TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/062491/0624000.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 13.1 KB | 274 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 28

SOVIET UNION

Boris Looks Westward


As Yeltsin arrives in the U.S., his landslide win creates a
dilemma: How to deal with him and other leaders who want to
bypass Gorbachev?

By GEORGE J. CHURCH -- Reported by David Aikman and John Kohan/
Moscow and Christopher Ogden/Washington


    He did not say "Read my lips." In fact, his wording was
rather pedestrian. But the substance of Boris Yeltsin's campaign
promise was quite as bold, and may be every bit as difficult to
fulfill, as George Bush's 1988 vow not to raise taxes. Under his
"program of immediate economic stabilization" for the Russian
Federation, said Yeltsin, "there will be the beginning of an
improvement in living standards toward the end of 1992." In
other words, he would not just stop but reverse the calamitous
economic plunge that is the legacy of more than 70 years of
communist mismanagement. And he would do it in only a year and
a half. And while the main levers of economic power -- to the
extent that there are any left in the chaotic
production-and-distribution system -- are not in his hands but
in those of Mikhail Gorbachev.

    The impetuous optimism, however, was quintessential
Yeltsin, and it has helped make him the first popularly elected
head of government in Russia's 1,000-year history. The eventual
outcome of last week's presidential election was never in doubt,
but there was some question whether Yeltsin would win the
50%-plus majority -- against five other candidates -- necessary
to avoid a runoff. Those doubts dissolved almost as soon as
voters began entering polling places stretching across the
Russian republic's eleven time zones. Though the official count
of more than 70 million mostly paper ballots will not be
announced until late this week, informal tallies indicated he
had won in a landslide with about 60% of the vote.

    So now Yeltsin will have to produce results rather than
just carp about the Kremlin. The future of nascent democracy
not only in Russia but in many of the other 14 Soviet republics
may ride on his success. His demonstrated popularity may boost
his chances of negotiating with the Kremlin and the other
republics a new union treaty that would give his government
greater autonomy. That in turn might increase Yeltsin's ability
to actually create the private-property, free-market economy he
envisions, and to strip away most of the authority still
exercised by Communist Party bureaucrats. Even then, however,
Yeltsin will have to stop relying entirely on his personal
popularity and begin building a genuine political movement and
an efficient bureaucracy of his own.

    But before even beginning to tackle those problems,
Yeltsin prepared for a visit to the U.S. that underscored his
growing clout. He was initially invited by congressional
leaders, but once the election returns were in, President Bush
lost no time asking Yeltsin to drop by the White House also as
long as he was in town. They plan to chat in the Oval Office
this Thursday. Simultaneously, some Administration officials
began hinting that Bush's twice-postponed summit with Gorbachev
may be held off until fall, though others continued to say late
July. The hang-up is lack of progress on a nuclear
arms-reduction treaty that Bush has identified as a precondition
for the summit.

    Coincidental or not, the timing symbolized a foreign
policy conundrum. Eager to prop up Gorbachev, the Bush
Administration previously had pretty much ignored Yeltsin. Now,
the U.S. and other Western powers can no longer put off
cultivating contacts with him and other rising leaders of a
rapidly decentralizing Soviet Union. Yet they must try to do so
without alienating Gorbachev, who still determines Soviet
foreign policy. The question of how far to go is already causing
some dissent in the West. British diplomats last week were
privately but sharply critical of the White House invitation to
Yeltsin; one called it a "needless slap in the face to
Gorbachev."

    The dilemma is likely to worsen, because while it is
Gorbachev who is pleading for tens or even hundreds of billions
of dollars in economic aid from the West, it is Yeltsin who is
pushing the sweeping reforms that in Western eyes are needed to
make any such aid effective. That divergence will be pointed up
at the conclusion of the summit conference of the G-7 (the
Group of Seven major industrial and financial powers) in London
on July 15-17. The group last week formally invited Gorbachev
to meet with them immediately afterward. He will then make his
pitch for massive aid, and the seven undoubtedly will press him
for assurances of fundamental change. They probably will get
unsatisfactory answers -- except in the unlikely event that they
can persuade him to adopt Yeltsin's program.

    Yeltsin has promised to resurrect private farming on a
grand scale, making land available to every peasant who wants
to till his own fields rather than toil for a collective or
state farm. Russia already has a private-property law on the
books, though Gorbachev gags at endorsing one for the whole
Soviet Union. Yeltsin promises to strengthen it and to bring
about the "rebirth of entrepreneurship," promoting the formation
and expansion of privately owned companies in "any business."
Further, he proposes departizatsiya, or departification, meaning
that the ubiquitous Communist Party committees should have
nothing to do with running factories, the army, the KGB or any
other Russian institution.

    This program is so frightening to communist hard-liners as
to spur speculation -- some of it inside Yeltsin's entourage --
that they might attempt a military coup to prevent anything like
it from being carried out, in Russia or the other republics.
Actually, though, the greater danger might be that Yeltsin will
simply be unable to deliver, and his failure will sour a
disillusioned populace not only on him but on democracy itself.
Yeltsin takes office considerably overpromised. For example, he
has pledged a hefty increase in pensions without offering any
idea of how he proposes to raise the money. He runs pretty much
a one-man show: he has made little attempt to organize his
legions of admirers into a political party, and his staff of
advisers and idea people, though excellent, is stretched very
thin. Ironically, in fact, Yeltsin can carry out his program
only with the cooperation of at least part of the very Communist
Party bureaucracy and central Soviet administration he assails
so vigorously.

