TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/060589/06058900.046

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                                                                                WORLD, Page 30

USSR

Presiding over a new Soviet Congress, Gorbachev gets a clamorous

lesson in democracy


By William R. Doerner


    "All of us today are just learning democracy. We are only
now forming a political culture."

    -- Mikhail Gorbachev at the Congress of People's Deputies


    From the opening moment, when the spotlights flicked on to
illuminate a towering statue of Lenin, it was clear that the
days of fully scripted, party-orchestrated politics had -- at
least for a moment -- come to an end. Assembled in the Kremlin's
Palace of Congresses were the delegates to the Soviet Union's
brand-new Congress of People's Deputies, a forum where doctrine
could be questioned, where the unexpected could happen, and
where the unmentionable could be spoken for all the nation to
hear.

    All of which came to pass, over three days of debate. The
2,250-seat Congress, two-thirds of whose delegates were freely
elected, constitutes what is arguably the most democratic
governmental institution in more than seven decades of Soviet
rule. But the assembly also revealed a profound regard for the
status quo in carrying out one of its principal jobs: the
election of 542 members of the Supreme Soviet, which will serve
as the country's working legislature. In voting results
announced Saturday, most anti-establishment candidates, some of
whom had defeated high-ranking Communist Party members to reach
the Congress, lost their bids to be seated in the Supreme
Soviet. The rebuffed reformers included Boris Yeltsin, the
former Moscow party chief who resigned his post in the
Construction Ministry earlier in the week, partly in
anticipation of being elected to the Supreme Soviet. Only in
delegations from Moscow and the Baltic region, a seedbed of
reform, did a handful of reformers gain election to the
permanent legislature. The results were a severe blow to
advocates of change, who seldom attracted more than a third of
the body's delegates in major votes.

    Any suspicion that the Congress would turn into a totally
rubber-stamp legislature, however, was dispelled minutes into
the opening session, when a Latvian delegate strode uninvited
to the podium. "I ask you to honor the memory of those who died
in Tbilisi," urged the gray-bearded man, referring to the 20
demonstrators killed in the Georgian capital in April, some
reportedly with poison gas, during clashes with army troops.
That request, which prompted the delegates to rise for a moment
of silence, was not merely unrehearsed, it was an explicit act
of defiance that went against Gorbachev's wish that no ethnic
group be singled out for sympathy.

    That was just the first in a series of moments of surprise
and spontaneity that rocked the historic convention, which
continues this week. No sooner did Gorbachev rise to chair the
session than a delegate stepped forward to challenge the agenda,
which had been set in a rump party session the day before by 446
delegates. "Please, People's Deputy Andrei Dimitreyevich
Sakharov," invited Gorbachev as the stoop-shouldered Nobel Peace
laureate -- his country's best-known dissident -- took the
microphone. Sakharov, who only 2 1/2 years ago was enduring
exile in the city of Gorky, expressed concern that the Congress
was ceding too much legislative power to the smaller, indirectly
elected Supreme Soviet. With the Congress preparing to elect a
President to a newly restructured and more powerful office,
Sakharov urged that the leading candidate, Gorbachev, be
required to defend his record. "I do not see any other person
capable of leading our country, but my support is conditional,"
said Sakharov. "I believe that discussion is necessary and that
the candidates should give a report."

    Gorbachev heard far blunter words than Sakharov's as the
day wore on. Leonid Sukhov, a driver from Kharkov, stunned the
assemblage by comparing Gorbachev "to the great Napoleon, who
fearing neither bullets nor death, led the nation to victory,
but owing to sycophants and his wife, transformed the republic
into an empire." Marju Lauristin, a prominent Estonian
nationalist, asked who in the ruling Politburo "knew in advance
that troops would be used in Tbilisi." Others complained about
Gorbachev's failure to improve his people's standard of living
and mentioned rumors that he is building a fancy dacha for
himself on the Black Sea in Crimea. Even the man who stood up
to nominate Gorbachev for President, author Chingiz Aitmatov,
did so with a few cavils. Gorbachev, he said, had made "serious
mistakes," notably a failure so far to turn around the country's
faltering economy and to keep a lid on ugly ethnic rivalries.

    In the end, Gorbachev did indeed give a "report," an
emotional and apparently extemporaneous 21-minute speech.
Confronting and denying some of the allegations against him, he
insisted, "During my entire life, neither I nor my family has
had or has a dacha of our own." But he also owned up to "major
mistakes and serious miscalculations" in managing the economy.
Above all, Gorbachev stressed his commitment to the democratic
process. "We must respond to all the questions, even the painful
ones."

    Despite such grandiose tributes to democracy, Gorbachev's
candidacy was uncontested -- the first hint that the Congress
was not out to rock the boat. An attempt was made to draft the
popular Yeltsin, but he withdrew his name, citing party
discipline. Leningrad engineer Alexander Obolensky, 46, a
political unknown, nominated himself -- not because he had any
illusion of winning, he explained, but "to set a precedent" of
contested elections. By 1,415 to 689, the assembly voted to keep
Obolensky's name off the secret ballot. Gorbachev was elected
President with 95.6% of the vote; 87 delegates voted against
him.

    The Soviet Union's lack of experience with the
rough-and-tumble of democratic debate was obvious from the
session's glitches. Deputies voted by waving white "mandate"
cards in the air -- a feasible method for the near unanimous
yea-or-nay votes of the past but hopelessly cumbersome in more
evenly divided counts. Also noticeable were the usual
inconveniences of the democratic process. Speakers were
long-winded. When the Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Pitirim, one
of seven clergy elected to the Congress, suggested that voluble
Deputies be silenced by having their microphones switched off,
delegates applauded enthusiastically.

    The ridiculous, the embarrassing, the surprising -- TV
cameras were recording it all for the whole nation to see.
Gorbachev served by turns as circus ringmaster, traffic cop and
soothing conciliator. Lithuanian newspaper editor Algimantas
Cekuolis expressed sympathy for the President's predicament: "He
is trying to be very democratic, but it's not so easy without
a tradition of democracy. To try not to boss us around is a hard
job for him."

    Among the more provocative moments for Gorbachev were
repeated references to the deaths in Tbilisi, which he insisted
he had learned about only after the fact. And Gorbachev sought
to defuse delegate anger over an incident at Pushkin Square the
evening after the Congress opened, when police encircled crowds
of Soviets seeking to meet with Deputies.

    During this week's sessions, elections are scheduled for
the offices of Prime Minister -- expected to go to the current
holder of that office, Nikolai Ryzhkov -- and First Vice
President, a post that the ever ambitious Yeltsin has hinted he
may covet. Just how the new Supreme Soviet will go about its
work as a standing parliament must also be decided. More
important, the composition of the Supreme Soviet suggests that
Gorbachev will be working with a legislature that is not wildly
enthusiastic about radical reform.


-- Paul Hofheinz and John Kohan/Moscow