TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061989/06198900.037

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 8.6 KB | 167 lines

                ¼                                                              COMMUNISM, Page 28

SOVIET UNION

Hard Lessons and Unhappy Citizens


Wherever he turns, Gorbachev faces the forces he has unleashed

By William R. Doerner


    Not so long ago, the catalog of crises that have recently
afflicted the Soviet Union would have been buried in the
recesses of the Kremlin, with much of the rest of the world none
the wiser. Not anymore. With a newly emboldened press and
oratorical skirmishing going on constantly in Moscow's new
Congress of People's Deputies, an engrossed world knows
practically everything.

    The very act of revelation is a central feature in the
gradual loosening of Communist strictures that Mikhail Gorbachev
is bringing to the Soviet Union, as he grapples with the
challenge of revamping the system without completely violating
it -- and a stark contrast to the refusal of China's leadership
to countenance the slightest openness.

    Paying heed to the cataclysmic outcome of that refusal, the
Kremlin calibrated its response with great care. Early in the
week, the Congress issued a timid resolution urging that
"wisdom, sound reason and a balanced approach" prevail in China.
Later, caution became less evident. "We hadn't expected this,"
said Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, adding that
his government was "extremely dismayed" over the events in
China. But Moscow's options were limited.  After almost two
decades of exchanging ideological insults, the Chinese were
scarcely prepared to accept a lecture from the Soviets. In any
case, admonitions would only feed lingering Chinese suspicions
that the Kremlin still harbors hopes of playing schoolmaster to
the Communist movement. So what is left, in Moscow's view, is
nothing but time and patience. "If you think we don't understand
the situation, you are wrong," said a frustrated Soviet observer
last week. "Not one Soviet, from the President on down to a
schoolchild, approves of China's use of tanks to repress the
students. But the only way we can really help is by example,
through deepening democracy in our own country."

    Last week the world was able to watch that process lurch
ahead as debates in the Soviet Congress reached a painful peak
of bitterness. Little was hidden from the Soviet people as a
pair of new disasters threw the nation into mourning.

    Gorbachev's experiment in rambunctious parliamentary
democracy adjourned, with moments of high drama to the very end.
At the closing session of the Congress, Andrei Sakharov and
Gorbachev squared off against each other. Sakharov called for
removal of the constitutional provision giving the Communist
Party the "leading role" in Soviet political life, while the
Soviet leader accused the Nobel Peace laureate of trying to
"belittle" the new parliament's achievements. There were also
painful disclosures about the dreadful state of the Soviet
economy. Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov admitted that some 40
million Soviets, or 13% of the population, live below the
poverty level, that the Afghanistan war had cost about $70
billion and that the country's foreign-trade deficit this year
will reach $52 billion. (The U.S. foreign-trade deficit last
year was $119.8 billion.) In an attack on the economic front,
Ryzhkov proposed cuts of almost a third in the military budget
until 1995 and the elimination of as many as 18 of the 50
government ministries.

    The political challenges that confronted Gorbachev included
the first walkout of the session, staged by members from
Lithuania, one of the country's three Baltic republics and a
hotbed of nationalism. They were provoked by a plan, backed by
Gorbachev, to establish a commission empowered to have the final
say on constitutional disputes. Baltic deputies viewed the
proposal as one more way for Moscow to impose its will on the
14 non-Russian republics. "Our electors ordered us to take care
of the sovereignty of our republics," declared Romas Gudaitis,
a writer and deputy from Lithuania. Gorbachev was clearly
exasperated by the Lithuanians' sudden departure, calling after
them, "I ask you to be calm because this is not so simple." In
the end, Gorbachev won passage of a compromise measure, placing
the commission's charter in the hands of a group that includes
leading dissidents.

    But that minor eruption paled next to the outburst of
violence in Uzbekistan, the fourth largest republic, located in
the southern part of the U.S.S.R. The worst outbreak of ethnic
mayhem in the modern Soviet era began on the night of June 3,
in the city of Fergana (pop. 190,000), 150 miles southeast of
Tashkent, as bands of native Uzbeks staged a series of brutal
attacks on minority Meskhetian Turks, who were deported from
Georgia in 1944 by Joseph Stalin. Most of the 190,000 displaced
Meskhetians settled in Uzbekistan, a region that did not always
welcome their presence.

    Precisely what touched off the violence remained unclear,
despite thorough glasnost-era reporting by the Soviet press and
television. Some stories said the fighting was touched off by
a dispute over the price of strawberries at a local market,
while others maintained that the attacks were in retaliation for
a fight last month in the tiny market town of Kuvasi.

    Whatever the cause, mobs of mostly young Uzbek men went on
a rampage against the Meskhetians, hunting them down in their
homes and beating them with iron bars and stones. Moscow rushed
9,000 Interior Ministry troops to the scene in an attempt to
quell the violence. But fighting erupted in the city of Kokand,
40 miles west of Fergana, where a mob numbering 5,000, some with
automatic weapons, attacked government buildings, blocked
railroad tracks and set fires.

    By week's end at least 80 people, mostly Meskhetians, had
been killed and perhaps as many as 1,000 injured. In addition,
more than 400 homes, eight factories and six schools had been
burned down. Some 11,000 Meskhetians had taken up residence in
refugee camps, either because their homes had been destroyed or
because they feared for their lives.

    Gorbachev acknowledged the violence in sessions of the
Congress, the latest outbursts in a growing litany that many
conservatives blame on his tolerant governing style. Said the
Soviet leader: "Let us again issue an appeal to keep the peace.
Please stop and let us trust the legal organs of the country to
do everything to protect the lives of the people."

    Ethnic disorders were not the only sad news that Gorbachev
conveyed to the Congress last week. On Monday, dressed in a
funereal black suit, the Soviet leader called for a moment of
silence in memory of "several hundred" Soviets who perished
over the weekend in a gas-pipeline explosion in the southern
Ural mountains. Some three hours before the explosion,
technicians apparently noticed a dip in pressure along one
section of the pipeline. But instead of searching for a leak,
they turned up the gas flow to get the pressure back to normal,
allowing huge quantities of propane, butane and other highly
flammable gasses to escape and form an atmospheric "lake."
Fatefully, two passenger trains on the famed TransSiberian
Railway were passing each other when the gases, ignited probably
by a spark or a discarded cigarette, detonated with the force
of a ten-kiloton bomb (the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima was
12.5 kilotons).

    It was the worst train disaster in Soviet history. The
explosion thrust a pillar of fire into the nighttime Siberian
skies that was visible to observers more than 60 miles away. The
bodies of 137 of the 1,200 passengers aboard the trains were
recovered, 53 more died en route to the hospital and an unknown
number were completely incinerated in the blast, making a
precise toll impossible. More than 700 passengers and crew, many
of them horribly burned, required hospitalization. The victims
included many children on their way to summer camps on the Black
Sea. On Saturday a train traveling from that resort area crashed
into a bus, killing 31 people and injuring at least 14 others.

    Ealier in the week, Gorbachev had visited the scene of the
explosion, acre after acre of which was scorched black by fire.
"It seems once again that it is a matter of incompetence,
irresponsibility, mismanagement," the grim and angry President
told the Congress. "It was nothing less than a shameful outrage.
There will be no progress in this country if we have such
laxness." Gorbachev then exhorted his listeners to "learn hard
lessons from what happened." Last week in the Soviet Union,
there was no shortage of hard lessons.


-- Paul Hofheinz and John Kohan/Moscow