TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/070290/0702006.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 12.4 KB | 300 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 31

SOVIET UNION

Key Players in a New Game


As perestroika comes to politics, and democratic institutions
begin to replace rule by secrecy and dictatorship, the old
party is breaking up

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by James Carney/Moscow and Brigid
O'Hara-Forster/New York


    Mikhail Gorbachev's revolution is about to sweep away what
is left of monolithic communism. When 4,750 delegates convene
next week for the Communist Party's 28th Congress, they are
expected to approve a measure that will bloat the once
omnipotent twelve-member Politburo into an unwieldy national
committee by adding to the top party officials representatives
of all 15 republics, workers and intellectuals. The delegates
are also likely to approve a proposal to reduce the head of the
party to a mere chairman of the committee. Gorbachev may not
even want to keep the job. He told the Russian Federation's
party congress last week, "There could be another General
Secretary or chairman of the party."

    In power terms, Gorbachev has already moved on. With the
formal abolition of the party's leading role last March, the
Communists lost their monopoly on political action. The
Politburo, which once decided all vital issues, now meets only
about once a month instead of weekly and deals exclusively with
party business, not matters of state. Gorbachev is the
Executive President of the U.S.S.R., and decisions lie with
him, his government and the parliament. To replace the counsel
formerly provided by the Politburo, he has created a
Presidential Council with 16 members.

    This political perestroika is far more than organizational
tinkering. It is opening up a range of ideas and influences no
one could have imagined under the old ways. Even a year ago,
an analysis of the policy debate in Moscow would have focused
almost exclusively on party leaders, the well-known Gorbachev
allies like Politburo member Eduard Shevardnadze and equally
prominent opponents like Politburo member Yegor Ligachev and
former Moscow party chief Boris Yeltsin. Today new approaches
and fledgling political parties are emerging across the
spectrum, from Gorbachev's left to his far right, reshaping
Soviet politics. Some of the most influential advocates of the
new approaches:

    LOYALISTS

    ALEXANDER YAKOVLEV

    [A former think-tank director, diplomat and history
professor who is often called Gorbachev's alter ego]

    As a member of both the Politburo and the new Presidential
Council, Yakovlev, 66, provides a bridge as power is shifted
from one to the other. In 1983 he was named head of the
influential Institute of World Economics and International
Relations (IMEMO). From 1970-73 he was acting chief of the
party propaganda department, where he won favor with liberal
intellectuals. In 1985 Gorbachev put him back in charge of that
department. He has been the President's closest adviser for
years, responsible for much of the philosophic theory
underpinning glasnost and perestroika. Gorbachev, claims
Yakovlev, is not power hungry and sometimes finds his job a
burden. He says that Gorbachev resisted his repeated urgings
to take the position of Executive President until he concluded
that it was what the country needed. Because -- or in spite --
of his year as an exchange student at Columbia University in
1959, Yakovlev dislikes and distrusts the U.S. and considers
it dominated by right-wing thinking. Sovietologist Dimitri
Simes says he is "unusually intellectually curious, a person
with imagination, with vision."

    YEVGENI PRIMAKOV

    [One of the architects of the new Soviet foreign policy, who
favors nonintervention and no export of revolution]

    An Arabist and former journalist, Primakov, 60, is a member
of the new Presidential Council and one of Gorbachev's top
foreign policy advisers. Like Yakovlev, he once headed IMEMO.
As a member of the Supreme Soviet, he has impressed no one with
his debating, but his record as a privy councilor is brilliant.
He has outlined the rationale for a nonthreatening foreign
policy, de-emphasis of military power, negotiated settlement
of regional conflicts, and cuts in the defense budget. In
recent months Gorbachev has enlisted his aid in dealing with
separatists in the Caucasus.

    NIKOLAI PETRAKOV

    [Gorbachev's personal adviser on economics, who says central
planning does not work and never has]

    An academic economist and member of parliament, Petrakov,
53, was named special assistant to Gorbachev last January. He
has been critical of the centrally planned economy for 20
years, and argues for immediate transition to a market-oriented
system integrated into the world economy. He thinks the
economic reforms presented in May by Prime Minister Nikolai
Ryzhkov are too timid, but he says a Polish-style shock
treatment would not succeed. The Poles voted for it, but the
Soviet people, he believes, would not. He suggests creating a
stock market and turning state property into publicly held
stock companies. Citizens should be allowed to buy their own
apartments, he says, "and to invest in production by buying
shares and setting up small-scale businesses."

    STANISLAV SHATALIN

    [The maverick economist in the inner circle, who claims he
is not a communist but a social democrat]

    Warning against performing "neurosurgery with an ax," the
economist says that building a market economy will require "big
credits from the West." But, he adds, a relatively rapid
transition to a "regulated market" is still possible. A member
of the Presidential Council and an academician, Shatalin, 55,
has argued since the 1960s against Moscow's tight
centralization of economic planning. He supports the
introduction of private property, private enterprise and direct
foreign investment, as long as strong social protection
measures are deployed to soften the impact. He has derided the
Ryzhkov economic-reform plan and says he and others are
preparing "much more radical measures."

