TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/122589/12258900.032

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                ┬¡ⁿ                                                          WORLD, Page 20

SOVIET UNION

Face-Off on Reform


Sakharov is gone, but Gorbachev still confronts an angry,
outspoken opposition

By John Kohan


    The second session of the Congress of People's Deputies had
barely begun last week when a bald, stoop-shouldered man
hesitantly made his way to the front of the Kremlin Palace of
Congresses. Mikhail Gorbachev motioned for Deputy Andrei
Sakharov to step up to the podium, then settled back in his
seat, not quite sure what to expect.

    In a quavering voice, Sakharov urged the more than 2,000
parliamentarians to change the agenda of the meeting and
discuss deleting articles from the constitution that stand in
the way of urgently needed economic reforms. Disapproving
murmurs rumbled through the hall. Was Sakharov trying to derail
the proceedings? Why was he wasting time with such matters? An
impatient Gorbachev finally cut Sakharov off in mid-sentence:
"I have the impression that you don't know how to realize your
suggestions -- and we don't either."

    But Sakharov was not quite finished. He handed Gorbachev a
handful of cables supporting the abolition of Article 6, which
grants the Communist Party a monopoly on power.

    "You come see me," snapped Gorbachev. "I'll give you three
files with thousands of such cables . . ."

    "I have 60,000 of them," countered Sakharov.

    "Let's not put pressure on each other by manipulating
public opinion," said Gorbachev, waving his hand. "There's no
need." Dismissed, Sakharov slowly walked off the stage.

    There have probably been moments, like the one last week,
when Gorbachev had second thoughts about the telephone call he
made to the city of Gorky in 1986, informing Sakharov and his
wife Elena Bonner that they could return to Moscow after seven
years of political exile. Like the prophets of biblical times
who appeared before kings at the most inconvenient times with
uncomfortable truths, the distinguished nuclear physicist and
Nobel Peace Prize winner was always insisting that Soviet
citizens deserved better, much better, than what the Soviet
system had to offer. But last week's brisk exchange was destined
to be the final encounter between two men who have come to
symbolize in different ways the mind and soul of perestroika.
Two days after the testy exchange, Sakharov, 68, died of a heart
attack while sitting alone in the study of his Moscow apartment.

    As a subdued Gorbachev looked on, Politburo member Vitali
Vorotnikov opened the next day's session of the Congress by
asking the Deputies to stand in a moment of silent tribute.
Considering the abuse that was once heaped on the former
dissident, Vorotnikov's words of praise groaned with irony.
"Everything that Sakharov did," he said, "was dictated by his
keen conscience and profound humanistic convictions." Whatever
bitterness Sakharov's friends may have felt about the way he was
treated in the past, the authorities, at least, tried to make
amends. An official obituary published on Saturday in the party
daily, Pravda, condemned the noted physicist's banishment to
Gorky as a "grave injustice."

    When grumbling could be heard at the suggestion that
Monday's session be cut short to allow Deputies to attend the
funeral, Gorbachev intervened, noting that "we ought to pay our
respects to Andrei Dimitreyevich." Approached by reporters,
Gorbachev delivered a eulogy of his own, hinting at his genuine
feelings for the man who had so often challenged him to move
further and faster toward overhauling their struggling country.
"It is a great loss," he said. "You could agree or not agree
with him, but you knew he was a man of conviction and sincerity.
He was not a political intriguer. I valued this in him."

    From the moment Sakharov returned from Gorky, he was often
at odds with the man who gave him his freedom, whether pressing
at home for the immediate release of all political prisoners or
warning audiences abroad that Gorbachev was amassing too much
power. He clashed with the Soviet leader on the opening day of
the Congress last May, saying he would support him as President
only after an open debate, and was dismissed from the podium on
the final day when he tried to outline his own political
program.

    With his whining voice, rambling syntax and rumpled suits,
Sakharov was not cut out to be a public speaker in an era of
live television. Sometimes he was all too ready to embrace every
needy political cause and seemed in danger of squandering his
considerable moral authority. Two weeks before his death,
Sakharov joined a handful of Deputies from a radical coalition
known as the Interregional Group in calling for a "warning
strike" to force Congress to debate Article 6 and a package of
reform laws. The strike was a failure, a tactical error that
strained relations with Gorbachev, who was already impatient
with Sakharov's frequent interruptions at legislative sessions.
Nonetheless, Sakharov's death left a permanent void in the ranks
of the liberal opposition and deprived the democratic movement
of its symbolic leader.

