TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/061989/06198900.037

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COMMUNISM, Page 28

SOVIET UNION

Hard Lessons and Unhappy Citizens

Wherever he turns, Gorbachev faces the forces he has unleashed

By William R. Doerner


    Not so long ago, the catalog of crises that have recently
afflicted the Soviet Union would have been buried in the recesses
of the Kremlin, with much of the rest of the world none the wiser.
Not anymore. With a newly emboldened press and oratorical
skirmishing going on constantly in Moscow's new Congress of
People's Deputies, an engrossed world knows practically everything.

    The very act of revelation is a central feature in the gradual
loosening of Communist strictures that Mikhail Gorbachev is
bringing to the Soviet Union, as he grapples with the challenge of
revamping the system without completely violating it -- and a stark
contrast to the refusal of China's leadership to countenance the
slightest openness.

    Paying heed to the cataclysmic outcome of that refusal, the
Kremlin calibrated its response with great care. Early in the week,
the Congress issued a timid resolution urging that "wisdom, sound
reason and a balanced approach" prevail in China. Later, caution
became less evident. "We hadn't expected this," said Foreign
Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov, adding that his government
was "extremely dismayed" over the events in China. But Moscow's
options were limited.  After almost two decades of exchanging
ideological insults, the Chinese were scarcely prepared to accept
a lecture from the Soviets. In any case, admonitions would only
feed lingering Chinese suspicions that the Kremlin still harbors
hopes of playing schoolmaster to the Communist movement. So what
is left, in Moscow's view, is nothing but time and patience. "If
you think we don't understand the situation, you are wrong," said
a frustrated Soviet observer last week. "Not one Soviet, from the
President on down to a schoolchild, approves of China's use of
tanks to repress the students. But the only way we can really help
is by example, through deepening democracy in our own country."

    Last week the world was able to watch that process lurch ahead
as debates in the Soviet Congress reached a painful peak of
bitterness. Little was hidden from the Soviet people as a pair of
new disasters threw the nation into mourning.

    Gorbachev's experiment in rambunctious parliamentary democracy
adjourned, with moments of high drama to the very end. At the
closing session of the Congress, Andrei Sakharov and Gorbachev
squared off against each other. Sakharov called for removal of the
constitutional provision giving the Communist Party the "leading
role" in Soviet political life, while the Soviet leader accused the
Nobel Peace laureate of trying to "belittle" the new parliament's
achievements. There were also painful disclosures about the
dreadful state of the Soviet economy. Prime Minister Nikolai
Ryzhkov admitted that some 40 million Soviets, or 13% of the
population, live below the poverty level, that the Afghanistan war
had cost about $70 billion and that the country's foreign-trade
deficit this year will reach $52 billion. (The U.S. foreign-trade
deficit last year was $119.8 billion.) In an attack on the economic
front, Ryzhkov proposed cuts of almost a third in the military
budget until 1995 and the elimination of as many as 18 of the 50
government ministries.

    The political challenges that confronted Gorbachev included
the first walkout of the session, staged by members from Lithuania,
one of the country's three Baltic republics and a hotbed of
nationalism. They were provoked by a plan, backed by Gorbachev, to
establish a commission empowered to have the final say on
constitutional disputes. Baltic deputies viewed the proposal as one
more way for Moscow to impose its will on the 14 non-Russian
republics. "Our electors ordered us to take care of the sovereignty
of our republics," declared Romas Gudaitis, a writer and deputy
from Lithuania. Gorbachev was clearly exasperated by the
Lithuanians' sudden departure, calling after them, "I ask you to
be calm because this is not so simple." In the end, Gorbachev won
passage of a compromise measure, placing the commission's charter
in the hands of a group that includes leading dissidents.

    But that minor eruption paled next to the outburst of violence
in Uzbekistan, the fourth largest republic, located in the southern
part of the U.S.S.R. The worst outbreak of ethnic mayhem in the
modern Soviet era began on the night of June 3, in the city of
Fergana (pop. 190,000), 150 miles southeast of Tashkent, as bands
of native Uzbeks staged a series of brutal attacks on minority
Meskhetian Turks, who were deported from Georgia in 1944 by Joseph
Stalin. Most of the 190,000 displaced Meskhetians settled in
Uzbekistan, a region that did not always welcome their presence.

    Precisely what touched off the violence remained unclear,
despite thorough glasnost-era reporting by the Soviet press and
television. Some stories said the fighting was touched off by a
dispute over the price of strawberries at a local market, while
others maintained that the attacks were in retaliation for a fight
last month in the tiny market town of Kuvasi.

    Whatever the cause, mobs of mostly young Uzbek men went on a
rampage against the Meskhetians, hunting them down in their homes
and beating them with iron bars and stones. Moscow rushed 9,000
Interior Ministry troops to the scene in an attempt to quell the
violence. But fighting erupted in the city of Kokand, 40 miles west
of Fergana, where a mob numbering 5,000, some with automatic
weapons, attacked government buildings, blocked railroad tracks and
set fires.

    By week's end at least 80 people, mostly Meskhetians, had been
killed and perhaps as many as 1,000 injured. In addition, more than
400 homes, eight factories and six schools had been burned down.
Some 11,000 Meskhetians had taken up residence in refugee camps,
either because their homes had been destroyed or because they
feared for their lives.

    Gorbachev acknowledged the violence in sessions of the
Congress, the latest outbursts in a growing litany that many
conservatives blame on his tolerant governing style. Said the
Soviet leader: "Let us again issue an appeal to keep the peace.
Please stop and let us trust the legal organs of the country to do
everything to protect the lives of the people."

    Ethnic disorders were not the only sad news that Gorbachev
conveyed to the Congress last week. On Monday, dressed in a
funereal black suit, the Soviet leader called for a moment of
silence in memory of "several hundred" Soviets who perished over
the weekend in a gas-pipeline explosion in the southern Ural
mountains. Some three hours before the explosion, technicians
apparently noticed a dip in pressure along one section of the
pipeline. But instead of searching for a leak, they turned up the
gas flow to get the pressure back to normal, allowing huge
quantities of propane, butane and other highly flammable gasses to
escape and form an atmospheric "lake." Fatefully, two passenger
trains on the famed TransSiberian Railway were passing each other
when the gases, ignited probably by a spark or a discarded
cigarette, detonated with the force of a ten-kiloton bomb (the
atomic bomb used on Hiroshima was 12.5 kilotons).

    It was the worst train disaster in Soviet history. The
explosion thrust a pillar of fire into the nighttime Siberian skies
that was visible to observers more than 60 miles away. The bodies
of 137 of the 1,200 passengers aboard the trains were recovered,
53 more died en route to the hospital and an unknown number were
completely incinerated in the blast, making a precise toll
impossible. More than 700 passengers and crew, many of them
horribly burned, required hospitalization. The victims included
many children on their way to summer camps on the Black Sea. On
Saturday a train traveling from that resort area crashed into a
bus, killing 31 people and injuring at least 14 others.

    Ealier in the week, Gorbachev had visited the scene of the
explosion, acre after acre of which was scorched black by fire.
"It seems once again that it is a matter of incompetence,
irresponsibility, mismanagement," the grim and angry President told
the Congress. "It was nothing less than a shameful outrage. There
will be no progress in this country if we have such laxness."
Gorbachev then exhorted his listeners to "learn hard lessons from
what happened." Last week in the Soviet Union, there was no
shortage of hard lessons.


-- Paul Hofheinz and John Kohan/Moscow