MOSCOW’S POTEMKIN ‘REFORMS,’ NEW ‘OPPOSITION’ GROUP: MORE FROM THE FOLKS WHO BROUGHT YOU PERESTROIKA

(Washington, D.C.): As the Soviet
campaign to win new economic concessions
from the West enters the home stretch in
the run-up to the London Economic Summit,
Moscow center is pulling out all the
stops. Scarcely a day goes by without an
announcement of some Kremlin policy
shift, some legislative action by the
Gorbachev-dominated Supreme Soviet or
some nominally unauthorized
initiative being taken by close Gorbachev
associates.

What these steps have in
common is a cynical attempt to mollify
Western concerns about the Soviet central
authorities’ commitment to fundamental
reform — without altering
meaningfully their actual control over
the levers of power.
A
partial listing of recent examples of
such initiatives includes the following:

  • Erstwhile Gorbachev economic
    advisor Gregori Yavlinski has
    been the prime Soviet mover
    behind the so-called “Grand
    Bargain” proposal developed
    with Harvard academics over the
    past two months. Gorbachev has
    coyly indicated his personal
    interest in this deal featuring
    at least $120 billion in Western
    aid flows over the next few years
    in exchange for the promise
    of reform in the USSR. Even as he
    has done so, the Soviet president
    has allowed his prime minister,
    Valentin Pavlov, and other
    cohorts to go unchallenged in
    denouncing it and ridiculing its
    terms. Fortunately for Western
    taxpayers and genuine reformers
    in the USSR, this deal seems to
    have died aborning as a result of
    premature exposure to critical
    examination in the West.
  • The Supreme Soviet passed what
    Sen. Bill Bradley (D-NJ)
    described as the equivalent of a “sense
    of the Senate resolution”

    concerning the right of Soviet
    citizens to emigrate from the
    USSR. The act established that
    such a right would be protected
    by law starting in 1993
    and subject to certain
    conditions. Remarkably, such a
    flim-flam was viewed by the Bush
    Administration as sufficient
    grounds to waive the
    Jackson-Vanik Amendment — even
    though it fell far short of that
    Amendment’s requirements for
    genuinely free emigration, to say
    nothing of meeting President
    Bush’s own, previously stated
    requirements for a full
    codification of this right and
    a period during which its
    faithful implementation could be
    observed.
  • Ironically, just yesterday,
    published reports in the New
    York Times
    and elsewhere
    indicated the pernicious effect
    that the new emigration
    “law” is having on the
    flow of people leaving the USSR.
    In an article entitled “Rush
    of Soviet Immigrants to
    Israel,” the Times
    revealed that:

  • “A sudden rush of
    new immigrants, eager to
    leave the Soviet Union before
    its new passport law

    took effect today, pushed
    Soviet immigration for
    June to its highest total
    since October….But
    Israeli officials said the
    same forces that caused
    the sudden rush would
    probably reduce
    immigration to a mere
    trickle
    in July.
    Starting July 1, every
    Soviet citizen who leaves
    the country must have a
    passport…there is
    apparently some doubt
    about the Soviet
    bureaucracy’s ability to
    [ensure that every
    would-be Soviet Jewish
    emigrant will get a
    passport quickly].”
    (Emphasis added.)

  • The Supreme Soviet also acted
    recently to make it possible, in
    principle, for Soviet citizens to
    own land privately. The terms and
    conditions applied to that
    ownership, however, are such as
    to make it exceedingly difficult
    for the average Soviet to acquire
    title — even if, despite bitter
    historical experience to the
    contrary (notably, Stalin’s
    violent repression of kulaks who
    took advantage of an earlier
    liberalization to own their own
    farms), they actually believe the
    government will faithfully honor
    such transactions in the future.
  • On 1 July 1991, the Supreme
    Soviet also adopted a new statute
    authorizing the private ownership
    of as much as 70% of state-owned
    properties. As with most other
    reform legislation, this
    authorization is substantially
    emasculated by conditions,
    caveats and exceptions that will
    greatly reduce its effect in
    opening up the Soviet economy to
    free market forces.
  • In a marvelous indictment of this
    legislation and its sister
    “reforms” enacted in
    recent weeks by the Supreme
    Soviet, yesterday’s New York
    Times
    quoted an obviously
    jaded, but quite realistic,
    Western businessman who has
    worked in Moscow for five years
    as saying:

  • “In the past year or
    so, the Supreme Soviet
    keeps passing laws in
    which the title sounds
    right but the details
    don’t add up to what you
    would think was promised.
    They pass a law on free
    emigration and travel and
    you can’t leave freely.
    They authorize private
    land ownership, but you
    can’t buy and sell land.
    And now, we have this
    spanking new law on
    privatization where it
    would seem you can’t buy
    an enterprise.”

  • Also on 1 July, nine present or
    former close associates of
    Mikhail Gorbachev — led by
    former Soviet Foreign Minister
    Eduard Shevardnadze — agreed to
    organize a political opposition
    group. The exact intentions of
    this group are unclear; it might
    or might not form an actual
    opposition party in September to
    campaign against the Communist
    Party. All of the organizers,
    however, have been intimately
    associated with the Communist
    Party. Some, like Shevardnadze
    continue to be Party members.
    Several, notably Shevardnadze,
    have moreover rather unsavory
    records as apparatchiks; href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=91-P_59at”>the
    attached article by Michael
    Ledeen which appeared in the Wall
    Street Journal
    on 13 May
    1991 documents some aspects of
    the former Foreign Minister’s
    career administering the KGB in
    his native Georgia.
  • What is rather more clear is that
    this initiative may
    constitute the life boat for the
    Communist Party
    — the
    vehicle whereby communists can
    affect a more “human
    face” calling themselves
    Social Democrats or by some other
    moniker, much as they have done
    elsewhere in the former Soviet
    bloc. The involvement of
    Gorbachev’s intimates, if not
    Gorbachev himself, in such an
    undertaking suggests furthermore
    that this movement is yet
    another in a series of steps that
    appear to challenge the
    old order he continues to lead
    but that actually help him to
    channel and control such
    challenges

    rendering them ineffectual in
    every respect except in
    impressing the West with Kremlin
    tolerance for “change.”

  • Equally indicative of the true
    character of this
    “opposition” group is the
    absence of bona fide reformers
    like Boris Yeltsin and Gary
    Kasparov whose loyalties lie
    unmistakeably with the
    anti-communist reformers

    something that cannot be
    said of the mayors of Leningrad
    and Moscow (Anatoly Sobchak and
    Gavril Popov, respectively)
    .

The Center for Security Policy believes
that the Bush Administration and
its counterparts in Western capitals must
exercise great care in distinguishing real
systemic change
from Moscow center’s
potemkin reform machinations
. It
would be an egregious mistake to reward
the Soviet central authorities for
undertaking the former — through
liberalized access to
taxpayer-underwritten assistance,
technology transfers, arms control
concessions or other devices — when, in
fact, they have (at most) engaged in the
latter.

Center for Security Policy

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