    Gorbachev too is likely to regret that Sakharov's prophetic
voice has been silenced. Despite their differences, the two men
had managed to carry on something resembling a dialogue amid all
the clamor at the Congress. Seven months have passed since the
new parliament held its first meeting, more than half a year in
which political change has outpaced progress in solving economic
problems and ethnic tensions. At times last week, Moscow's
maestro tried to orchestrate the debate, cutting off talk with
a curt "That's all." Still, plenty of sour notes were struck.
The Armenian delegation stormed out in protest, radical
Lithuanians vented their mistrust of the Kremlin, and ordinary
Deputies griped about empty food stores. At one point, a stung
Gorbachev even flared, "Don't direct any accusations at me. Just
calm down!"

    At a time when his popularity has climbed to new heights
abroad, Gorbachev must fend off growing attacks at home from
two fronts: what he calls the "adventurists" and the
"reactionaries." Last week the Soviet leader took on the
adventurist radicals, criticizing them for racing "like firemen,
with clanging bells" to abolish the constitutional guarantee of
Communist Party rule. The Congress decided not to take up the
contentious question of Article 6, voting 1,138 to 839, with 56
abstentions. But the margin of victory was not so comfortable
that the Kremlin could indefinitely ignore the East
European-like rush to multiparty politics. Boris Yeltsin, the
ex-Politburo member turned radical populist, urged the
leadership to learn the lessons of East Germany, where reforms
were delayed so long that they were eventually accomplished
within a week -- "without (Erich) Honecker."

    For all the bluster on the left, Gorbachev's greatest
challenge comes from the reactionary conservatives. They make
up a bizarre patchwork quilt: hard-line trade unionists and
factory workers from groups like the United Worker's Front who
oppose a "return to capitalism"; military officials angered by
plans to convert defense factories to civilian use; entrenched
party apparatchiks who fear the loss of position and privileges;
and Russian nationalists who hanker after the Czarist past, many
of them aligned with the reactionary Pamyat (Memory) movement.
Whatever their ideological differences, the conservatives are
united by a concern that the reforms are moving too fast and
bringing in alien Western ideas that are pushing the country
toward a social breakdown.

    Party conservatives who long masqueraded as yea-sayers to
Gorbachev have begun to regroup. Leningrad party boss Boris
Gidaspov was roundly criticized from the floor of the Congress
last week for making "threats against our leader" and "sounding
nostalgic notes" for the past. Surprised by the attack,
Gidaspov claimed that everything going on in Leningrad was aimed
at "speeding up perestroika." Gorbachev watched the whole
spectacle impassively from the tribunal.

    The Soviet party leader has had his share of bruises
lately. He was apparently so angered by the harsh criticisms he
heard at the Central Committee plenum two weeks ago that he
threatened to resign. Gorbachev has played this trump card on
at least two other occasions to rally support. But this time the
conservative onslaught was especially fierce, particularly from
Alexander Melnikov, party boss from the Siberian city of
Kemerovo, one of the sites of coal-mining strikes that swept the
nation last July. In an article in the liberal weekly Moscow
News, journalist Danil Granin, who was a guest at the plenum,
expressed alarm that "here for the first time, not at a factory
meeting but from the mouths of leaders of major party
committees, I heard direct accusations against Gorbachev."
Granin even heard complaints that "if the capitalists and the
Pope are praising us, we are taking the wrong road."

    A two-stage Five-Year Plan to improve the economy that
Premier Nikolai Ryzhkov unveiled last week reflected the
tug-of-war going on within the leadership. Ryzhkov made clear
that his approach represented a "third alternative" to making
minor corrections in central planning or plunging headlong into
a free-market economy. Over the next two years, he said, the
state intended to use "rigid directive measures" to reduce the
national deficit from about 10% to 2.5% of GNP and increase
supplies of consumer goods. A real market with varied forms of
property ownership would take shape after 1992, he added, when
the state would begin to rely primarily on credits, investments,
pricing, taxation and other levers for regulating the economy.

    Liberals labeled the Ryzhkov proposals a "defeat for
perestroika and a victory for central planning."  Radical
economist Gavril Popov dismissed the new Five-Year Plan as a
return to "administrative socialism." Noting that the plan even
sets goals for egg production, he quipped, "It's time for the
comrades in charge to leave our laying hen in peace so she can
provide us with enough eggs by her own efforts."

    To keep his reform spirit alive, Gorbachev has continually
sought out the middle ground. He feints left, moves right and
usually lands in the center. But such compromise policies come
at a price, contributing to a widespread feeling that Gorbachev
has no clear policies for the future. As Deputy Nina Dedeneva,
a textile worker from Omsk, complained at last week's session,
"People have ceased to believe in perestroika because the
difficulties have only increased, while the period for
overcoming them has become too long." Now the Kremlin has asked
the people for another five years, and that could prove to be
more time than Gorbachev can afford.