TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080591/0805004.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.9 KB | 122 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 41

SOVIET UNION

Hard Times for the Hard-Liners


For Alexei Sergeyev and other devout communists, Gorbachev's
reforms spell the end of the party

By JOHN KOHAN/MOSCOW


    While Mikhail Gorbachev blasted "communist fundamentalists"
from his Kremlin pulpit last week, one of his main targets,
Alexei Sergeyev, sat silently in the audience of Central
Committee members, nursing a few grievances of his own. As the
founder of the hard-line Communist Initiative movement, Sergeyev
concluded that what Gorbachev said about "breaking out of the
circle of dogmatic concepts" confirmed his worst suspicions. "In
the past, Gorbachev has always disguised his true views," said
Sergeyev. "This time, he was almost honest. His speech left me
in no doubt that he is not a communist. If you were to change a
few words in his program, Margaret Thatcher or George Bush could
endorse it."

    What particularly incensed Sergeyev and other supporters
of traditional Marxist-Leninist doctrine was a draft charter
that Gorbachev presented to the plenum of the party leadership
-- the first complete restatement of basic principles in 30
years. In Sergeyev's view, Gorbachev's document was too "social
democratic," a derogatory term among hard-liners. What he meant
was that Gorbachev wanted to abandon basic communist principles.
Instead, he has advocated a democratic, parliamentary-style
party and a mixed economy. "If the Gorbachev line should
triumph," warned Sergeyev, "there will no longer be a Communist
Party -- not even in name."

    The plenum was not marked this time by bitter personal
attacks against Gorbachev. His opponents, said Sergeyev, a
professor of political economics at Moscow's Academy of Labor
and Social Relations, were trying to stage "a revolt on their
knees." There were angry outcries in the hall during the closed
sessions, he said, but when the time came to vote, Gorbachev
always won. The General Secretary had trumped his critics by
embracing their call for a special congress before the end of
the year, thus deflecting their attempts to force an immediate
schism in the party or a change of leadership.

    There was a time when Gorbachev would not have dared to
move so brazenly against the hard-liners. Now he evidently
believes that time is running out for them. Party hard-liners
have been defeated in almost every major election that has been
held during the past two years. While communist rule goes
unchallenged in the conservative Central Asian republics, the
party is virtually a marginal opposition group in Georgia,
Armenia and the Baltic republics. Rank-and-file members across
the country are deserting the fold in droves. Some 4 million
have left the party during the past 18 months, reducing total
membership to 15 million.

    Sergeyev fears that if Gorbachev's policies do not finish
off the communists, the party's most prominent dropout, Boris
Yeltsin, will. In one of his first acts as president of the
Russian Federation, Yeltsin banished all party organizations
from the workplace and from state institutions. His decree was
aimed like an ax at the very roots of communist power: the dense
tangle of party cells in factories and businesses that have
functioned alongside state agencies as a shadow system of
administration. This party bureaucracy has been a major brake
on radical economic reforms.

    The Central Committee passed a resolution last week
condemning the Yeltsin decree. Gorbachev also claimed that he
would oppose any moves against local party cells by "all
constitutional means." But hard-liners like Sergeyev suspect the
President will betray them. They contend that Gorbachev wants
the issue to be decided by the Committee for Constitutional
Compliance, which rules on the constitutionality of laws, rather
than veto the decree himself and risk alienating Yeltsin. No
matter what the Kremlin does, the Russians are bound to go ahead
with plans to kick party functionaries out of factories.

    The struggle between hard-liners and radicals has
splintered the party into rival factions. They range from the
Bolshevik Platform of neo-Stalinist gadfly Nina Andreyeva to the
radical Communists for Democracy group led by Russian vice
president Alexander Rutskoi. Sergeyev contends that his
Communist Initiative movement alone counts at least 3.5 million
sympathizers. Other alternatives are emerging on the fringes of
the party. With the tacit approval of Gorbachev, former Foreign
Minister Eduard Shevardnadze set up a Democratic Reform Movement
earlier this month to further perestroika. Last week Alexander
Yakovlev, a key architect of Gorbachev's changes, quit the
government, presumably to devote his energies to the fledgling
movement. Meanwhile, 12 prominent hard-liners called for the
creation of a "popular patriotic movement" of their own for "the
salvation of the motherland."

    The question is not whether there will be a party schism
but when. More is at stake than just ideology. Property worth
billions of rubles, ranging from printing plants and party
office buildings to Black Sea health spas and a luxury Moscow
hotel, is held by the Communist Party. No one wants to be the
first to leave the party and risk losing claim to a lucrative
chunk of the property settlement when the divorce is completed.

    Faced with the latest plenum setback, Sergeyev vowed to
oppose what Gorbachev is doing to the party "by every possible
means -- within the law." He admitted that there would be "tough
times" ahead for hard-liners. Gorbachev declared last week that
the party would only be "strengthened" if those who opposed his
new program resigned, but Sergeyev has his own ideas. "The
social democrats and liberals -- and that includes Gorbachev --
should get out," says Sergeyev. "Let them create their own new
party. True communists have no reason to leave."