TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/122589/12258900.032

Text File | 1990-09-22 | 11KB | 193 lines

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.