachev is the Teflon General Secretary, blaming
others for the plodding progress of perestroika despite the fact
that he has been in charge for more than four years.
"Gorbachev's greatest strength may very well be his pragmatism,"
mused a Moscow intellectual. "He is not dogmatic about carrying
out any set program. Instead, he maneuvers in and out of every
situation like a clever fox." Nonetheless, with empty store
shelves and seething ethnic tensions, many edgy Soviets are
counting the days in hopes that the first session of the new
congress will mark the point of no return on the path of reform.