    GEORGI SHAKHNAZAROV

    [A lawyer, political scientist and part-time science-fiction
writer who pushes basic reforms in domestic and foreign
affairs]

    Shakhnazarov, 65, is a member of Gorbachev's personal staff
and with Primakov has authored much of the "new thinking" on
foreign policy, mutual security and arms control. He has been
an advocate of wide-ranging reforms and decentralization for
most of his life. While an official at the Central Committee
in 1972, he praised Western social democracy and proposed
splitting party and government functions in the Soviet Union.
Earlier this year he announced that power would be taken from
the Politburo and placed "in the hands of a legitimate state
authority . . . as in any democratic country." He predicted the
evolution of a multiparty system.

    VADIM BAKATIN

    [The diligent and able Interior Minister, who could turn
into a law-and-order candidate in future elections]

    A member of the Presidential Council as well as a minister,
Bakatin, 53, is the country's chief policeman. Though he was
trained as a civil engineer, he is in charge of combatting
crime, corruption and ethnic violence, all of which he handles
well enough to earn praise from conservatives and liberals
alike. He is businesslike but personable, articulate,
impressive on television. Conservative Supreme Soviet Deputies
offered to nominate him for President in the election last
March. He declined, but next time he might not, especially if
Gorbachev is not a candidate then.

    RIVALS

    GAVRIL POPOV

    [Yet another radical economist who hopes to turn Moscow into
a laboratory for market-based reforms]

    A short, impish professor of Greek extraction, Popov, 53,
was elected mayor of Moscow last April. He and his reformist
colleagues plan to open a computerized apartment-rental service
and launch an industrial-commodities exchange to barter needed
items among enterprises. They have also called for soup
kitchens to help cushion the transition to a market economy.
Popov and his city council have not managed basic reforms, but
they represent a challenge to Gorbachev simply by being in a
position to experiment. Popov is one of the founders of the
progressive Interregional Group in parliament, and he has
criticized Ryzhkov's reform plan as a "fiction" that would
leave "the same whip and fist" in charge. He advocates
eliminating most of the huge Moscow-based industrial
ministries, along with large slices of the bureaucracy.

    ANATOLI SOBCHAK

    [One of parliament's leading Deputies and a scholar of law
who questions the Communist Party's legal standing]

    Sobchak, 53, was elected Mayor of Leningrad in May after
reformers there mounted a draft. An expert on economic
legislation, he is an influential member of the Supreme Soviet,
where he has clashed bitterly with Prime Minister Ryzhkov.
Yegor Ligachev is also one of his targets. Sobchak said of him
last week that "yesterday his word was law; today it is
nonsense." Sobchak belongs to the Interregional Group and is
considered a radical, but a measured one. He argues that KGB
leaders should be barred from political leadership and, perhaps
tongue in cheek, that the party might have to be refused
registration because it advocates a dictatorship (of the
proletariat), which is illegal. But he has spoken up for
Gorbachev, saying "Let's not hinder the efforts of this
President who pursues a policy of democratic renewal."

    LOOSE CANNONS

    VALENTIN RASPUTIN

    [A literary figure of real standing who brings a whiff of
hard-core Russian nationalism into the Presidential Council]

    The name of the Siberian Rasputin, 53, has been famous for
more than a decade because of his sensitive depiction of the
ravages of industrialization at the expense of the countryside,
its villages and churches. Writers and poets have a special
standing in the Soviet Union, and Raisa Gorbachev is reportedly
one of his fans. He rails against the decline of "human
values," and as an outspoken supporter of the nascent Green
environmental movement, he is active in the campaign to save the
purity of Lake Baikal. In light of his anti-Western,
nationalist and anti-Semitic views, his appointment to the
Presidential Council surprised many. Though Rasputin is not a
member of the Communist Party, Gorbachev may view him as a
communications link to an important segment of the population.

    VENIAMIN YARIN

    [A blue-collar right-winger who says the working class
opposes radical reform but demands a higher standard of living]

    Another surprise addition to the Presidential Council,
Yarin, 50, is co-chairman of the United Workers' Front, formed
last year in 29 cities to oppose free-market reforms and defend
fellow Russians against attacks by ethnic movements in
far-flung Soviet republics. A construction worker with a high
school education, he is a member of the Supreme Soviet and is
on record as blaming the bureaucracy for the misery of workers'
lives, food shortages, infant mortality and pollution.
Conservatives have been attracted by his strong personality and
persuasive public speaking. The Front claims that Gorbachev is
dividing the society into rich and poor and that the workers
are getting poorer. But the Front has not been successful in
elections so far, and to redress the balance, it demands a
fixed percentage of parliamentary seats for workers.

    BORIS GROMOV

    [A popular military hero who might be the man on horseback
if reforms fail and the system collapses]

    The commander of the Kiev military district, Lieut. General
Gromov, 46, is one of the most famous and admired officers in
the country. A major general at 39, a Hero of the Soviet Union,
he served three tours in Afghanistan and was overall Soviet
commander there from 1984 until the pullout last year.
Typically, he was the last soldier to cross the bridge back
into the U.S.S.R., in February 1989. There is no tradition of
Bonapartism in Russian history, and Gromov denies rumors that
he is contemplating a coup, but he says the army "cannot be
kept outside politics." His political views are unknown, but he
is a conservative on military matters who nevertheless
acknowledges that change is inevitable. If the government
flounders and chaos threatens, Sovietologist Simes says Gromov
"would be the man to watch."