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Desperately Seeking Stability
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12633 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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6 / 1987 |
4,974 Words |
| Author
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Hans Huyn
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Fundamental democratization is a task which cannot be deferred!" - thus Mikhail Gorbachev's voice rang out from the television screens of the Western world during his speech before the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in January 1987. Yet in the 23-page final document published by the Central Committee, which contains binding instructions for party work, no mention was made of voting by secret ballot or of several candidates standing for election.
Even if such procedures had been mentioned and decreed, this would have nothing to do with democracy in the Western sense of the word: nothing to do with the rule of law, the separation of powers, or the form of government, let alone with several parties being permitted. Gorbachev's aim is not to transform the Soviet dictatorship into a liberal state under the rule of law but reorganization of the existing totalitarian system - if possible with Western assistance. It is a futile attempt to convert an antiquated steamroller from the time of Karl Marx into a modern sports car by means of streamlined bodywork.
Gorbachev's desperate attempt to make the ossified Soviet system more efficient is so urgently required because, in contrast to the prophecies and plans of the 1961 party program, the Soviet Union failed to overtake the United States by 1980 and is falling ever farther behind the industrial nations of the free world. In 1960, the Soviet Union still produced more than five times as much as Japan; today, 120 million Japanese produce more than one and a half times as much as 280 million Soviet citizens. If Gorbachev today promises that the Soviet standard of living will double by the year 2000, this is - given a continuing socialist dictatorship - doomed to failure in just the same way as the predictions of 1961.
The absence of a free market to regulate progress; the inflated - and still growing - bureaucracy, which ensures the continuation of corruption and the black market; the chronic plight of agriculture; the Chernobyl disaster; the fall in oil prices and the resultant relative increase in the price of Soviet energy; and, finally, the insatiable arms demands of the military compel Gorbachev to make a maximum effort and take drastic measures. It is, however, not a reform but an attempt to reorganize the system, despite the strong resistance of its ruling nomenklatura.
In addition, there are centrifugal national forces at work: Ethnic Germans from Russia, Jews, and Crimean Tartars want to emigrate or obtain greater autonomy. The Lithuanians protest against national oppression and religious repression. On December 27, 1986, the seventh anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, young people demonstrated in Riga, chanting their demands: "Away with Soviet Russia - a free, free Latvia." In the Ukraine, the old autonomy is not forgotten. In the Northern Caucasus, the Sufi fraternities are a rallying point for fundamentalist Islamic ideas. In Islamic Soviet Central Asia, where the birth rate is higher than that of the Russian population in the Soviet Union, the teachings of the Koran carry greater weight than the doctrine of dialectical materialism. In Kazakhstan, it was not least the repercussions of Moscow's Afghan adventure that contributed to the outbreak of serious riots in mid-December 1986, in which dozens of people were killed. Efforts are being made to bring the situation under control through rigorous purges and by refusing entry to
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