    Though on paper Yeltsin now has considerably more legal
powers than he did as chairman of the Russian parliament, it is
an open question whether he will be able to deploy them. He is
heavily dependent on the negotiations between Gorbachev's
central government and nine of the 15 Soviet republics for a new
treaty replacing the one that formed the Soviet Union in 1922.
In those talks, says Georgi Shakhnazarov, an adviser to
Gorbachev, "we are encountering the same problems the Americans
faced 200 years ago" -- and occasionally seeking guidance from
the same sources. At one point, addressing representatives of
the republics, Gorbachev read excerpts from an Alexander
Hamilton essay in The Federalist Papers to back up his advocacy
of a federal tax system under which the central government would
collect at least some revenues directly. He was trying to steer
them away from proposals, primarily from Yeltsin, for a plan in
which the republics collect all the money and pass on a portion
to the Kremlin.

    The negotiations are making enough progress to give
Yeltsin and some others hope for a completed draft by next
month. But that will not solve all problems even if it happens.
For example, the current draft calls for dual administration of
defense plants, with organization, planning and design bureaus
under central control and factory management within each
republic's jurisdiction. That seems less a clear division of
authority than a formula for chaotic conflict.

    Six of the 15 republics have refused even to participate
in the negotiations for a new union treaty, and are shaping
programs that look toward total independence. In the rebellious
Baltics, Estonia is offering, in effect, to buy its freedom for
$1 billion in hard currency delivered to Moscow. Latvia plans
to introduce its own currency, the lat, in the next 12 to 18
months, and has already lined up a Dutch company to print the
banknotes. Lithuania has adopted a budget totally separate from
the union budget. It proposes to keep all taxes and revenues
collected on its territory and use the funds to administer
agencies -- the Interior Ministry, the public prosecutor's
office -- formerly financed by and run from Moscow.

    In the south, Armenia has scheduled a referendum on
independence for Sept. 21, the first step in the five-year
process decreed by Moscow for formal secession. Meanwhile,
though torn by violent ethnic clashes, Armenia is actually
carrying out one of the reforms proposed by Yeltsin. The
republic has sold 65% of its agricultural land to private
farmers. Georgia and Moldavia have been too preoccupied by their
own ethnic conflicts to do much in the way of economic reform,
but they have made it clear that they also want out of the Union
-- and in a lot less than five years.

    The Baltics, in addition, are making a strong pitch for
more foreign investment, and they may soon be joined by most or
all of the nine republics that want autonomy rather than
independence. Article VII of the draft union treaty authorizes
the republics to "establish direct diplomatic, consular, trade
and other ties with foreign governments." Shakhnazarov insists
this does not mean they can set up their own embassies and
conduct their own foreign policy. But, he says, republics can
and probably will station representatives at various Soviet
embassies to deal directly with foreign governments about the
republics' special interests. Those interests are heavily
economic; the republics can be expected to strike their own
trade and investment deals with foreign countries and, in
particular, to angle for a chunk of whatever grants, loans or
credits the Western powers decide to make available to the
U.S.S.R.

    That would please some Sovietologists who have been
arguing for years that the West should stop dealing exclusively
with Gorbachev and the center, which they view as declining
forces, and cultivate contacts with Yeltsin and other republic
leaders. Some American experts argue in addition that aid
funneled to the republics would do more to promote economic
reform and democracy than would assistance through Moscow's
bureaucracy. One idea: set up an international superagency to
hold all money the Western governments put up for Soviet
economic aid; then have the central government, republics,
cities and enterprises bid for the funds; a multinational board
of experts would weigh their claims.

    "It's a mistake to go through the central government,
which has only a 14% acceptance rating in its own country," says
James Billington, Librarian of Congress and a scholar of Soviet
affairs. "That tends to reinforce precisely the old, essentially
declining but still strong ((Communist)) Party system."
Alexander Motyl, a Columbia University Sovietologist, concurs:
"There is too much going on in the Soviet Union to have a Soviet
policy that is essentially a Gorbachev policy. It misses the
variety, the contradictions and the complexity of the
situation."

    Such talk sounds foolish to many diplomats. British
experts insist that the West must continue to deal primarily
with Gorbachev because he still holds the power in foreign
affairs: Washington can hardly negotiate a reduction in nuclear
missiles or Soviet support for the war against Iraq with
Yeltsin. Western officials whose prime interest is stability are
afraid that bypassing Gorbachev, especially to deal with the six
breakaway republics, might encourage a splitting up of the
Soviet Union or even civil war, with unpredictable consequences.
Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger goes so far as
to talk about a "situation akin to 1914," when the breakdown of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire into savagely feuding fiefdoms
helped trigger World War I.

    What is needed is to strike a balance between dealing more
with Yeltsin and other republic leaders on economic affairs
while continuing to negotiate with Gorbachev on foreign policy.
That is a tricky job, and there is no assurance the West will
get it right, but Yeltsin has simply put on too much political
weight to be ignored. In March he could not get Secretary of
State James Baker, who was visiting Moscow, to come to his
office for a private meeting; Baker did not want to give
Gorbachev's rival special treatment. Now the doors of the White
House are about to swing open for Yeltsin. Next year who knows
how much power he will exercise and what reception he might
deserve? But it would be unwise to bet against the man's
potential -- and a horseshoe-pitching session between Boris and
George at Camp David.