In early February, the Central Committee of the Communist Party accepted, after bitter argument, a Gorbachevian political platform that rejects many of the central tenets of Marxism-Leninism.
The party of Lenin, according to this document, rejects the very notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The party of Stalin no longer claims a monopoly of power. The party of Khrushchev espouses universal, equal, and direct suffrage. The party of Brezhnev rejects bureaucratic rule. The party of Andropov advocates the separation of governmental powers.
The lion, it would seem, is to lie down with the lamb, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union is to become the guarantor of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Has the totalitarian larvam of Soviet communism entered a February chrysalis from which a lovely democratic butterfly is to emerge in late June at the 28th party congress?
A more reasonable interpretation of these events would be that Mikhail Gorbachev has arrived belatedly at the conclusion that the Communist Party must change or die. He sees that Soviet citizens consider communist rule to be illegitimate and have become a people who may have reached their limits.
Non-Slavic subjects of the Soviet empire are making their views known in the most unmistakable manner. From Estonia to Tadzhikistan, captive peoples denounce Muscovite colonialism, repudiate their local communist satraps, and cast their lots with popular fronts favoring home rule. Resentment of Russian domination is, of course, nothing new. Nationalism has fermented under czar and commissar alike. What is new is that the captive peoples sense that Moscow has lost its will to repress their independence movements effectively.
Reluctantly, and probably too late, Gorbachev proposes a more loosely confederated Soviet state. Gorbachev hopes that modestly greater autonomy from Moscow will be enough to persuade a majority in the non-Slavic republics to remain voluntarily within his new federation. Some, like the Armenians, may take that offer unless nationalist passions are further inflamed by soviet troops sent in to halfheartedly suppress local uprisings. But others, such as the Lithuanians and Estonians, want total independence, and nothing short of permanent military occupation will keep them within the Soviet Union.
Few doubt that the USSR still has sufficient tanks and troops to reimpose dictatorship in the Baltic republics and other restive regions, but Moscow has blinked too many times in recent years. Its imperial will has weakened, and the empire is in the process of dissolution.
In Russia and, to a lesser degree, in the Ukraine and Byelorussia, the communists once enjoyed a significant degree of political legitimacy. Now, however, the socialist economy's inability to deliver the goods combined with the corruption and cynicism of the Brezhnev era have weakened that legitimacy. Gorbachev's glasnost and the failures of perestroika have delivered a knockout blow to even the Russians' belief in the party's ideology.
The people
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