WORLD, Page 41SOVIET UNIONAnd Now for My Next Trick . . .By purging 74 "dead souls" from the Central Committee, Gorbachevonce again proves a political magician without peerBy John Kohan/MOSCOW
More than once, Mikhail Gorbachev has shown himself to be the
most dazzling of political magicians. So when word spread that the
Communist Party Central Committee had been summoned last week for
a special plenum to discuss "organizational questions," many
Soviets wondered just what the General Secretary had up his sleeve
this time. Gorbachev did not disappoint them. Without resorting to
repression, arrest or personal vilification, he gracefully purged
74 full members of the 301-member Central Committee. Never before
in Soviet history had such a large housecleaning been executed so
painlessly.
The departing Old Guard, dubbed the "dead souls" in a reference
to Nikolai Gogol's 19th century novel, read like a Who's Who from
the time of Leonid Brezhnev. Included were a former President, a
former Prime Minister, five marshals, six generals and a portfolio
of onetime Politburo members. What's more, they had "requested" to
resign in an extraordinary statement that expressed "unanimous
support for the political course of our dear party." As Gorbachev
explained to the plenum, "One generation of party members has
naturally to replace another."
That modest assessment downplayed the significance of a
leadership shuffle that considerably strengthened the Soviet
leader's position in his struggle against the party's conservative
wing. In theory, the Central Committee functions as the party's
most authoritative ruling body in the period between Communist
Party congresses. It has the formal power to vote out the ruling
Politburo, but it can replenish its own ranks only when a congress
is convened. With the next regular congress scheduled for 1991, the
Soviet leader had to be content, for the moment, with promoting 24
junior members of the present body from candidate to voting
members. Though the Central Committee was thus downsized by 50
members, to 251, reinforcements are on the way. Since the last
congress, in 1986, Gorbachev has changed party leaders in six out
of 15 republics and 88 out of 150 regional and territorial party
chiefs.
The plenum was the first major meeting since the March
elections for the new Congress of People's Deputies, which holds
its inaugural session on May 25. The strong showing by reformist
candidates gave Gorbachev the proof he needed to persuade skeptical
party functionaries that the solution to the country's economic
woes lies in accelerating reforms, not braking them. "The elections
unequivocally said yes to perestroika," Gorbachev told the plenum.
Added he: "We should have enough courage and ability to pursue
consistently the line we have marked out under difficult
conditions."
Speaking with the same bluntness heard at past party plenums,
Gorbachev did not gloss over the country's continuing shortages in
food and consumer goods, but he also contended that many Soviets
had forgotten how to work and "had got used to the fact that they
are often paid just for coming to work." His harshest words were
targeted at bumbling bureaucrats. Gorbachev told how one ministry
had imported almost 30 million medical syringes without ensuring
that there were needles to go with them.
Gorbachev asserted that many in the party were "not always
keeping pace with life," adding, "This is also true of the Central
Committee of the party and its Politburo." He compared some party
leaders with commanders who are straggling in the trenches when
their divisions are already on the attack. Said he: "Some have
already gone so far as to say in effect that democracy and glasnost
are very nearly a disaster. The fact that people . . . no longer
want to remain silent and insist on making demands is viewed as
taking perestroika too far. I for one, comrades, see this as a
success of perestroika."
Gorbachev's feisty tone was matched by a barrage of frank
criticism from the floor, which was later printed in full in the
Soviet press. Yuri Solovyov, the Leningrad regional party boss who
had lost his uncontested election race for the new legislature,
charged that Kremlin initiatives like the antialcoholism campaign
and the program to foster cooperative businesses had been carried
out with "inconsistency, haste and insufficient thought." Of
perestroika, Solovyov said, the "minuses still significantly exceed
the pluses." Moscow Mayor Valeri Saikin, another election loser,
questioned whether democracy had not come to mean "everything is
permitted."
One of the harshest blasts came from Vladimir Melnikov, the
party boss from the Komi region, in the northeastern part of the
Russian Republic. He charged that today's problems could not simply
be attributed to past leaders. "We are duty bound to admit that
many mistakes and miscalculations have been made in the years of
perestroika too." In fact, he wondered if the real truth were being
kept from Gorbachev by aides who were "clearly guarding the General
Secretary from the severity of the situation."
With a final round of elections set for May 14, there was
evidence last week that some local functionaries had not got the
message from the first round of votes. In one district of the
Russian city of Pskov, the local electoral commission chose the
regional party boss again as its uncontested candidate, despite the
fact that he lost his first bid at the ballot box. The liberals
could at least claim a triumph in the second round of elections at
the Soviet Union's Academy of Sciences. After weeks of debate,
academy members finally voted Nobel Peace laureate Andrei Sakharov
one of their 20 seats in the congress. Independent deputies and
supporters of such unofficial groups as the popular front movements
in the Baltic States have already gathered in Moscow to discuss
forming a loose parliamentary bloc called the March Coalition. The
group could attract as many as 10% of the members of the new
Congress of People's Deputies, presenting Gorbachev with something
akin to an organized opposition.
If the left may challenge the Soviet leader in the future, the
conservatives are doing so right now, and Gorbachev showed last
week that he could hold his own in the debate with them. In some
ways, Gorbachev is the Teflon General Secretary, blaming others for
the plodding progress of perestroika despite the fact that he has
been in charge for more than four years. "Gorbachev's greatest
strength may very well be his pragmatism," mused a Moscow
intellectual. "He is not dogmatic about carrying out any set
program. Instead, he maneuvers in and out of every situation like
a clever fox." Nonetheless, with empty store shelves and seething
ethnic tensions, many edgy Soviets are counting the days in hopes
that the first session of the new congress will mark the point of
